Zeitgeist

According to Wikipedia: Zeitgeist is originally a German expression that means "the spirit (geist) of the time (zeit)". It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era.

So who cares, right? Well – show of hands – who thinks now is a good time to write a script about the Iraq war? Anybody? Anybody? Right. Though the war is still grinding on (and on) the fact is that three years from now, audiences will probably be less interested in the Iraq war than in some new conflict. But what new conflict? Exactly.

Part of our job as writers is to not just reflect zeitgeist but to predict it. Which comes first, movies, journalism and commentary about the news of the day or the way people feel about the news of the day? That is a question Hollywood has long struggled with. The fact is, as with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. What audiences see at the movies provokes their opinions, conversations and reflections long after the movie is over. But if we don’t provide movies that audiences want to go see because that particular hook or premise is the subject of curiosity or concern – then son, we have ourselves an empty theater.

How do we know what the zeitgeist is? Well first of all, it is helpful to break the concept down a little. There are global, domestic, environmental, intellectual, political, sexual and just plain silly issues and concerns floating around all the time, large and small. THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and Ugly Betty are two great examples of nailed zeitgeist. Boomers are aging, the globe is warming, the Middle East is warring and information is king. So what will happen next? Where are we going from here, as a species?

What is the prevailing zeitgeist about Africa at the moment? Well, thanks to the Pitt-Jolie family, Bono, Oprah, THE HOTEL RWANDA, BLOOD DIAMOND and the CONSTANT GARDENER, most Americans are feeling perhaps a bit more concerned about the continent; maybe even aware of some of the issues going on there, good and bad. Unstable nations, child slave-labor, AIDS and the exploitation of resources have been brought to the fore. Show of hands – good time to write a script about Africa? Anybody? Probably not.

But let’s take that down a notch. What is the prevailing zeitgeist about women in the workplace? For that, as writers, we need to turn to the pop culture happening all around us. How do most people you know feel about Hilary for president? What books about women are on the bestseller list right now? What are literary critics saying about the work? We don’t have to be high falutin in our research: who has been on the cover of People Magazine lately? What do the letters to the editor say about Brittney’s parenting skills?

In other words, to determine zeitgeist, all we really need to do is look and listen to the conversations going on all around us. What does your mom worry about more these days? What do YOU worry about? What are you excited about? What do your friends talk about on a Friday night? Mind you, you’ll have to listen in for subtleties. It’s unlikely you will see this scenario playing out:

Wilhelmina: What do you think about a female president?
Fredericka: Well, my zeitgeist-o-scope says it’s fema-bout-time!

Really, zeitgeist is a slippery term but in general it is generated by the attitudes we collectively hold toward various topics. If Hollywood executives could nail zeitgeist every time, all movies would be hits. But they can’t. And again we go back to which came first – the zeitgeist or the movie.

There is no silver bullet to nailing zeitgeist. Bear in mind that even if your agent is going wide with a great script right this minute, it can take two to three years before your movie will even be made. So what is a writer to do?

Look around at what is happening right now. Now reach into the future a couple of years at least. A public totally saturated with Paris Hilton right now may be totally disinterested in a movie about spoiled, vacuous blonde heiress three years hence. By then, there will be something or someone else capturing our attention. For better or for worse. Who will be elected president next? How will our nation recover from Iraq and The Bush administration? We just don’t know. So we may begin to conclude that while we can see what is happening now, we can’t possibly know what will be going on in the future. We can only make educated guesses.

So while writing your script, be aware. Is your script highly topical? If so, does it reflect what is going on now or has been going on for a year or more? If so, you may need to rethink the script because by the time your script is in play, the topicality is old news. But rather, if you are purely speculating about some totally new way of thinking about a particular issue, you’re probably on the right track.

Writers are spectators, speculators and historians of our collective experience. Unless you’re writing a blog – instantly publishable and imminently perishable, either take a new view of the past or take a wild stab at the future. Your script could become the movie that audiences will gravitate to because they are curious or concerned, consciously or unconsciously about the nature of your premise. And they might just come away from your movie with whole new attitudes about it too. Which will shape the zeitgeist.

And for those of you who made it to the perishable end of this blog-entry:

Fahrvergnügen, from fahren "to drive" and Vergnügen "pleasure". Which reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker, unprintable here.

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