Yes, dear reader, I am talking about the flashback, a device that is used oh-so-frequently in novels, films and TV these days. Much more frequently, in fact, than it ever was in the past.
And what is wrong with the flashback, Jess, you ask, as you sip 2013 Dom Pérignon in your fabulous duplex (this is how I picture my readers).
Let me give you an example. I will use a, er, flashback.
Monday. I bought one of those “girls on the” books (not The Girl On The Train, which I liked, although thinking about it, that had a lot of flashbacks. Anyway, why are all those books called “the girl” like the protagonist is seven years old? If she’s a girl she wouldn’t have been travelling unaccompanied and the book would have been called The Girl Travelling With A Parent or Nominated Guardian).
I digress.
As soon as I got home and opened the book I realised the whole thing was told in alternating “Now” and “Then” chapters. My heart sank, and not because I’d just splashed out a dollar on the book.
My heart sank because I knew I wasn’t going to like it.
I gave it my customary minimum 100 pages and indeed gave up. It just felt like two steps forward, one step back all the time. A book is meant to have you getting excited in some way the nearer you get to the end, and this doesn’t work for me if the writer is metaphorically tugging you back by the shirt all the time.
It’s like they’re saying: “Not so fast, I know something you don’t.” Which of course they always do, being the writer, but the excessive use of flashbacks just kills the momentum for me. It sort of damages the trust I have in the writer, that sense that they are leading me through this, that we’re doing it together.
It’s like if the projectionist (okay they probably don’t have projectionists in the cinema these days but humour me) kept stopping the movie, just because he can (or because he’s an alcoholic and can’t work the equipment).
Or it’s like one of those parties where you’re a bit merry (five glasses of wine merry, you’ve been there) and the host insists on everyone playing some complicated game when you just want to dance, drink and talk nonsense.
Hmm, this might just be the analogy I’m grasping for: are flashbacks party killers?
The reason for their growth, I believe, is what I call Complication Culture, that attitude within entertainment whereby everyone has to make their plots hard to follow.
Complication Culture emerged in the mid-noughties with the rise of “smart TV”.
TV used to be cinema’s dumb cousin, didn’t it? It was cheaper, crasser, peopled with actors who weren’t good enough to be in the movies. Well, not any more, mister! Welcome to the era of smart TV. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost, Stranger Things. All shows I loved, by the way. But they were much more complicated than they used to be. And if you can’t keep up, well, maybe you should keep quiet about it as you don’t want people thinking you’re stupid, hmm?
And flashbacks have been a key tool in the Complicated Culture practitioner’s toolkit.
Thoughts?
J x
Jessica Harper Uncanceled 
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