Snow on Tha Bluff and the Anti-Story
One day, a drug dealer named Curtis Snow, who lives in a neighborhood in Atlanta called the Bluff, stole a camera and started filming his life. With a little editing magic, the footage he shot ended up becoming the 2012 docufiction film Snow on Tha Bluff. Some of the footage we see in the movie is real, some of it's fake, and due to the statute of limitations on certain illegal activities portrayed in the film, the director and its subject have refused to offer any clarity on what is and isn’t staged. (Were I a betting man, I would put my money on most of it being fake, but no answer would really surprise me, and in the end, I don’t think it really matters.)
On the surface, Snow on Tha Bluff basically looks like Ignorance: The Movie, and if you’re of a closed mind, I don’t think there’s much for you here. I, on the other hand, think that Snow on Tha Bluff is an incredibly powerful and subtle statement against the glamorization of street life and violence in America.
SPOILERS, FOR A NUMBER OF FILMS, INCLUDING SNOW ON THA BLUFF, STAR WARS, SICARIO, SCARFACE, AND THE GODFATHER BELOW!
Also, I think it’s as effective as it is because it doesn’t have a story.
Now, before we get into the thick of it with Snow on Tha Bluff, I feel the need to go back over some basics. When I say, “Snow on Tha Bluff doesn’t have a story,” I want you to know precisely what I mean, and understand that this isn’t meant to be a criticism.
What is story structure?
If you’ve ever taken a film class or read a screenwriting book or a pretentious film think piece (Hi!) or tolerated a speech from your pretentious film snob friend, chances are that you’ve heard the term “story structure” thrown around in one way or another. Unless who or whatever went out of its way to explain what it means, and you’re not already familiar with the concept, you may have left that conversation scratching your head. After all, even the finest writers should admit that “story structure” is a pretty nebulous term that covers a ton of information, and the nuances and term definitions can change depending on who you ask or what writing pedagogy makes sense to you.
As for me, I made up my own definition, as I’m clearly qualified to do so what with my zero script sales and the master’s degree I don’t have. My definition is simple: Story structure describes the mechanics of why and how you give a shit about a story.
A writer wants to make you feel a particular feeling or express an idea or make you think about whatever it is that they want you to think about. To do so, they build a story to effectively earn those emotions from their audience. The way the writer constructs each scene and how each story beat leads to the next is what we refer to as “story structure.”
Suppose for a moment that I wanted to tell you a story about a boy playing fetch with his dog. Which of these two stories is more engaging?
Story 1: “A boy and his dog go to the dog park to play fetch. The boy throws a tennis ball, and the dog retrieves it.”
Or
Story 2: “A boy and his dog go to the dog park to play fetch. The boy throws a tennis ball into the bushes and the dog panics because he can’t find it. So the dog sniffs around and eventually locates the ball. He’s overcome with joy, but then another dog takes it and runs away. At first he’s sad, but then he looks up at the boy and realizes his desire to please him will never be fulfilled unless he gets that ball back. So he sneaks up on the dog, snatches it back, and brings it to the boy, who rewards him with a treat and a belly rub.”
Neither are particularly interesting or “good” stories, and "most" story doesn't necessarily mean "best" story (article coming soon). But the second story is the more engaging of the two. The dog has a goal: Bring the ball back to its owner. You can sympathize with the dog’s desire to fetch the ball, and events in the story build on one another and culminate to a climax and an ending.
The first one is barely a story. The events have a causal relationship to one another, but it doesn’t build or seek to engage. It’s simply a series of events that happen in chronological order.
What we use to differentiate these two stories, besides basic opinion, is story structure. One is the deliberate result of a series of decisions designed to engage with you and tell you an effective story. The other is a basic description of a boy playing fetch with his dog. Maybe you can find some sort of meaning in that. Maybe you can’t. But it’s not a story. It’s an account.
Is it possible to make an affective work of narrative art without structure?
A quick and overly simplistic rundown of traditional story structure. Or the monomyth. Or the hero’s journey. Or whatever name you so desire: For the sake of demonstration, our protagonist will be named Frampton.
Frampton wants something. What he wants could be anything from a literal object to a person or simply a feeling. Something happens, and Frampton has to venture out into an unfamiliar place or situation. He adapts to said unfamiliarity, overcoming obstacles and meeting new people. Around the middle, Frampton feels like he’s accomplished something. But then tragedy strikes, and Frampton’s worst nightmare comes to life. Frampton realizes his biggest flaw, rises from the ashes, and does whatever it is that he has to do. He may or may not get what he wants, but either way, he gets what he needs. Frampton, literally or metaphorically, then returns to where he was, now a changed man firmly in charge of his own life. Whatever his problem was will never be an issue again, as he is now in charge of his own fate. Or you have a darker sensibility and Frampton died in the end.
There are, of course, more nuances than what I’ve described, as well as some missing steps. (Mentors and all that.) More qualified people have written about this subject ad nauseam. In other words, read The Hero with a Thousand Faces. (Read this as well, but know that it also tells you to read The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Just read it.)
The most common execution of this style of storytelling is the three act structure. If we plug in our monomyth, in act one, you establish Frampton, the world he lives in, and what he wants. Something then happens, and he has to make a story happen. Now we’re in act two, where the meat of the narrative lies. This is where Frampton overcomes some obstacles, builds relationships, and gets what he thinks he wants or scores a major victory. This part is commonly referred to as the midpoint. (Hi!) But by the end of act two, the horrible thing happens, and Frampton hits his low point. Act three is where Frampton realizes what was wrong with him all along, owns it, and saves the day/gets the girl/stops the bad guy/a combination of the three. He then returns home and starts the rest of his life a different person.
We’re in a world where a group of rebels are fighting an oppressive government called The Empire. Luke Skywalker wants a life of meaning beyond the stars, away from chores and the day-to-day grind of Tatooine. One day, he takes in some droids, one of which has a message from a woman named Princess Leia, and he meets an old man named Obi-Wan, who shows him a funny laser sword and tells him about these people who called themselves “Jedi.” Luke’s family gets murdered by the government in search of the droids, so he leaves Tatooine, and act one, with Obi-Wan, the droids, and his new friends Han Solo and Chewbacca. In act two, they try to meet up with Princess Leia at her home planet, but they find that the planet’s been destroyed. They wind up on the Death Star, and though Luke saves Leia, Obi-Wan dies on their way off the base and act two comes to an end. Luke realizes his fate, and using everything Obi-Wan has taught him, he returns to the Death Star and destroys it. Now he’s a man, ready to take on the world.
So, is it possible to make an effective movie without the three acts, or traditional story structure as a whole for that matter? Well, yes and no. Yes in the sense that you don’t have to follow it exactly as it’s laid out. However, unless you’re making an art film that doesn’t seek meaning from narrative, structure of some sort is unavoidable. You can skip steps or rearrange them or change the beats, but you’re still going to wind up with a structured story. It may not necessarily be an effective one, but you’ll have a structured story nonetheless.
Many a film student as seen this specific graph before.
As for the three acts, let me put it a different way: Suppose I want to drive a nail into a wall. What is the best method for doing this? Maybe I can use a rock or a heavy book or ask the nail gods for help. Some of these methods may even work. I could do all these things, or I could just use a hammer. That’s what it’s designed for.
Effective stories not only mirror our desires to accomplish and overcome, but also how human beings cope with trauma and the basic obstacles that crop up in our lives. Ultimately, The hero’s journey and the three acts are designed to capture those feelings. Protagonists, on a macro level, go through the same stuff you and I do. We want something, and a bunch of stuff is going to get in the way of us getting it, but we’ll learn about ourselves and overcome. The heroes journey and the three acts are there to provide a framework that matches cycles we’ve already lived through and will live through over and over again.
However, if “structure” is antithetical to your idea of art, there are ways of turning it against itself. Take, for example, Sicario. Kate, Sicario’s protagonist, always tries to do the right and legal thing, unlike CIA agent Matt Graver or cartel hitman Alejandro. Kate thinks her methods will topple the men responsible for the murders in the beginning of the story, and because it’s ingrained in our movie watching culture that the good guys are going to prevail, we the audience believe her. However, we soon realize that there are no “good guys” in the fight against the cartels, and every time she tries to do what’s right, it blows up in her face. The drug war has escalated beyond anyone’s control, and the old rules of engagement have been so long forgotten that she can never hope to accomplish anything. There is no arc for Kate or the audience. There’s only a woman trying her hardest, only to realize that there’s nothing she can do. Ultimately, she walks away, defeated by the enormity of the war on the border.
We can find further examples in Richard Linklater’s films. I would argue that they actually have more structure than you’d think. (Particularly Dazed and Confused and the Before trilogy.) However, the philosophy behind a lot of his movies involves dropping you in a place and time, then leaving you there to soak as much of it in as possible. The events in his films unfold just like they would in real life. Some stuff happens, then some other stuff happens. Some of it’s random. Some of it isn’t. Either way, the satisfaction you get isn’t from a fully resolved story, but from being transported to a time of emotional growth, like adolescence or college, and letting it wash over you.
I think that in the end, the best reason to abandon structure (or try to, because you can't) is to make a specific point, and it’s here where we finally circle back to Snow on Tha Bluff.
Snow on Tha Bluff
One day, a bunch of college students drive into the Bluff to buy some drugs. They end up getting robbed by Curtis Snow, who takes their money and their camera. He immediately tells his friends to never stop filming for any reason. Curtis, a dealer himself, gets word that there’s a new crew close by who have set up their own operation. They’re led by a guy in a white Kangol cap. Shortly thereafter, Curtis robs the rival crew.
From here, we get a series of episodes and learn about Curtis’s life in the Bluff. We learn that he’s lived there all his life, and he takes the camera around to all the spots where his various family members have been murdered, including his brother and the mother of one of his children. We see life in the neighborhood and get to know Curtis some more, including another one of his children’s mother, and eventually, we see him plan and rob some dealers from Pittsburgh. More random episodes, then one day, Curtis is ambushed by White Kangol and the police show up.
Four months later, Curtis is released from jail, and immediately plans revenge on White Kangol. One night, Curtis fires an automatic rifle at the house of White Kangol’s baby’s mother. We get some more random episodes and scenes, and White Kangol shows up here and there in the background. Curtis’s baby’s mother needs to take a trip, so Curtis takes in his infant son. Later, Curtis finds out that she’s been murdered. It’s never explicitly stated if this is the work of White Kangol, the Pittsburgh dealers, or anyone else. Curtis spirals into depression and plots revenge. As he and his crew load up, they’re ambushed by White Kangol, and Curtis narrowly avoids being arrested. He goes home and destroys his own house. While his son plays in the wreckage, he looks at all the tapes he’s shot on his stolen camera. We then get a final shot of Curtis calling the production company and telling them about all the stuff he’s filmed.
Ultimately, there’s no resolution to the feud with White Kangol. The story just ends when it ends, and the feud metaphorically lives on forever.
So is it actually fair to claim that Snow on Tha Bluff doesn’t have a story? After all, events do occasionally have a causal relationship to one another and White Kangol does provide us with a little bit of a through line.
But there’s a difference between the presence of storytelling and having a completed story. A full story is the sum total of all of its parts and how they build on one another. All the pieces fit together, and each story beat is the result of what came before it. Luke Skywalker is able to blow up the Death Star not because he randomly decided to do so, but as the result of a series of decisions and events that happened before he fires those torpedoes. If he tried to do so in the middle of the story, it wouldn’t have worked and we the audience would not have found any satisfaction.
The plotting of Snow on Tha Bluff as a whole cohesive work isn’t governed by an easy “W happens, therefore X happens, but Y happens, so therefore Z.” When Luke Skywalker makes a decision and acts, we’re reasonably sure of what’s going to happen because of the relationship the story beats have with one another. When Curtis Snow makes a decision and acts, he’s met with chaos.
Curtis shoots up a woman’s house with a machine gun. We’re never told if anyone’s hurt or killed. We then get a few unrelated scenes and then the woman in Curtis’s life is murdered. We have no idea how or why any of it is related. The presence of White Kangol gives us a circumstantial hint, and you can read into it however you want. However, it’s never said for sure, there’s deliberate information provided to cast doubt, and with the way the world of the Bluff is set up, it could be anybody for any reason. We’ll never know who killed her, or why.
If you believe in karma or anything beyond basic cause and effect, then that’s your right. But I don’t. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc and all that. In Snow on Tha Bluff, actions lack direct consequences. Wrongs happen to Curtis and nobody really pays. Curtis does wrong and bad things happen to him, but there’s no direct link between the two. Conflicts are set up, but they’re never resolved. None of it leads anywhere.
And that’s why it works.
Traditional structure demands an arc, even if your protagonist is a bad person. Your lead characters must confront some aspect of themselves, even if they don’t change because of it. Every protagonist must have, so to speak, a “return.”
Curtis Snow never confronts himself. He never has to. He’s not a character searching for a story. His wants and needs are related to the pure necessity of being stuck in a system that will keep him trapped in poverty unless he operates outside of the law. Audiences hoping for a Scarface like story about the glamorization of drugs and gang life are thus treated to the exact opposite. Tony Montana commits violent acts, and as a result, he’s rewarded with wealth and pleasure until the darker parts of his personality spiral out of control. Curtis doesn’t even get the luxury of an uptick in his life trajectory. He commits violent acts and is rewarded with nothing but death and despair.
The ultimate gift story structure gives protagonists is a sense of closure. “I started here. X, Y, and Z happened, and now I am where I am and I’m different.” I suppose one could argue that Curtis showing the production company his tapes provides some level of catharsis, because now he gets to show people his story and maybe reflect upon the way he lives.
However, a story is ultimately told for the audience, not the subject. Curtis may have found some form of resolution, but we the audience get nothing. We’re then left to think about the point of it all, and what we’d do in Curtis’s shoes. It’s understandable why someone would have the impulse to glamorize Curtis's lifestyle, be it in the form of movies or music. He has a family to provide for, after all.
But when characters do horrible things to feed their families, we expect basic cause and effect to play out as it may. There's food on the table for one night, but a choice eventually has to be made: Drown in the lifestyle or get out with your soul intact. Tony Montana and Michael Corleone end their arcs by choosing the former. Michael Corleone winds up a lonely monster, and Tony Montana winds up dead.
Curtis, in the end, was never given a choice. The unwritten laws of the Bluff keep him trapped in his lifestyle, and the laws that rule the country keep the lifestyle alive. Like Kate in Sicario, he never really had a chance.
And it's here where we must remind ourselves that Curtis isn't a character. He's a real person.
