Snowpiercer & Hadestown: How to do Social Commentary in Fiction

If you wanted to rile up my friend group, no phrase is more effective than, “Snowpiercer (the film directed by Bong Joon-ho and staring Chris Evans) is bad.” Most people I know seem to think this is an excellent allegory for capitalism, so whenever I or others point out the movie is actually bad, the first (and in my experience, the only) rebuttal is, “You’re just a capitalist.” While this is true (in my case), it’s never stopped me from enjoying other forms of communist propaganda, case in point today being the hit Broadway musical Hadestown, by Anaïs Mitchell. I also feel I can do a little better at explaining my disdain for Snowpiercer then, “You’re just a communist.” By comparing these two stories, I’ll demonstrate how Snowpiercer falls short of its goal of social commentary while Hadestown performs excellently. It comes down to two concepts, one more well known then the other.

Suspension of Disbelief

Audiences have a tremendous capacity to suspend disbelief and accept a story as possible, but there is a breaking point. This breaking point may be sooner or later depending on the genre of the story (science fiction and fantasy stories get much more leeway than, say, a soap opera). Audiences bring the expectations of the genre with them to the film. They’ll accept magic is possible. They’ll accept Gods control the world. They’ll accept that the world could be frozen over in a scientific disaster. They’ll accept the surviving humans can continue in a massive train under a caste system. However, once you push an audience member beyond their ability to suspend disbelief by introducing something that cannot coincide with their understanding/expectations of the story’s setting, you not only shatter their belief in that moment, but in every moment to come and every moment that came before.

Because I’ve read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, I knew the tail passengers were going to find the front passengers living it up in luxury from basically the first scene in the Snowpiercer. While such predictability is inherently disappointing, I think I would have been overall okay with that, had it stopped there. But as we moved up in the train, Bong Joon-ho demanded I suspend more and more of my disbelief. Not only did there appear to be several cars of luxury more than those of poverty, but we see every luxury we enjoy today being produced in large quantities on train cars not wide enough to fit three people standing shoulder to shoulder for seemingly more people than are living in the back. Suddenly, the idea the front passengers really believe the back passengers need to be crammed into a car or two and can only all be fed on a diet of jellied locus seems absurd.

Another contributing factor to the shattering of my disbelief was the over-the-top fight scenes, which is incredible considering the prevalence of superhero action movies today (a genre that, I admit, is far from my favourite). From Curtis and his rebels somehow fighting past guards with assault rifles and infrared goggles in pitch darkness with nothing but their fists and makeshift weapons in a crammed space, to shooting at each other across train cars while punching holes in the train and letting in air that freezes exposed skin in a matter of seconds, to a pregnant kindergarten teacher whipping out an Uzi she keeps under her desk in the event of an uprising, to seeing people who supposedly have everything to lose so recklessly throw away their lives to stop the rebels from reaching the front of the train, these moments can chip at or take out huge chucks of an audience member’s constitution to suspend disbelief, if it doesn’t shatter it entirely.

I may be accused of having a very weak capacity to suspend disbelief for not buying in to all this, which is why I’ll tell you it wasn’t until one of the final scenes in the movie, when Curtis and the surviving members of his company are weaving through a packed nightclub-car, that I finally threw up my hands and said, “I can’t believe this.” I couldn’t believe that the ratio of front passengers to tail passengers could be in the tail passengers’ favour when so many people are in this one car alone. It completely shattered the usual romantic, French revolution, “we the many against they the few” narrative these types of stories usually try and emphasis. After seeing Curtis fight and kill so many rabid civilians bent on stopping him, like a pregnant schoolteacher, I couldn’t believe all these elegantly dressed clubbers were just letting some dirty tail passengers make their way to the front. I couldn’t believe Curtis made it this far at all. That’s the thing about the suspension of disbelief. It doesn’t matter where someone is on the story-bridge when the fraying cord finally snaps. They can be at the end when they fall into the abyss of disbelief. There are those I know who checked out of the film long before I did. The whole bridge falls with them. The viewing experience is ruined.

The Pyramid of Abstraction

When I told a friend about how I couldn’t get past why a train able to produce such luxury at such quantities would arbitrarily force the tail passengers to live in such horrendous conditions, she said with bewilderment, “But that’s what capitalism does!” as if I didn’t get that was the point. I’m supposed to recognize the world of Snowpiercer as absurd, draw a connection between it and real-world capitalism, and conclude capitalism is absurd. To explain why this doesn’t work, I will need to explain how a much more successful story presents this very same concept.

In terms of themes, Hadestown and Snowpiercer are the same. Hadestown says pretty explicitly themes Snowpiercer spends it runtime implying in one of the musical’s final songs “If it’s True.” I usually hate when a story explicitly tells me what it wants me to think rather than showing me through its narrative, and I concede that Hadestown maybe could have been better in this regard, but this story earns its themes through its concrete world building.

Hadestown spends much of its time exposing us to its two worlds and the forces that operate within them. While Snowpiercer rushes us from car to car before we can understand why the situation is the way it’s shown to us, Hadestown spends the majority of the first act explaining The World Up-above. The coming and going of Persephone dictates the seasons. Those who live on The World Up-above live bohemian lifestyles. They aren’t wealthy but for Orpheus and presumably the denizens of this world, this is enough for them because they are free to live as they please, singing and dancing and such. As Orpheus says, “if no one takes too much, there will always be enough.” However, Hades and his fear of losing Persephone forces her to leave the world above sooner and stay in The Down Below longer. He’s convinced that it is his wealth that keeps Persephone in The Down Below, and so strip mines and builds furnaces and powerlines to maintain that wealth. This has disastrous effects for The World Up-above. As Hades hoards Persephone and the bounty of nature, there is now not enough for those living above to, well, live. This breaks Eurydice resolve to stay with Orpheus and she gives up the bohemian life and Orpheus to work in The Down Below. The second half of the show builds The Down Below, and the audience sees that the workers see themselves as free, earning wages and being able to eat, but in the process, they lose their ability to live as they like, ultimately forgetting their identity and humanity until all they are is their job. Why would Hades do this to people? We get a solid explanation in his songs. He believes he is doing a service by creating jobs that allow the people to eat, not realising that it’s the creation of the work that is necessitating the need to work. When Orpheus finally sings, “It isn’t for the few to tell the many what is true,” the audience nods their head along with him because they have seen firsthand why the problem is real in the world of Hadestown and why Orpheus’ solution, the story’s theme, is true.

Hadestown functions on a storytelling technique Brandon Sanderson calls “The Pyramid of Abstraction” in one of his lectures. When consuming a story, audiences tend to get bored when storytellers present them with abstract ideas and problems, such as the idea that the scarcity of recourses is a myth is fabricated by the one precent to control the remaining population so they and they alone can enjoy all the world has to offer. But you can prepare audiences to entertain abstract ideas by laying a ground work in some concrete. You present things you know your audience has experience with and settle them into the world of the story before you present them with the abstract idea overseeing the world. Like when building a pyramid, you lay a solid groundwork, a believable story setting, and work your way up to ideas and themes.

Anaïs Mitchell tells her message patiently in Hadestown, setting up a chain of causes and effects that are easy to understand. She starts with what everyone in the audience understands: leisure, jobs, abundance, and poverty. She presents these viscerally in contents of her lyrics. She then builds up to the beliefs underlying these things, freedom, servitude, generosity, jealousy, fear, and greed. Finally, she presents her theme at the climax of the story. She does everything she can to make the audience believe in her theme, now it’s up to them to decide for themselves what's true. Bong Joon-ho is impatient with his theme. In Snowpiercer, he starts from the abstract and builds the concrete from there. That there are enough resources to go around and the front passengers are hoarding them because they’re… evil, I guess… is presented as the absolute, bottom line, no discussion necessary, truth. Under this model, the world building is being compared to an abstract idea, not reality, where most audiences live their lives. If the audience doesn’t understand the concept or rejects the premise, they are alienated from the story and can’t suspend disbelief.

Why Does This Matter?

Snowpiercer is as much a critical success as it is a box office success. How do I explain that while also claiming the film is so bad? Why am I shitting on such a success? Where’s my smashing success if I know so much about storytelling?

Why a story becomes successful is impacted by many factors. Quality of story is most important, followed by marketing and reputation. Many great stories never see the light because they weren't marketed well, and convincing someone with money to invest on an unknown is a leap every artist struggles to make in their early career. If a story stinks, it’s not going to matter how well it’s marketed or whatever successes the minds behind it had in the past. But I believe good marketing and a good reputation can bring a mediocre story far.

Who enjoys a movie and why also doesn’t necessary correlate to the quality of the story. There’s taste in genre, which is completely up in the air for everyone. Most of the reasons why someone enjoys a film, though, are entirely explainable. For those who I’ve talked to about Snowpiercer, it’s come down to this question: do they have an opinion on the scarcity of resources being a myth and is that opinion in line with the film? Basically, do they walk into the film already convinced of the film’s ultimate conclusion? If yes, they loved it. If no, if they believe life is more nuanced or completely different than what the film presents, they did not.

I’m not explaining how Bong Joon-ho could have made more money or scored better with the critics. If a storyteller’s definition of success is preaching to the converted and getting rich doing it, I bid them good luck in their endeavours and congratulate their success. However, should their ambitions be loftier, should they want to change people’s opinions on issues they at least say are important to them, there is a way to do so through storytelling. While Snowpiercer’s reception is mixed in the circles I mingle in, no one I know says Hadestown is a bad story, regardless of what politics they had going in and regardless of if they’re mind was changed going out. When you treat all audience members as intelligent human beings, they reward you with their respect and attention. Dismiss those you disagree with out of hand, and your stories will have no impact. At best, dissenters will only consider it a silly musing.