Thoughts on Fiction

http://io9.gizmodo.com/this-video-shows-an-easy-way-to-make-passengers-better-1794491601

First discussion topic in the comments:

Would it have been that hard for the Pratt character to find some technicians or engineers in hibernation who’d be able to fix his cryo-chamber? Then they all go back to sleep, problem solved. The whole premise is really stupid.

"Would it have been that hard for the Pratt character to find some technicians or engineers in hibernation who’d be able to fix his cryo-chamber? Then they all go back to sleep, problem solved. The whole premise is really stupid."

I forgot to add the q

http://climbingsky.com/textual-literalism-and-the-dc-reboot/

This blog post sees the trend towards literalism to extend from religion and politics to pop culture. I hadn't thought of the political implications, but we live in highly ideological times.
Naked facts and objective, natural reality in all its rawness are discounted in favor of the primacy of the written word.

https://newrepublic.com/article/106441/scalia-garner-reading-the-law-textual-originalism

The New Republic article makes me think that there may be a correlation between textual literalism and conservatism, both cultural and political.
Individuals with a preference (or need) for canonicity are expressing their desire for an authoritarian rule of law.

I had an idea of what your answer would be, and I can agree with you for the most part. Just as your animated stories send me searching for a personal meaning or an underlying message, so to does the world's current, apparent state send me searching for an understanding as to why literalism has taken over. I don't know if education is wholly to blame. Memorization of facts is okay, but learning the tools by which we apply them is of greater importance. Facts stop our searching, while processes lead us onward.

Biblical literalism sprouts its ugly head in response to its opposition: scientific and logically calculated interpretations of reality. The "facts" of the Bible have been taught to the believers, but not the processes by which we are to scrutinize those "facts." Those who believe in the nonsensical stories of the Bible do not possess the proper logical tools to understand what it is they're arguing for, and furthermore cannot formulate a proper argument to combat opposing theories. Evolution, for example, is seen as a threat to Biblical belief, and so it is rejected on the grounds of 'Biblical inerrancy' simply because they cannot come up with any other justification other than this ex nihilo attempt.

But I feel even more aspects of our culture hinge upon this literalistic train of thought. Even science itself can fall into dogmatic traps. Consumer culture has us believing that some things are in and some are out and that we must follow suit in order to be valued. The hive mind has us believing that we must fit in to achieve purpose or happiness.
I guess what I'm saying is, there seems to be this infectious idea going around that there's a singular right and wrong way to act, believe, think, and exist. As a story-teller, I feel you must share in my contempt for this narrow and sad way of perceiving this awesome, multi-faceted world in which we live. What a disservice we give and disdain we show for such a wonderful universe.

Good article by Film Crit Hulk on Ridley Scott, spends a good amount of time on The Counselor and Prometheus (two films Peter has spoken highly of recently) and the newest Alien movie: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/06/13/film-crit-hulk-smash-ridley-scott-cinemas-underrated-weirdo

Valerian in 3D is highly recommended.
It was refreshing to see a narrative that stuck to focusing on actions and the consequences while leaving a lot of exposition out.

There's a big war that sets up the story, but no details are given as to why they are fighting, and they are not needed.
Most of the time, there is no dialogue explaining strange events, but we understand what is happening purely through context.

It appears that Luc Besson returned to the mindset that inspired his first film, Le Dernier Combat, which had zero dialogue.
Pure cinematic storytelling.

Alien Covenant, on the other hand, was a crushing disappointment after the sublime Prometheus. It appears that Mr. Scott succumbed to the negativity and gave us a film that undid everything he'd so carefully set up.

Given your own experience, how much do you ascribe to the director vs the writers in the case of movies like Covenant, Prometheus, etc...? (Prometheus to me seemed very much of a piece with LOST which the writer was also involved with.)

Scott did not want to make another monster slasher movie, which was what the original Spaihts draft resembled.
A director with a vision will work closely with a writer to shape the story along the thematic lines that drive him to want to make the film.

http://www.tor.com/2012/10/10/ridley-scott-explains-prometheus-is-lovably-insane/

http://www.alien-covenant.com/news/ridley-scott-says-prometheus-was-mistake

I remember when Blade Runner first came out, it was received badly. But Scott knew what he was doing. The world caught up eventually. Too bad that today, the pace and volume of audience backlash has become insurmountable.
I came out of my first viewing of Prometheus in a state of elation. A world of discovery and adventure lay ahead for Shaw and for the public.
Alien Covenant is a despicable film and a betrayal- most sadly because of Scott's own doing.

Rereading the thread, I have another thought to add to the comment regarding the appreciation for literary world building:
"I would argue from the opposite angle, that text can evoke worlds with hand-waving efficiency..."

This is fine if "efficiency" is what matters to you in the consumption of art.
But why would I prefer to read a writer's description of a physically dense, visually rich world, if the choice exists to have the sensory experience first hand?
The same applies to the interactions between characters. Dialogue is speech. It exists because it is SPOKEN.
Reading it on a page is a step removed, and to say you prefer to see the words printed rather than hear them with your ears - that is like saying you would prefer to read Beethoven's 6th symphony as sheet music.

This is maybe the reason why the cinematic form, either in movies or TV has become the preferred medium for audiences to get their fix of narrative fiction.
People don't read novels anymore-- I confess that I don't. There have been enough times when I've either finished a novel or gave up on one and been left feeling like it was a waste of time.
Many of my formative experiences as a young artist have been through literature. But maybe that is destined to be the future role of literary fiction in the lives on new generations.
Reading literature will be like reading textbooks on science and math. You do it in your student years, but once the principles have been absorbed, one rarely goes back, as the effort yields diminishing returns.

"There have been enough times when I've either finished a novel or gave up on one and been left feeling like it was a waste of time."

Of course, a good novel does not make me feel this way, but the broader point is that the literary form itself is a reductive and linear experience that makes use of such a narrow range of your body's capacity.
I have to shut off my ears and minimize my eyes for the sole function of recognizing black symbols on a page. As a voracious "retinal fiend", my eyes can only remain starved for so long. In other words, for the duration of time required to read a novel, my poor eyes are shackled.

How much do textual descriptions play a part in your production process? (The recent Mad Max movie was apparently conceived of purely in storyboards, rather than script form.)
Has any recent tool development allowed you to scale back text in favor of generating animatics directly?

Textual descriptions are absolutely central to my production process. Written language is the most efficient way to give myself clarity and to stay focused. The efficiency of language make it useful as a production tool. I also enjoy using language to deconstruct and evaluate a project after the fact- as you can see by my postings here.

Thanatophobia Script

As you can see from this script, I go into great detail describing scenes that will ultimately play non verbally on screen.

In the interests of being complete, here is the other famous M. John Harrison weigh-in on this subject: http://web.archive.org/web/20080410181840/http://uzwi.wordpress.com/2007/01/27/very-afraid/

TS Hugo Largo,
Belated thanks for the link to M. John Harrison. I read it at the time you posted it, but just looked at it again, and I completely agree with his stance.
It seems impossible that any writer working in genre fiction would not, if they are honest, reach the same conclusion.
I haven't read his books, but I shall seek them out.

Personally, I think the book is it's own medium. It's an object. You engage with a book in the manner that one does -- opening it, etc. There are many, many great "experimental" writers that engage with the medium in a way that is specific to the medium and no other, and that continue to make advancements in said engagements.

The divisions in publishing between what is a novel or poetry or anything else are most often grafted onto it for the purposes of marketing. If someone asks me what I do, I usually just say that I" work with text". And much of what I read or have published with my collective is similarly meant to reflect this. (www.plinth.us)

Unfortunately, a lot of what winds up being published these days is written with an eye toward transposition into other mediums -- films, shows, podcasts -- and this isn't literature.

Here's a really great interview with a publisher/architect that I think reflects some of the more forward-thinking movements in literature and publishing in general:
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/materialising-time-lawrence-kansas-conversation-john-trefry/

*its own medium

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/112-the-intellectual-dark-web

I often listen to podcasts or lectures while drawing. This discussion at one point becomes a debate on (as usual with Harris) how to determine an adequate basis for morality.
It's an aggravating exchange when Shapiro persists in trying to bolster his theistic world view that morality can only be acquired through religion. Harris, who himself holds onto a contorted claim for absolute morality, tries to argue on the same shaky ground that "morality" is a thing. Morality is a convenient word for a class of judgments.

The argument here is backwards. Why presume that this thing "morality" exists from the outset? The idea of morality arises out of the fact that human actions must follow only one actual course out of a multitude of potential paths. When making a choice to do one thing versus another, one judges the course that will lead to the desired outcome. Depending on whether one chooses the path leading to benefit or to suffering, that choice is later labeled with the words "moral" or "not moral". Over time, humans become more confident in predicting which choices will be more beneficial than harmful, and they are able to judge an action as moral based on such projections- before observing the actual outcome. The ability to make this judgment is a useful social tool, and we call this tool "morality". But that is what morality is, a tool. Imperfect, but convenient. It is not some cosmic force of nature.

(You could call it a "fiction", so I'm posting these thoughts here.)

The argument against subjective morality (a redundancy) is that it reduces moral standards to opinions, or mere personal preference. This is a game. The truth is that, even those who ground their moral standards on some objective foundation (reason, in the case of Sam Harris) are actually just dressing up their personal preference in a more elaborate guise.

Do you consider language itself a fiction, and thus incapable of describing or alluding to an objective foundation?

Good question. Yes, language is a fiction. But no, unlike morality, language IS capable of describing an objective foundation.

There is an important difference between language and morality Morals describe values, not facts. They measure a subjective quantity-- the assessment of what promotes human well-being (I will use Harris' wording), which by its nature cannot exist apart from living consciousness. Values, unlike things, do not exist "out there" in the external world.

There is a difference between objective morality and absolute morality, but both are ideals that cannot exist.
Absolute morality is self contradicting. Even theologians will concede this.
Theists will fall back on the notion of "objective morality". I sympathize totally with the impulse being expressed in the debate by Ben Shapiro. One wants to believe that certain actions are good or evil without regard to how anyone thinks about them. I used to espouse that belief myself. But I cannot see how it doesn't just boil down to someone expressing his personal preference. while pretending it is otherwise.

To go back to what prompted the post above, while listening to the debate, I realized that I disagreed with both sides (Harris and Shapiro).
But in considering both flawed arguments, a new insight occurred to me, which is that the origin of morality in human affairs must have been prompted by the fact that the course of one's life "collapses" into a singular path at some point. One option is taken and others fall away. Moral standards may have arisen as a tool for aiding in deciding which path to pursue. Whereas the conventional view is that its main importance is in the administration of justice.

I wrote " Harris, who himself holds onto a contorted claim for absolute morality,". To be accurate, I should have said "objective", not "absolute".
The difference was less clear to me when I wrote that.
This debate has been distracting me from my work, but I realize that my thinking on this subject has become clearer just in the last few days.

"One wants to believe that certain actions are good or evil without regard to how anyone thinks about them."

Isn't the main angst of the modern world the opposite, that there are increasingly mathematical applications of moral calculus (like self-driving trucks that deliberately kill some pedestrians to save others) that go against our pre-modern intuitions?

You may be right, with regard to a younger generation.
The post modern world is moving towards disallowing universal cultural standards, including universal standards of morality.
While I think that objective morality is not possible, that doesn't mean we must do away with all notions of objective truth.
One is values, the other is facts.

Sam Harris sees himself as a guardian of Enlightenment-age values; individualism, rationalism, positivism. My suspicion is that inviting guests who espouse a pre-modern worldview to debate him gives him a framework he's more comfortable with than that of his postmodern critics, whose arguments I don't think he understands very well. Whereas he has a ready-made vocabulary for debating someone like Ben Shapiro.

I'm not convinced that a younger generation is less universal in their morality; if anything, there seems to be a shift towards more universalism. For me, my biggest problem with Harris isn't his insistence on universal cultural standards but the double standards he carries. He's a humanist, but some humans are more human than others, e.g., the contempt he has for Arabs and Muslims. He fails to live up to his own espoused ideals. With regard to certain groups of people, he'd rather fill the room with non-members so he can debate their humanity at a comfortable distance.

At the same time, one of the criticisms I have of Harris' writing -- and it reflects a trend within the atheist movement -- is the romanticized gloss he puts on cultural Buddhism and the practice of meditation. Suddenly, New Atheists are not skeptics when it comes to the supposed benefits of meditation, and I suspect that ties into their political bias towards (in reality, often repressive) Buddhist countries.

Buddhist Meditation, Pseudoscience, and Sam Harris

I'm hardly a Harris admirer, but he is gracious and articulate enough to be a good host to the many interesting guests on his podcast. He is smart, but mostly wrong - his cleverness leads his thinking down paths that are more sophistry and rhetoric than truth. His least useful discussions are the debates, and this one is a good example of that. Jordan Peterson is another.

Back to the original thread topic-
I just rewatched Blade Runner 2049, and it seems a perfect example of a film that delivered a rich experience rather than a tight fictional story. And that is what makes it good. The parts that don't make logical sense are precisely what gives it a dream-like tone, which is what I want from a movie.

The last novel I tried to read is Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, about two years ago. I had to give up at about page 72. After that passage, I pretty much swore off reading fiction for good.
Here is the part that did it:

Hackworth in the hong of Dr. X.
The scalpel’s edge was exactly one atom wide; it delaminated the skin of Hackworth’s palm like an airfoil gliding through smoke. He peeled off a strip the size of a nailhead and proffered it to Dr. X, who snatched it with ivory chopsticks, dredged it through an exquisite cloisonné bowl filled with chemical dessicant, and arranged it on a small windowpane of solid diamond.

Dr. X’s real name was a sequence of shushing noises, disembodied metallic buzzes, unearthly quasi-Germanic vowels, and half-swallowed R’s, invariably mangled by Westerners. Possibly for political reasons, he preferred not to pick a fake Western name like many Asians, instead suggesting, in a vaguely patronizing way, that they should just be satisfied with calling him Dr. X—that letter being the first in the Pinyin spelling of his name.

Dr. X placed the diamond slide into a stainless-steel cylinder. At one end was a teflon-gasketed flange riddled with bolt-holes. Dr. X handed it to one of his assistants, who carried it with both hands, as if it were a golden egg on a silken pillow, and mated it with another flange on a network of massive stainless-steel plumbing that covered most of two tabletops. The assistant’s assistant got the job of inserting all the shiny bolts and torque-wrenching them down. Then the assistant flicked a switch, and an old-fashioned vacuum pump whacked into life, making conversation impossible for a minute or two. During this time Hackworth looked around Dr. X’s laboratory, trying to peg the century and in some cases even the dynasty of each item. A row of mason jars stood on a high shelf, filled with what looked like giblets floating in urine. Hackworth supposed that they were the gall bladders of now-extinct species, no doubt accruing value by the moment, better than any mutual fund. A locked gun cabinet and a prim~val Macintosh desktop-publishing system, green with age, attested to the owner’s previous forays into officially discouraged realms of behavior. A window had been cut into one wall, betraying an airshaft no larger than a grave, from the bottom of which grew a gnarled maple. Other than that, the room was packed with so many small, numerous, brown, wrinkled, and organic-looking objects that Hackworth’s eyes lost the ability to distinguish one from the next. There were also some samples of calligraphy dangling here and there, probably snatches of poetry. Hackworth had made efforts to learn a few Chinese characters and to acquaint himself with some basics of their intellectual system, but in general, he liked his transcendence out in plain sight where he could keep an eye on it—say, in a nice stained-glass window—not woven through the fabric of life like gold threads through a brocade.

Everyone in the room could tell by its sound when the mechanical pump was finished with its leg of the relay. The vapor pressure of its own oil had been reached. The assistant closed a valve that isolated it from the rest of the system, and then they switched over to the nanopumps, which made no noise at all. They were turbines, just like the ones in jet engines but very small and lots of them. Casting a critical eye over Dr. X’s vacuum plumbing, Hackworth could see that they also had a scavenger, which was a cylinder about the size of a child’s head, wrinkled up on the inside into a preposterous surface area coated with nanodevices good at latching onto stray molecules. Between the nanopumps and the scavenger, the vacuum rapidly dropped to what you might expect to see halfway between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Then Dr. X himself quivered up out of his chair and began shuffling around the room, powering up a gallimaufry of contraband technology.

This equipment came from diverse technological epochs and had been smuggled into this, the Outer Kingdom, from a variety of sources, but all of it contributed to the same purpose: It sun’eyed the microscopic world through X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, and direct nanoscale probing, and synthesized all of the resulting information into a single three-dimensional view. (End excerpt)

I found myself going over this passage several times, and many others like it throughout the book, conjuring the image of what he was trying with so much verbal dexterity to describe. This exercise, I realized, was more frustrating than pleasurable, and not ultimately very meaningful other than in appreciating this writer's special skill in using words. Which I had no reason to care about. Meanwhile, whatever narrative momentum had been building had come to a complete stop and I had to struggle to remember what I was doing in this place and what it was that I was expecting to happen next.

When I say that world-building works better on film, this is what I'm talking about.
Here is a frame from Blade Runner:

http://lukedowding.com/wp-content/uploads/BladeRunner-Sebastian-1920x1080.jpg

what do you think of blade runner's textual elements (prologue, expository dialogue, in-universe ad copy, etc...)?

The voice-over in the original studio version was terrible and ruined my first viewing of the film.
Otherwise, I find the dialogue and invented vocabulary evocative, tasteful and well chosen. I'm especially in awe of the brilliant choice to use the title Blade Runner.
One of the all time great movie titles.

I'm grateful for Blade Runner 2049. Villeneuve deftly steers away from literal-mindedness, as Scott did with the original.

Since posting it, I've looked at the Stephenson passage more closely, and I'm now convinced it is truly, deeply, awful.
My initial response to his writing was amused and respectful, though a bit uncertain about whether it was really good or really bad.
It's really bad.

There are some glitches in the quoted text (OCR artifacts), so to be fair to NS-

"prim~val Macintosh" is "primæval Macintosh"
"It sun’eyed the microscopic world" is "It surveyed..."

Could you explain a bit more about what you mean by literal-mindedness? 2049 in particular seemed concerned about spelling out a lot of plot background in the mini-episodes that Villeneuve handed out to other directors. Ridley Scott also went to the trouble to clarify the number of escaped replicants in one of his latest revisions, something that would only be of interest to pedants. To me, these seem like the priorities of literal-minded, mechanical world-building, rather than the impressionistic, evocative approach (as in Rutger Hauer's ad-libbed "I've seen things" scene, which I would ascribe to Rutger Hauer rather than Ridley Scott).

Spielberg's movie of PK Dick's Minority Report is an example of literal-minded storytelling. The conclusion is focused on uncovering the identity of the villain, bringing him to justice. The plot is resolved, Tom Cruise is absolved and the audience can feel comforted knowing that order has been restored. The directing focuses the audience's interest on the story's fictional arbitrary details, which is not the point of creating and consuming fiction.

In fact, Tom Cruise is still actually guilty of many things at the end, such as arresting people who have not committed crimes, of killing a man out of rage without due process, of endangering many civilians in the act of resisting arrest. The philosophical and thematic implications of the premise are not addressed in favor of providing a story that gets resolved on a plot level.

Not to mention that the safety of the precog is not what the audience should care about. As Skye pointed out a long time ago on this board, the precogs are a plot device to allow the speculative premise to operate. They aren't real people.
"Gotta save the poor precog!" Wrong.

Blade Runner and BR2049 are not detective stories concerned about catching villains and achieving justice. I've heard some people complain about Deckard not being a good detective. That is not the point. Deckard, it turns out, is not even the hero we think (and he thinks) he is at the beginning. He is a tool of the slave trade. Batty is the true hero, and Deckard's mind in the end has been shifted to accept it.

Scott and Villeneuve are interested in the bigger questions driving the premises of their stories, not the fictions.
In Blade Runner's case, what does it mean to be human?
In BR2049, it is how does one live an authentic life?
Life is finite and its meaning is defined by the individual who lives it- in spite of the fact that for the replicants, a creator-given purpose exists.
Similar to the theme of Prometheus, it is a thought experiment that considers the proposal of life having been created with a purpose.
The religious paradigm of submission to the creator's will is portrayed as slavery.
The exercise of free will is our only recourse to authentic meaning.

Yes, that Stephenson passage is awful. My response to that post was going to be that you're comparing one of the very best films ever made with what is (apparently) a bad novel. For what it's worth, as a teenager I loved the world Do Androids Dream created in my head and was never crazy about the film until recently.

I did not like 2049 and do not think I like Villeneuve in general (if Arrival is any indication). However I'll likely give 2049 another shot in a theater in a few weeks. The original took me over 20 years to catch on, so.

Weekend at Bernie's is my choice for greatest title.

Neal Stephenson is not a bad writer. The opening chapters of Reamde are terrific.

"you're comparing one of the very best films ever made with what is (apparently) a bad novel. "
The Diamond Age won the Hugo award for best novel in 1996. The story it tells is fascinating, I just wish the way it was told wasn't by an attention deficit disorder- addled and ostentatious narrator.
The book was an immediate success and widely praised, whereas Blade Runner was almost universally scorned upon release. To this day, there is a huge number of viewers who consider Blade Runner a boring mess.

I agree that Arrival is not a good film. It only makes sense if the extraterrestrial visitors are a product of Amy Adams' imagination. She is trying to cope with the loss of her daughter, and in order to feel that her life has importance, she dreams that she alone can fulfill a role critical to the survival of humanity.

I recommend you give Sicario a shot. The directing is masterful.

The terrible thing about the passage from The Diamond Age is that it brought to light for me the inherent problem of literary description in a way that has tainted my ability to enjoy reading books that I used to enjoy reading.

Nabokov's Pale Fire gets a special moment in Blade Runner 2049. I've no idea what could be behind it, maybe Hampton Fancher taking a dig at highbrow literature? Or suggesting that the girlfriend simulation's AI isn't designed to grasp irony?
It made me laugh.

the original short story arrival was derived from was much more interior and about resolving philosophical paradoxes of free will/pre-destination; stephenson as an author (as well as william gibson) are primarily known and praised for delineating influential ideas rather than constructing taut plots or characterization -- aren't these the larger ideas trumping literalism that you're looking for? if anything, doesn't the visual (and capital-intensive) nature of cinema prioritize the kind of literal, surface-level construction of narratives?

"doesn't the visual (and capital-intensive) nature of cinema prioritize the kind of literal, surface-level construction of narratives?"

It does in practice. That is why most films opt for the literal-minded treatment of story.
But it isn't an inherent property of the medium, just in the way it is used.
Minority Report was a commercial success while Blade Runner 2049 was not- so it's easy to see why.

My own view is that because written narrative is a more direct way to delineate ideas than cinematic narrative, it is less challenging, less surprising, less reflective of human experience- especially for the artist.
I suppose that once I've written a story, I could release it as text and be done with it. I find that I have very little interest in doing so. I need to give it the form of an experience of the senses because that is the way life is lived and how I find meaning- it is through experience, not words.

I first became exposed to the writing of Neal Stephenson when Amazon Studios asked me to adapt a project he was developing - a medieval sword fighting game - into a potential animated series.
I was working from a treatment written by Stephenson himself, along with other writers and enthusiasts of historically accurate sword techniques.

if they're mostly concerned with the formal representation of swordsmanship over narratives, it seems like there would be a lot of creative room left over to maneuver in -- is that usually the case in these kinds of projects?

Playtime (Peter's favorite or close to it?) plays on the big screen in SF on March 15th; I'll be there.

That is the only way to really see Playtime- on the big screen with an audience. My first viewing, on a pan and scan vhs tape, baffled and confused me.
I consider it essential viewing for filmmakers, especially for animators, and I show clips to my students, not all of whom get it at first.
Please post your thoughts after the screening.

http://meaningoflife.tv/videos/39901?in=00:01
An interesting discussion on the shifts of moral stances in narrative traditions.
The claim is that defining the hero of a story by the morality of his actions is a relatively recent practice.
We may, in fact, be reading old stories that way by habit (identifying the hero by his goodness).
Whereas the authors had no such need nor intention. Instead, heroes are defined mainly by their tribal identification, regardless of how moral their actions might be.

Present day critiques of Biblical myths assert that the actions of God and God's agents in the Old Testament are useless and untrue because they are plainly immoral.
(Not consistent with universally recognized standards of goodness.) Such arguments are beside the point for the biblical, and other mythological, writers.

My argument against submitting to the Judeo Christian God because I detect God's moral failings is,in this way, a non sequitur.
In other words, the 10 commandments and other biblical laws were never meant to provide moral guidance. They are not claiming to help make men good.
They are meant to make men conform to a common, tribal identity. What is "good" has no meaning outside of that.

In teaching my class, I struggle to convince some students on why they should not rely on exposition to engage the viewer's interest and emotions.
The argument is that if exposition works, then what is wrong with using it? Exposition is the simplest and clearest way to convey the characters' motivations and the dramatic stakes of a narrative turn.
The problem is that by explaining why an action is needed, its urgency- you destroy any sense genuine of urgency.

https://cdn.boldomatic.com/content/post/QWnDQg/Explaining-a-joke-is-like-dissecting-a-frog-You-un?size=800

Everyone understands that you must never explain a joke, because to do so defeats the purpose. Any comic who has to explain his jokes to his audience hasn't learned the skills needed to be a comedian and does not deserve to be on stage.

My hard claim is that this principle does not apply only to humor. All emotions- sadness, anger, love, horror, suspense must arise naturally from an internal realization in order to be genuinely felt.

I use several examples from films where some character explains what has to be done before the hero decides to go and do it. This is extremely common and has the effect of rendering the mission irrelevant to the interests of the viewer.
If a director can't convey the motivation without explaining it, he has no business directing. It should be self-evident from the context the director creates.