(Here's the beginning of all this)
The lovely Michael Gyngell joins us in response to this post: Great debate Jen but much as I hate bad prosody and scansion, I think it's got to be that basic and obvious to make it work for the 'kids'. Also I'm not sure Tenacious D write like a 14 year old on purpose, I think that's just what they do. I fully expect you to prove me wrong and look forward to it. x
Well, I've done a lot of writing for young people to perform, and from the age of about seven upwards, I've always written for them exactly as I would for adults. In my experience, there is no need for the craft to change, and although the choice of content will obviously vary because human beings want to explore and consider different things at different stages of their experience of life, the actual difference between a child and an adult is just that: less life experience. We have the same emotions, and the same sort of fundamental drives. They just get more complex the more experience we have.
So I don't use long words - but then, I don't often use complex language with adults either, especially in song. I want everything to fall pretty easily and immediately on the ear.
I think "basic and obvious" is exactly what I've been talking about with prosody and scansion: it helps everything reach the human ear and filter into understanding much quicker, no matter what stage of life experience the human being is at. That's the point of it.
Tenacious D may not have made a conscious and overt decision to write like teenagers, but they are certainly aware of the fact that their material relates to the teenage demographic for which we have an inherent nostalgia. Frankly, from a commercial point of view, they would be foolish not to take note of that. I'm quite sure that Jack Black is aware of his own commercial type-casting, even if only to be slightly annoyed by it.
On the other hand, I'm not saying it's just deliberately manipulative. It is about creative choice, and creative choice is about what honestly and truthfully comes out of (or appeals to) Jack Black and co. Which is great, it's a device, and it acknowledges the rules it is busy breaking.
Calling them 'rules' seems to be the problem, here. Tim will correct me if I'm wrong, but as soon as someone says, "These are the RULES of language!" it's very easy to be angry about that kind of imposition.
That's not what I'm referring to in this discussion, though. If we started from scratch, right here and now, in this moment, and looked at ways in which language can be used to communicate stories to the audience of Now, I would observe the way scansion and prosody facilitate clear communication.
That's not me looking backwards and trying to haul some old and heavy rulebook with us, forcing new writing to be dragged down by it. It's me looking at what we've got that can help us, and pushing us towards those things. Making writers go further. Making the craft do as much as it can to reach people.
A friend of mine types the word "shan't" with two apostrophes, to show off that he knows what an apostrophe does: sha'n't. Which I love for its nostalgia and arrogance, and for the sense of being something of an in-crowd in the understanding of the history of grammar, but it is history. I like history, but I'm not teaching it.
I'm not teaching anything, actually. If writers don't want to use scansion or prosody, it's not going to kill them, or their writing, or even the craft of writing lyrics. But it makes me sad. It's like a painter disregarding the existence of perspective, rather than choosing to use it or ignore it as a specific creative choice.
Horrible histories isn't making a specific creative choice. Or, if they are, it's not communicating itself to me very well. (Which may also be the case. But since scansion and prosody are global, one would hope that the communication of a creative choice to go against either one would be globally successful.)
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