I’ve spent a good chunk of the last week reading through Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The Psychology of Success. It’s an interesting book, presenting concepts that you’ve probably come across online in all manner of articles about praising effort instead of intelligence, or assuming character traits and intelligence are fixed rather than malleable.
Mostly, though, I spent the book thinking about Yoda.
You’re familiar with Yoda, right? Little green muppet guy from Star Wars with irregular sentence syntax? Owner of one of the most quotable lines from The Empire Strikes back. The one that goes:
Do or do not. There is no try.
Possibly one of the most iconic mentor figures in science fiction film, and beloved of nerd-types everywhere despite the prequels turning him into a pingpong ball?
Well, here’s the thing: it’s really hard to read Dweck’s book and start figuring that, really, Yoda is a bit shit as a Jedi educator. The whole idea that you succeed or you fail is largely antithetical to the way brains actually work and learn, the way people develop skills, and the way we keep ourselves fucking motivated to keep learning and progressing.
Admittedly, a long and growth-oriented struggle where you keep testing yourself against increasingly challenging tasks and attempting new strategies is significantly harder to film. It’s not a dynamic that lends itself to immediate conflict, and it doesn’t present the opportunity to lift an entire X-Wing out of a swamp and deliver a terrific visual.
But this is the ongoing challenge for narrative. There are things that are easy in storytelling, ideas that will always work because the conflict is immediate and easily accessible.
Fixed mindsets–do or do not, there is no try–make for an easy source of conflict and an easy source of triumph, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a healthy idea to lodge in the minds of your audience.
