Minimalism: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Many works of fiction try to be as epic as possible. A new work will try to [[Bigger Is Better|top the ones that came before it]], and [[Sequel Escalation|the sequels try to top their predecessors]].

 

 

Minimalism is when a piece of fiction lowers the scale of the events depicted within it, not simply due to time and budget restraints, but rather for creative reasons.

Minimalism is essentially the exact opposite of the [[Bigger Is Better]] trope. Here bigger isn't better, ''smaller'' is better.

 

 

Compare with [[Beige Prose]], [[Minimalist Cast]], [[Bottle Episode]], [[Stick Figure Comic]], and [[Minimalistic Cover Art]].

 

* ''[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=50234 shifticida]'' is an attempt to make a game by using only 32 bytes of disk space.

* ''[http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=54378 A true story from the life of a lonely cell]'' is trying to tell a story about relationships by using only 3 squares and 256 bytes.

* [[Texhnolyze]]. Again, very little dialogue, none for the first 11 minutes of the series and Ichise, the main character, rarely speaks unless spoken to by someone he respects.

* [[Kino's Journey]]. The art designs are very simplistic and the music is subtle and low key. The show has no overarching story other than Kino travels from place to place and learns about the strange cultures of the lands. Most episodes concern themselves solely with the philosophical ramifications of the culture and pay very little attention to any kind of plot progression or character development.

* ''[[Bleach]]'': Infamous enough to have reached meme proportions, [[Tite Kubo]] tends to dispense with background scenery in his panels. He's stated in interviews that his emphasis lies with the characters themselves and, by discarding background scenery, all the attention is focused on the characters and all the action, emotion and detail comes directly from, and are focused on, the characters. It works: he's considered one of the best weekly shounen artists in the game despite the jokes about his lack of backgrounds.

 

 

* ''[[Alien|Alien3]]'': How do you try to top ''[[Aliens]]'', a film which featured hundreds of Aliens, Space Marines, huge gun battles and a Space Operatic setting? The answer is you don't. Instead you deliberately scale it back so there is only one Alien, no guns, and the whole film is just confined to a dank prison with a few lowly inmates running around, in order to spend more time focusing on the human drama and the terror caused by the Alien.

** This was actually because of [[Executive Meddling]] and budget restrains. The original answer was "show the aliens making a full-scale invasion of Earth and film that".

* ''[[The Blair Witch Project]]'': No music, no lighting, filmed on camcorders and starring only three people (not counting interviewees). Despite being such a bare bones film, it's scary, and was a huge success financially.

* ''[[Sleuth]]'', ''[[Cube]]'', ''[[The Breakfast Club]]''. All these movies accomplish so much with so little.

** There is one action scene, albeit rather subdued for superhero genre.

* The 2010 Spanish film ''[[Buried]]'', which has [[Ryan Reynolds]] as a U.S. truck driver working in Iraq, who gets buried alive. The whole movie takes place inside the coffin, with Reynolds' character being the only person we actually see in the flesh (all other performances are either voiceovers or on his cell phone.) Still, the film never repeats a shot.

* ''[[Signs]]'': Your typical Alien Invasion movie will focus on world-wide destruction and chaos, the military's futile attempt to defeat the Alien war machines, a rag-tag group of scientists trying to find the Aliens weakness, and our unbreakable hero who will end up saving the world. ''Signs'' on the other hand tries to get ''as far away from that as possible''. Yes there is a world-wide chaotic invasion, but we don't see it. What we see is just a lowly farmer attempt to secure his property and protect his family during this time of crisis, while he leaves it to the rest of the world to do the actual fighting. No war scenes, no city destroying scenes, no heroism; just a guy on his farm with his family, scared shitless of the Aliens. (Too bad the aliens' [[Special Effects Failure]] and [[Weaksauce Weakness]] diminished the scare.)

* Gus van Sant's ''[[Elephant]]'' is a no-nonsense Columbine tale about 2 students going on a killing rampage in their school. The film features a lot of pristine stillness, extremely long static shots (which continue rolling even after everyone has left sight), and no score.

* Hitchcock's ''[[Rope]]'' is an 81 minute film that takes place entirely in real time and was filmed in only 8 shots edited to appear as one continuous shot; mind you, most films consist of several ''hundred'' shots. Eight shots is virtually unheard of.

** And the only reason ''Rope'' was filmed in that many shots was because film cameras of the time could only hold 10 minutes of film. If not for the limitations of tech, Hitchcock would have filmed in [[The Oner|one continuous take]].

** ''Rope'' wasn't quite real-time. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040746/trivia Quoth IMDB:]

* ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' is a gangster jewelry heist film with one strange twist: ''it doesn't actually show the heist!'' In fact, the movie doesn't show much of anything. With the vast majority of the film set in an empty warehouse that is serving as the gangsters hideout, we don't get to see the elaborate planing of the job or the shootouts that ensued, instead we get to see is the crooks sitting around discussing the aftermath.

* Jim Jarmusch's deadpan comedy ''Stranger Than Paradise'' is a study in minimalism. It focuses almost exclusively on three characters who do and say very little. The film has only a few mundane locations, uses black and white film, and features long periods without any dialogue. The film also has a very slow pace, with a total of 67 shots. In between each shot, Jarmusch inserted black space to further slow down the pace. The film is general thought to be a reaction to the growing trend toward fast, flashy media.

** Andy Kaufman's parody, ''My Breakfast With Blassie'', featuring an hour-long breakfast conversation between Kaufman and professional wrestler "Classy" Freddy Blassie, mirrored the minimalist style of ''Andre''.

* The [[Film Noir]] genre as a whole, focusing on the social commentary of urban stagnation and how the characters react to it.

* The [[Found Footage Films|Found Footage]] genre relies heavily on low effects and amateur filming in order to give viewers immersion through its realism.

 

 

== Literature ==

* Raymond Carver.

* Haiku is often said to be minimalistic in nature.

* [[Chuck Palahniuk]] specifically identified this as his style in an essay about another American minimalist writer, Amy Hempel.

* [[Film Noir|Hardboiled literature]]. Examples include [[Raymond Chandler]] and [[Dashiell Hammett]].

 

== Music ==

** In turn, a number of [[Kraut Rock]], post-rock, and electronic musicians incorporate minimalist songwriting.

** John Adams

* Lowercase subgenre takes it to the extreme. ''Bernhard Günter'', for an example, has some works where the "music" may be barely heard and sounds are similar of your average background sounds coming out of sensitive headphones.

* Alvin Lucier's 1961 composition "Elegy For Albert Anastasia" is mostly made up of inaudible low frequencies, with the few audible sounds being extremely quiet or fleeting. [[Viewers Are Geniuses|The concept: The Mafioso of the title was murdered because he "did not hear" certain important information; neither does the listener.]] [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|You may resume tilting your heads now.]]

* Tina Weymouth, the bassist of [[Talking Heads]], plays the same exact chord loops per song on their Remain In Light album. Listen to the bass's line on Crosseyed and Painless, it's simplistically intense.

 

 

== Software ==

** Also available are OISC (1 command, 3 operands) and Thue (1 command, 2 operands).

 

 

* Samuel Beckett, anyone? See for instance ''Not I'', in which the only thing on stage is a mouth, speaking for about 15 minutes.

** And then there's ''Breath''. Throw some trash on stage, turn the lights up, wait twenty seconds, turn the lights down. (To his credit, he wrote this one at least partially as a joke. He withdrew it when the producer who originally commissioned it decided to throw some naked people on stage along with the trash to give it the [[Faux Symbolism|illusion of meaning something.]])

** The same is true for many [[Absurdism|absurdist]] playwrights. Eugene Ionesco comes to mind in particular.

* Scenery in ''[[A Chorus Line]]'' is reduced to a cameo role. Except for one brief shining moment in the finale, it takes place on a bare stage, or a bare stage reflected by mirrors.

 

 

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''Oasis'' does that to ''[[Civilization]]''-type games.

* ''[[You Have to Burn The Rope]]'' plays it for laughs.

* ''[[Narcissu]]'' is a [[Visual Novel]] example. It's comparatively short, features only two main characters (who are seldom seen), and the graphics almost entirely consist of background art, with no sprites or fancy effects. Oh, and all the graphics are letterboxed to the middle third of the screen.

* ''[[Limbo]]'' is incredibly minimalistic, and all the more haunting because of it. No dialogue, no chapter names, no character names, [[Deliberately Monochrome|no color]], yet it's emotionally compelling and enthralling while it lasts.

 

 

* The design of [[The Best Page in The Universe]] is minimalistic in that its pages consist of minimal colour (large grey text on a black background), and is mostly text oriented, for the most part lacking images, advertisements, animations, and other fancy design gimmicks. The site author, Maddox, claims the purpose of this is in part to minimise bandwidth consumption, but is mostly as protest against "all the slick-looking, contentless web sites out there" and to make the website easier on the eyes as "Staring at a white background while you read is like staring at a light bulb".

* ''[[Marble Hornets]]'' is much like ''[[The Blair Witch Project]]'' - there's no music, it's all shot on cheap camcorders, and has few special effects. There's often little to no dialogue (some entries don't even have sound), with nearly all of the exposition done in white text on black at the start and end of the videos.

* ''[[Everyman HYBRID]]'' is what the cast of ''[[Marble Hornets]]'' pointed to when asked if they were fans of any of their imitators, describing it as doing everything, even the minimalism, exactly right. They arguably have more content, but it's often much less dense; [[No Fourth Wall|sometimes fans find in-game clues;]] one was a piece of paper with a single line of typed text.

* [[Google]] search. A logo, a search box, a couple of buttons and a few links.

 

== Western Animation ==

[[Category:Lit Class Tropes]]

[[Category:Minimalism]]