Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I stayed in Brooklyn, where a friend and I cooked up a lil Indian feast for ourselves. There was also a strawberry rhubarb mango pie involved, but while it tasted delicious, it wasn’t the most photogenic, so I’m omitting it here. Linked the above pics to their recipes!
I am simple man. I don’t ask for much. Like most simple men, all I need to be happy is a hot mug of tea, good water pressure, and well-titled media—meaning, when I’m prepared to kick back and enjoy some piece of art (or consumable nonsense, at the least), I prefer that the title of that work make a proper introduction. I like when a title prepares me for the work in a way I didn’t expect.
For the past few years now, I’ve explored this corridor in my brain that obsesses over artistic titles. Before I start a new TV show, book, movie, essay, painting, album or whatever, this part of my brain evaluates the title to contextualize what’s to come, and it’s noticed a few simple patterns. For example, you can tell how dramatic (or subversively non-dramatic) a movie’s gonna be if it’s got an of in the middle (Dawn of the Dead, The King of Queens); you can tell how ~artsy~ it’ll be if the title has many syllables (The Men Who Stare At Goats, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). Each title primes you for the piece’s tone.
In fact, most titles* could fit into a certain template. Here are some I’ve noticed:
Noun of Nouns.
Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire, The Shape of Water, The Name of the Wind, Children of Men, Prince of Persia, The Rite of Spring, Settlers of Catan, Harry Potter books 2-5.
As mentioned, this pattern’s inherently dramatic. Expect vaguely foreign people to discuss wartime strategy. Why is this title so good at sounding serious? Besides its phrasing bringing to mind lordly titles (Baron of the West, Duke of York, etc.), I think having two powerhouse nouns in a phrase makes it feel more solid, like how we have two legs on either side instead of one giant stupid-looking one.(The) Person’s Thing.
Ender’s Game, Wesley’s Theory, The Queen’s Gambit, The Handmaiden’s Tale, Jennifer’s Body, Dead Poet’s Society
Love this one. It always makes me wonder, “Who is Person, and how did they come to own Thing? And wait, is their ownership of Thing…symbolic???” So with that laying out the context for the story, it was pretty cool to read about Ender Wiggin retire from his astromilitary career to develop tabletop RPGs, almost as much as it was to see the Queen of England make her first stock market purchase.Verbing (Noun).
Killing Eve, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Saving Private Ryan, Being John Malkovich, Trainspotting
This kind of title’s only meant for those movies where a single action, denoted by the titular verb, occurs through the whole runtime. So admittedly, it was a little bit uncomfortable to watch Eve get shot in ultra slow-motion for the season’s entire 18-hour runtime, just as it was boring watching teenagers catch glimpses of distant trains from their dorm room windows. But you mustn’t argue with art; you’re to accept it on its own terms.Preposition Noun.
In Bruges, Under The Skin, Against All Odds, Below the Heavens, Over The Hedge
I think this pattern is a little overblown, but that’s because it works. Prepositions are powerful parts of speech because they give your mind’s eye a specific perspective, so these titles instantly place you in, like, a psycho-spatial tableau. Sometimes, though the POV can be a little bit awkward, like when you literally observe the uncensored moving intestines of Ozzy & Drix’s spiritual successor Inside Llewyn Davis, which (deservedly) won best the Academy award for Best Visual Effects.Quirky Full Sentences
There Will Be Blood; You Were Never Really Here; 4eva Is A Mighty Long Time; Jiro Dreams of Sushi; Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
More common in movies and short stories, in my experience. I’m attracted to this because I desperately seek the illusion of closure. But often times, if the sentence is untrue, I’m less inclined to enjoy the piece. There wasn’t much blood, I was actually there, and Jiro actually dreamed of being caught with his pants down during an alien invasion, so…give me my money back, Hollywood?The Person(s).
The Master, The Dark Knight, The Big Lebowski, The Boys
Boom, is what goes through my head reading one of these because yes, they create little explosions in my brain with their punchy directness. Its simplicity discourages further questioning, which is what every piece of film ought to aim for. “What’s this movie gonna be about?” your child asks, to which you respond, “Um, it’s gonna be about a dark knight, idiot!”
So that’s all I got. Hopefully this is a useful guide for exploring the shaky terrain of media titling. Curious to know if you have any other media title patterns in mind! Shoot me a comment or email, or just send me some smoke signals or whatever.
*This says nothing about untitled works, which are created by only those people don’t know what they’re doing.
Other Things Of Note
This video about how adults fight kids in anime which is…true to life.
The movie snatch. about Jason Statham trying to convince Brad Pitt to fight in a rigged boxing match while Lennie James botches a diamond heist.
This recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie that we followed for our Thanksgiving dessert while also adding one sliced mango.
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—Chuckry Vengadam (@churrthing)
Interesting topic:) I'll start paying attention to titles now. As I read your piece, I went back and thought about old man Shakespeare. Looks like all these new titles are modeled after the bard's titles