Hansel and Gretel for Hernán Casciari

Last night I was reading a very famous children’s’ tale to my daughter Nina, Hansel and Gretel by the Grimm Brothers. There is a dramatic moment in the story when the siblings find out that some birds have eaten the breadcrumbs they had strategically scattered in a foolproof plan to trace their way back home. Hansel and Gretel realize they are all alone and lost in the woods; and it’s getting dark. I started to make a spooky voice, to add fear to  the story. She, instead of being frightened said to me: “That’s ok. They can call up their daddy with their cellphones.”

And then, just then, for the first time, I realize: my daughter has no notion that there was a life without cell phones. That was also the moment I realized how awful literature would be, the classical at least, if cell phones had always existed. 

Think now of any classic story, any story that comes to your head. The Odyssey, to The Adventures of Pinocchio, from The Old Man and the Sea, Macbeth, snow white or Hopscotch, to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Any story.

Good. Now place a cell phone inside the main character’s pocket. The plot of the story you’ve chosen works? The plot works now that the characters can call each other regardless of how far apart they are? It doesn't matters which story we have chosen. The plot doesn't fu#$king work anymore.

For example, Penelope with a cell phone in her hand, she wouldn’t have to wait impatiently for Odysseus to return from war.

With a cell in her basket, Little Red Riding Hood would be able to warn Granny about the wolf in time, and the woodcutter’s help would be unnecessary.

Cinderella would give her phone number to the Prince from the beginning and he wouldn’t have to go all over the place trying to find who the owner of the glass slipper is.

Tom Sawyer wouldn’t get lost on the Mississippi River, thanks to Verizon’s remarkable GPS service.

The three little pigs could google a way to trap the wolf before their houses are blown down.

And Geppetto would get a notification from school saying that Pinocchio didn’t show up that morning.

Throughout the past twenty centuries, the main conflicts in most stories, whether written, sung, or acted out, have revolved around the characters’ misunderstandings, distance and uncommunication. In other words, Classical tales exist, thanks to the absence of cellphone communication

No love story, for instance, would have been tragic or complicated at all if lovers had been able to stay in touch through the phone. Lets think about the most romantic story of all times. The iconic dramatic climax of the most famous love story in the world, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, bases all its dramatic tension on a fortuitous lack of communication: Juliet fakes her own death, Romeo believes she really died and kills himself, so once Juliet awakens and realizes what has happened, she commits real suicide (spoiler alert).

If Juliet had had a cell phone with her, in Act 4 she would’ve texted Romeo something like:

IM PLAYIN DEAD,

BUT IM NOT REALLY DEAD

DNT WORRY ABT ME

OR DO ANYTHIN STUPID
C YA IN VRONA ;) XOXO.

All the important works are completely destroyed if you put a cell phone. All those wonderful romantic movies where the boy ends up running like crazy through the city and against the clock because his beloved is about to get on a plane would be solved today with a quick text.

I wonder and I seriously wonder— isn’t the same thing happening in real life? Aren’t we depriving ourselves of heroic adventures because of the permanent connection? Will any of us ever run desperately to the airport to tell the person we love not to get on the plane, to tell to that person that life is here and now?

I think not. We’ll send them a pitiful, short text message from the couch. while watching Netflix. 

Why make the effort to live on the edge of uncertainty, on the edge of adventure, if something is always going to ruin that suspense; a call, a binary message, an alarm?

Our world is already infected with signals and secrets, of all our secrets: beware that the Duke is on his way to kill you. Be careful the apple is poisoned. I won’t come home tonight ’cause I’ve been drinking. Kiss her, and the girl will wake up and fall in love with you. Dad, come find us, some birds ate the breadcrumbs.

Our plots are losing their brilliance — the written, the lived, even the imagined — all because we are becoming... lazy heroes.

Traducción sin permiso alguno por Gregorio.