Author Filibuster: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
An
It's worth noting that writing a work of fiction neither adds nor subtracts evidence from a point of view. It may display evidence, it may make an argument using that evidence, it may convince the reader using that evidence. Authors should remember though ''a work of fiction doesn't prove anything.'' The fact that the author expects us to take their fictional world as instantly applicable to real life is part of what makes the trope so grating.
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If this is the climax of the book, it's often a case of [[Talking the Monster to Death]].
If a character is delivering the rant, it's also a [[Character Filibuster]]. If the author's opinion is the purpose of the work, it's an [[Author Tract]]. A main cause of [[Don't Shoot the Message]]. Whether or not any specific reader considers an
{{examples}}
== Anime ==
* The [[Mind Screw|infamous]] final two episodes of ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' are essentially an
** [[The Movie]] ''End of Evangelion'' was pretty much the same, just not taking place on a "giant blue ball" and was... [[Gainax Ending|arguably ''even more confusing'']].
** Due in part to the [[Mind Screw]], what exactly the
* In an early chapter of the ''[[Excel Saga (manga)|Excel Saga]]'' manga, Il Palazzo takes a few pages to rant about how he feels Christianity has had a negative influence on the world. The anime parodies this by Excel suggesting they skip that scene to avoid controversy. [[Lampshade Hanging|A lampshade is hung]] by Excel in the manga: "I think we may have just offended a large portion of the world's population..."
* The original ''[[Ghost in the Shell]]'' manga had an entire ending consisting of little more than the author's existential musings thinly packaged in abstract screen toned "art". However, this philosophical payload was cleverly hidden inside an espionage series, and anyone who didn't see where it was going after {{spoiler|Kusanagi beheld the falling feather}} have only themselves to blame.
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== Comics ==
* In a 1945 ''[[Little Orphan Annie]]'' strip, Annie soliloquizes about the dreadful foster home she's been placed in. She sleeps in the attic, dresses in a cut-down maid's uniform, is allowed no friends or recreation, and has to take every irksome task from serving dinner to shoveling
* As Jhonen Vazquez's comic ''[[Johnny the Homicidal Maniac]]'' went on, more and more text began appearing that dealt with the main character's philosophical doubts, to the point that the panels would usually carry more text than drawings.
* As part of the legendary [[Creator Breakdown]] during the run of ''[[Cerebus]]'', Dave Sim replaced parts of his comic with fine-print screeds detailing his legendary misogyny, which even diehard fans who continued to read the comic do their very best to ignore.
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{{quote|'''Cheech:''' "A maze beset by brutal pitfalls!" Hey, Olive, ''I'' memorized it, and I'm tellin' ya, it comes to me all the time, and it stinks on fuckin' hot ice!}}
* In the last 10 minutes of ''[[Clerks]]'' [[Kevin Smith]]'s voice hops from one character to another basically every time someone opens their mouth. In fact, this tends to be the method by which he concludes all his films.
* During a flashback scene in ''[[Saw]] VI'', Jigsaw is standing in the office of William, an executive at a health insurance company who had just denied him an experimental treatment for his cancer (and who is the subject of the film's main trap). This causes Jigsaw to go into a rant attacking the health insurance industry, saying that they do the very same thing that conservatives fear socialized medicine will
* ''[[Black Hawk Down]]'' suffers from this at points, where all of a sudden, one character or another will give a little speech to whoever's around justifying "why we're here", which is no doubt because it was ''[[backed by the Pentagon]]''.
* ''[[Birdemic]]'' twice brings all other activity in the film to a dead stop to lecture about environmentalism. These are just the densest clumps of the movie's almost relentless "message".
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== Literature ==
* ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'' has the definitive
* Howard Roark of ''[[The Fountainhead]]'' also gets a such an opportunity in his courtroom scene, and the last chapter of ''Anthem'' is essentially devoted to this purpose ([[Ayn Rand]] seems to do this a lot). These examples aren't quite as extreme as ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]''
* ''The [[Illuminatus]]! Trilogy'' parodies the filibuster in ''Atlas Shrugged'' with ''Telemachus Sneezed'', mentioning that the last hundred and three pages are a soliloquy on the importance of guilt.
* [[Louisa May Alcott]] admits in ''[[Little Women]]'' that she was guilty of this at one point. Her [[Author Avatar]] Jo's literary exploits include, in a backlash against [[Executive Meddling]] insisting that [[True Art Is Angsty]], writing a book that failed because "it might more accurately have been called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it".
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* The plot of ''[[Moby Dick]]'' is, basically, an excuse for myriad Author Filibusters about whaling, whaling culture, the anatomy of whales, and, of course, lots of [[Have a Gay Old Time|sperm-wringing]]. Not to mention [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|all the classical references]].
** Then there are those that interpret the whole book as an [[Author Tract]] about religion, where Ahab was trying to kill [[God]] by using Moby Dick as a substitute.
* Vegetarians get their say in the second book of the ''[[Inheritance Cycle]]''. Humorously, Paolini seems to have changed his mind in the mean-time, as Eragon rationalizes about eating meat in the third book. The anti-religion message was just as bad or worse. It looked like it was ''literally'' forced
** And then Eragon changes his mind about that ''as well''!
** It seems to go both ways. Elves tend to be a lot wiser and more attune to nature than any other creature because of the nature of their magic that bound their whole race in their blood oath with the dragons. As a result, they can't eat meat any more than a person could eat their own hand because they can feel the emotions from all the life around them, and if a creature dies, it feels like they themselves are dying along with it. They sing<ref>they speak in the ancient language combined with a flow of magic. The singing part is just their own artistic flair.</ref> to the trees to harvest fruits and vegetables that grow all the nutrition they need, so there's no need to butcher animals. With all their needs taken care of, the elves don't fight wars and most are content to keep to themselves and pursue whatever they fancy, be it writing, painting, or being a fish. However, when pressed, they will rise up together to fight off whatever force threatens them.
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** Goldman parodies his own parody in the excerpts from ''Buttercup's Baby'', (the sequel) that are provided in some editions of the novel - he describes in detail how a major stumbling block in getting his annotation of the sequel off the ground is the fact that Morgenstern's estate took a dim view of his chopping away Morgenstern's filibustering, as they view that as an integral part of the original work.
* The final third of Upton Sinclair's ''[[The Jungle]]'' is a rambling treatise on the virtues of socialism. Most readers only noticed his nauseating descriptions of contemporary meat-packing practices. As Sinclair himself noted, he'd aimed for the country's heart, but hit its stomach.
* Terry Goodkind's main characters in his ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series frequently stop to give ranty, self-important speeches espousing a fantasy version of his Objectivist philosophy. The fact that he [[Sci Fi Ghetto|doesn't consider himself a fantasy writer]] adds a lot of weight to this
* [[Robert A. Heinlein]] was fond of these. In ''[[Starship Troopers (novel)|Starship Troopers]]'' his characters deliver several lengthy monologues on subjects like the death penalty (good), conscription (bad), corporal punishment (good) and disarmament (bad), while in ''[[Farnham's Freehold]]'' he has characters offer similar diatribes on topics including cannibalism (good; er, what?!) and African colonialism in the post-WWIII remains of the USA (good). In fact, one could make the blanket generalization that this is Heinlein's [[Signature Style]].
** In ''[[For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs]]'', the entirety of the plot is a single lengthy aside sandwiched between the monologues on the death penalty ([[Flip-Flop of God|bad]]), corporal punishment (bad), and economics (complicated, but if you just do...) Note that ''For Us'' was his first book (even if it was only published after his death, as the manuscript had been lost for decades), and his tendency towards this lessened
*** He goes so far in the economics rant as to tell the reader to go gather a whole bunch of odds and ends to ''act out'' a model of his argument and see for themselves how right he is.
** ''[[The Cat Who Walks Through Walls]]'' contains yet another example, wherein the two main characters stop what they're doing to discuss the virtues of libertarianism and how wrong-headed the alternatives are.
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** In the category of "anvils that definitely should have stayed where they were," ''The Hippopotamus'' has a lengthy passage on the idea that [[All Women Are Prudes|women don't enjoy sex]] and [[The Oldest Ones in the Book|only say they do because they need to be in a relationship]]. This is something Fry said in at least one TV interview twentyish years ago.
* Neal Stephenson does this a ''lot''. He keeps you on your toes, too - sometimes he's just rambling about [[Restoration Comedy]] for no good reason, but sometimes the five-page demonstration of van Eck phreaking will turn out to be a key plot point.
** Stephenson's filibusters tend to less about telling us about his political views (though that does show
* Terry Pratchett has, perhaps, started to succumb to this in later ''[[Discworld]]'' books, as he began to use the series to express his views on the world. A major example is the argument between Sacharissa and William in ''The Truth'' on the true purpose of news media, in which William may as well be holding a card that say "VIEWPOINT OF TERRY PRATCHETT". Actually, basically any point in the book where anyone (but especially William) starts talking about truth in journalism. Makes sense since Pratchett started his writing career in journalism.
** It could easily be argued that, as a satirical series, this is the entire point of Discworld. This is a questionable argument, though, since it didn't ''start'' satirical.
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* ''[[Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates|The Silver Skates]]'' devotes lengthy chunks of the book - including a long side-story only little related to the main plot - to facts about the country of Holland, its culture and history, and basically why it is just [[Author Appeal|completely awesome]].
* The ''[[Left Behind]]'' series has this in spades. Each of the 16 books bring the narrative to a full stop on at least one occasion to provide sermons that are several pages in length. The final book, Kingdom Come, is especially bad as it spends an entire chapter retelling the stories of three old testament figures.
** The ''[[Children of the Last Days]]'' series my Michael D. O'Brien is essentially a very conservative Catholic version of the above, with a hefty dose of [[New Media Are Evil]] and [[Take That
* Similar to Left Behind, the ''[[Christ Clone Trilogy]]'' has some serious author fillibustering. There's hardly any in the first 2 books, but the 3rd book, Acts of God, frequently gets bogged down in Christian sermonizing.
* Professor Michael Murphy in the [[Babylon Rising]] series frequently lectures his students, friends, and acquaintances on the the correctness of his conservative Christian views. It just so happens that Murphy's creator, Tim [[La Haye]] (of [[Left Behind]] fame) is a conservative Christian.
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* The Marquis De Sade was quite fond of this trope, intercalating his famously depraved sex scenes with just as many, if less famous, lengthy rhetorics about the pointlessness of morality in a Godless universe and the glories of hedonism. ''The Philosophy in the Bedroom'' is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|probably the most blatant example]].
** Even in ''120 Days of Sodom'', which was allegedly written to be a catalogue of different "passions", he can't help his philosophizing and the first part of the book (the 400 pages that were actually written, as opposed to just notes researchers have found) intertwines "tame" (for de Sade, that means watersports/scat, by the by) non-penetrative sexual scenes with why the four main characters are justified in their future torture and murder of their guests.
*** This was [[Stealth Parody]] of the day's aristocracy and those who they share power with, and an example of how an [[Overly Long Gag]] can still be
* ''Relatively'' brief, but frequent, bouts of this appear to be a [[Signature Style]] of the work of [http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/SD40ka/ "SD40ka".] Marvel at how Gary proves to a black guy that [http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/SD40ka/The%20Singer%20Meets%20Her%20Man.txt racism does not exist.] Marvel again at how in ''another'' story Carol proves that [http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/SD40ka/Greg%20and%20Carol.txt those liberals are all just hypocritical closet racists.]
** SD40ka isn't the only culprit. Search around [http://asstr.org asstr] long enough, and you'll see plenty of asstr writers are guilty of making their stories nothing more than glorified morality plays. It's very annoying when these stories target specific audiences with [[Reactionary Fantasy|thinly veiled contempt towards their fetishes.]]
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*** Some academics think it was originally intended as an in-joke. Hamlet has no theater experience whatsoever yet there he stands, lecturing a roomful of actors on how to act. It's suspected to be a send-up of the late Earl of Essex, Shakespeare's first patron and a well-known egocentric loudmouth.
** Child actors/children in theater is reference to Boy's Theater, a form of English theater that was outside the patent rules that Shakespeare and his contemporaries had to follow. Only two theaters in ALL of England were legal for centuries (The Admiral's and King's Men); however Boy's theaters were outside these boundaries and many of the regulations did not apply (also the city of London which hated theater could do nothing against Boy's theater). So, a rant by Shakespeare on the topic of "spoiled" child actors is perfectly valid, they were his biggest competition right next to bear-baiting.
* Tony Kushner's ''[[Angels in America]]'' has a number of these, except that the rants are not about Kushner's views, they're about his character Louis's views. This might sound pretty
** Of course, how much Kushner agrees with Louis is uncertain.
** Louis is to some extent (by Kushner's own admission) an [[Author Avatar]]
** Not to mention that Kushner is a huge fan of Brecht, and the subtitle of ''Angels In America'' is ''A Gay Fantasia On National Themes''. So really, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]].
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* This happens a ''lot'' in the ''[[Metal Gear]]'' series. As a sly apology, more often than not it's the ''villains'' blathering on, and the protagonist greets their speeches with irreverence, frustration or bewilderment as appropriate. Not to mention that you get to ''beat the crap out of them'' once the cutscene's over.
** That said, in the final cutscene of each game, there's a character that always espouses for Hideo Kojima for a while. In MGS1 it's Naomi Hunter, in MGS2 it's Snake, and in MGS3 it's EVA (sort of, she doesn't nearly break the fourth wall). And you never get the chance to beat any of them up, because it's the final cutscene.
*** That's because the Villainous filibusters are actually [[Character Filibuster
** As a side-note, Nastasha Romanenko would like you to know that [[Anvilicious|nukes are bad]].
* Subverted in ''[[Resident Evil]] 4''. Antagonist Ramon Salazar starts what appears to be a long speech about a rather "special" fate he's got planned for Leon, following a brief quip about terrorism "(being) a popular word these days", but before he can finish his second sentence, Leon [[Shut UP, Hannibal|shuts him up by nailing his hand to a wall with a well-thrown knife.]]
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* ''[[Subnormality]]'', while excellent, often features a [[Wall of Text|level of verbosity]] rarely seen in its medium. Perhaps the most filibustering example is [http://www.viruscomix.com/page474.html this one]. (If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's a summary: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem".)
** It's no coincidence that Subnormality's subtitle is "Comix with too many words since 2007."
* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' [[Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny|Kiki, of all people]], breaks into [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20090830 an eight panel rant] about how [[Fandom
* ''[[VG Cats]]'' has the infamous [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/090423.jpg Nerd Rage], and several others almost equally non-subtle.
* [[Ozy and Millie]] was often interrupted by its author so she could rant on various subjects and air her left-wing opinions. What makes this odd is the fact that the author also had a political comic running around the same time with which to do this.
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* ''[[Family Guy]]'' has done a lot of this in its post-revival episodes to express the writers' generally left-wing views, usually without any self-parody. There is one example of a parodical usage in the episode "Boys Do Cry", however. The message itself is completely sincere, but the way it's delivered is comedically heavy-handed, infused with [[Reality Subtext]]:
{{quote|"Like, for instance, if you're watching a TV show and you decide to take your values from that... you're an idiot. Maybe you should take responsibility for what values your kids are getting. Maybe you shouldn't be letting your kids watch certain shows in the first place if you have such a big problem with them, instead of blaming the shows themselves. [long pause] Yeah."}}
** That is subtle [[Lampshade Hanging]] of
*** One particularly egregious example has an entire episode defending OJ Simpson and in the closing scenes there's an explanation about how it's wrong to judge others and it end with OJ stabbing three people. The [[Broken Aesop]] infuriated many viewers who felt that they had just had a half hour of time stolen from them.
** A particularly horrifying example of a literal filibuster came from the same episode where they used up 5 minutes of their show playing... a Conway Twitty music video.
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