Failed Writer's Journey: The Cult of Ambiguous Endings, or The Sopranos Blew It

Okay, so this is a bit of a weird one, and just wanders off a bit, so you have been warned.

The latests literary kerfuffle (and I will keep using this word until you admit its perfection) is about some poor person who said that they thought ambiguous endings were bad, using No Country For Old Men as an example. Now, I do not think that ambiguous endings are bad — if used well, they can be moving and thought provoking. Part of the problem, however, is that I think they are very often not used well. Sopranos is the perfect example, in my opinion.

Spoilers for a very old show.

Tony is deader than a dead thing that is very dead.

The show make no bone about that. Even the “previously on” section highlights the discussion of death where they say everything just ends, goes dark. Just like how the show ended. And Tony is meant to be the bad guy. No ambiguity there. The scene where the FBI agent celebrates Tony’s victory in the mob war and his fellow agents look at him like he is bottom of the shoe scum makes that clear. There is nothing ambiguous about this ending — the writers tell you very clearly how it ends and what they thought of Tony. Both the plot and moral endings are crystal clear.

But.

But people think of the show has having an ambiguous ending because of the sudden cut to black. The writers played a game with audience expectations knowing that people would argue about its meaning, played coy about their intentions, and suddenly — ambiguous ending! The Sopranos are hardly the only show to do this. Deep Space Nine’s “greatest’ episode does something, thought not entirely, similar. It supposedly presents a tough moral dilemma that the audience is supposed to worry over. Except it doesn’t — the show absolutely takes one side of the argument, in a really lazy fashion in my opinion. There is no ambiguity in the text, only in the presentation. And I believe that is because the idea of ambiguity has been fetishized in writing.

Again, there is nothing wrong with ambiguity in writing. Some things are hard, and stories should reflect that. Some choices are all different shades of bad, the world often requires unpleasant compromises, and people often have what they consider good reasons for doing what you consider bad things. Literature and films should reflect all of that. But sometimes, things are clear. Sometimes, there is a right thing to do. Sometimes, the choice is straightforward, even if it may be hard to implement. And stories should reflect that as well, maybe now more than ever. But I think we as a society have convinced ourselves that clear is bad, that simple reflects a lack of intelligence, that ambiguity is the only measure of reality. That is just nonsense, and it is nonsense that encourages the kind of fake ambiguity the indulged in by the ending of the Sopranos and the episode of Deep Space Nine.

That is a shame, because the fake ambiguity obscures real issues. If the Deep Space Nine episode had not so egregiously stacked the deck in favor of its preferred position, it could have had a deep and interesting conversation about morality and principles and what is and is not worth fighting for. Instead, we got performative ambiguity. The Sopranos could have spent its ending interrogating why Tony was an attractive personality despite being a miserable, murdering son-of-a-bitch. Instead, we got a fake-out designed to appear ambiguous without actually earning that ambiguity.

Ambiguity — real ambiguity — is good. But it is not the be all end all of writing, its lack does not signal a lack of sophistication or intelligence, and it does not reflect reality in every situation. Pretending otherwise doesn’t get us more sophisticated works. It just gets us trickery, a lack of seriousness, and an excuse to avoid properly interrogating what you are trying to say as a writer.

Also, I have neither read nor seen No Country for Old Men so I have no idea if any of the above applies to the book or the film. I told you this was a rambling little rant at the start. You knew what you signed up for.

Weekly Word Count

About five grand. Not great, but progress. I am warming up to the “convert from script” writing style, though I am worried that I won’t have a novel at the end, or I will have one with the shape out of whack. But, again, failed writer, so most of my stories are out of whack in one way or another.

Have a great weekend, everyone.