In the anime series Revue Starlight, theatre students are quite literally battling one another to get top billing. For those well-versed enough in Japanese culture (which certainly doesn’t include me – all these details had to be explained to me), this is a commentary on and criticism of the intensely competitive Takarazuka Revue theatre troupe. They aren’t particularly subtle about it --the position that the girls are fighting for being called the “Top Star”, and in the Takarazuka Revue the “Top Star” plays the lead role in ever performance put on by her troupe until the day she retires.
In the show, there’s this character, Kirin, who sits in the stands and watches the battles, and ranks the girls based on their latest performance. I had him pegged for standing in either for the management of the troupe or the troupe’s audience for some time. It just wasn’t clear to me whether he was taking an active role in the proceedings or not. He winds up coming across as kind of an uncaring jackass as time goes on and things got rough for the girls while he doesn’t really bat an eye, so the viewers grow to significantly dislike the guy. The criticism of Takarazuka gets pretty pointed, but as it’s directed at a medium that the viewer doesn’t necessarily hold a lot of attachment to the viewer is likely to accept and agree with the criticism…
In the very last episode, Kirin turns to the camera and addresses the viewer. In a monologue he confirms that he is a stand-in for the audience, and carries on to berate the viewer for not really being any better than he is. This is when the viewer finally realizes that really this show is criticizing how popular entertainment in general is both produced and consumed,. As they’ve already gotten you to buy into it by originally targetting a medium you didn’t have strong feelings for and weren’t likely to have an instinctive reaction to defend, the criticism sticks rather than being rejected out of hand by the viewer.
This show as a very interesting one to experience.
In The Stone Monkey, one of Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme novels, Lincoln and his team are hunting a ruthless crime lord. A side plot has one of the characters befriending a kindly old man. Toward the end of the novel, we realize that they are the same person.
It’s been years since I read it, so I don’t remember all the details, but I still recall the punch this reveal packed. It was both a twist that I never saw coming, and in retrospect made perfect sense. I’m sure other novelists have done this sort of thing, but probably not as well.
Another screenplay: Mulholland Falls, starring Nick Nolte.
[spoiler]There is one character who:
is an army general (Boo! Hiss!)
is the head of a nuclear weapons lab (Boo! Hiss!)
is played by Jon Malkovich (Boo! Hiss!).
Not only is he NOT the killer, he is arguably the least corrupt government official in the entire movie. (Considerably less corrupt than Nolte’s character.)
And the more stereotypes you hold about the characters, and the actors playing them, the less likely you are to spot the real killer.[/spoiler]
Woman has a stalker. The police can do nothing about it until he sees the detective leaving her apartment, gets infuriated that she’s seeing other men, breaks in and beats the hell out of her. She survives and is rushed to the hospital. Stalker goes to the hospital, waits in the men’s room until midnight and goes to the woman’s hospital room, determined to finished killing her. She’s apparently sleeping, with only her hair showing above the bed covers. Stalker goes over to the side of the bed.
And out of the bed pops Detective Bert Kling, who says “Surprise!” and punches the guy out.
Maybe the guy should have noticed both the woman he was stalking and the detective he saw had short blond hair.
Speaking of Stephen King: the Dark Tower series. The entire thing as a whole, the octology comprising eight (or is it nine?) novels. At the end of the very last one, the gunslinger whose fantastic saga over eight books and several worlds finally attains the object of the quest, the Dark Tower itself, and walks into and up it. Right there SK tells the reader, welp, I guess that’s it, he finally got there and we’re done, OK! when the reader can clearly see there are several more pages to go. At that point SK says he’ll reveal what happened to Roland in the Tower, but you really don’t want to read it, don’t say I didn’t warn you! It cycles back to the opening sentence of “The man in black fled through the desert and the gunslinger followed” :mad:Thanks a lot, Stephen King, you incredible dickhead.
But that was the *perfect *ending to the saga. I didn’t need the disclaimer, but IMO there was no better way to end it. Certainly better than “oh, it’s a giant spider that we can defeat by a kiddie gang-bang.” A low, bar, to be sure, but the ending to the Dark Tower is perfection personified.
Despoilers of the Golden Empire, by Randall Garrett. This one has a twist ending to beat them all; so much so that the author spends an entire chapter afterwards justifying it to the reader.