A slightly odd use of your time but it does raise some interesting questions. For instance, would Carrie and the girls be such a big hit if they dressed according to what they could realistically afford?
I knew a few girls who used to watch the show for fashion tips and ideas as much as the plotlines. They’d take Carrie’s (or the team that styled her) fashion sense as gospel and used to pay ridiculous amounts for outfits or shoes they could barely walk in.
Me? I’m a flip flop type of gal. I’m short. I accept it. I’m not going to wobble precariously around on four inch toothpick heels to try to pretend I’m not.
In books (TV and movies too), we all have to put reality on hold a little and go with the flow. Has anyone else noticed how female characters in so many books wake up and have to do practically nothing to make themselves presentable (which isn’t quite as bad as in the movies when they wake up with a face full of perfect makeup and artfully dishevelled hair – I don’t even look that good after hours of primping!)? Or that the leading man is naturally buff, supposedly without the aid of a gym....actually, I don’t mind that so much.
As a writer, I understand that’s because no one wants to read ‘I showered, brushed my teeth, spent half an hour applying my makeup, blow dried my hair...etc’ because a) it gets in the way of the story and b) the fact I have to do it is enough, why force it on a character too?
Things like that I can accept. I didn’t even really mind when Janet Evanovich’s Ranger grew a few inches somewhere between her first and third book and suddenly became a viable romantic interest for Stephanie. I think it’s necessary to postpone reality a little when reading because really, isn’t that why we’re reading in the first place?
If you pick up a book in the currently popular vampire/shapeshifter Urban Fantasy genre then you’re willingly surrendering reality at the outset because we all know that vampires and shapeshifters don’t really exist (right?). But what about cosy whodunnit’s? When the maniacal samurai sword wielding psychopath, murdering people who have an excess of vowels in their name, is revealed to be the protagonist’s childhood sweetheart/Great Aunt Maude/local mousy librarian? Is that too far out of the realms of possibility for you?
Is it possible? Of course. Is it probable? Not really, but the killer can’t be who you expected all along or you’d whine there was no twist in the tale.
The problem is where to draw the line? For me, this depends on how the author sets up the world of the protagonist initially and how they react in the early dramatic scenes. If Polly the Protagonist trips over a dead plumber in a graveyard in the middle of the night and her response is “Huh. So that’s why he never came to fix my sink.” then anyone from the mousy librarian to the head of the PTA would make a viable murderer. If, on the other hand, Polly screams until she passes out, I’m just not going to buy it when it’s revealed that Uncle Mike, the local ice cream shop owner who loves kids, did it.
The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, if Polly screamed until she passed out, I would find it annoying (I’m heartless, I know) and secondly, her reaction is too close to a real life response in that situation. And in real life I would be seriously disturbed to think Uncle Mike would wield a sword for so inane a reason. Or if the killer turned out to be Polly’s childhood sweetheart, I wouldn’t be able to accept she’d never had an inkling of his swordsmanship tendencies.
Like I said, I’ll happily leave reality at the door and allow myself to be drawn into a well told tale, but for me, you can’t mix realistic human responses and unrealistic murderous situations. I just won’t buy it. Literally. And if I’m honest, I don’t want a realistic human response to murder and mayhem, if I did, I’d watch the news.
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