Monthly Archives: November 2008

New Ways of Viewing, Revisited

In my previous post, I examined the role that aberrant viewing plays in constructing narratives. My experience of Bones in reverse was interesting in terms of charting cause and effect, but the way I constructed the fabula from the series syuzhet (adopting the terms to the story arc of the season/series instead of episode text) was not seriously altered. At the time, I supposed that other aberrant ways of viewing could directly impact the narrative of a text. But in the end, I came to no definite conclusions on the matter. 

In Film Theory today, we watched ten seconds of Psycho in slow motion in an attempt to recreate the feeling of Douglas Gordon’s instillation work “24 Hour Psycho” (see this New York Times article for more information). We discussed how watching just under 2 frames per second leveled out the importance of actions and scenes in the film. A car pulling into a station and the shower scene are of equal importance when shown at this pace. Things that would never be examined are given narrative weight and Barthes’ elusive third meaning becomes readily examinable. A cut is truly a revelation, and in fact, becomes the most exciting moment in this 24 hour film. The viewer asks inappropriate questions: Who is that extra? Do they have a story? Where is that other car going? Purely graphic phenomenon in a film projected at 24 fps morph and become narrative phenomenon.

Additionally, Gordon’s piece was an instillation in a gallery. Consumption circumstances impact not only how we view narratives, but the meaning we accord to them. Watch a film with a group who would rather be surfing, and you will probably not like the film. Which, in turn, says absolutely nothing about the inherent qualities of that film. Watching Arrested Development online was an entirely different narrative experience than watching it in a lecture hall in Axin. Like Duchamp’s followup to L.H.O.O.Q., L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved, nothing has changed in the text itself, and yet, everything has changed. Slowing Hitchcock down to 2 fps doesn’t fundamentally alter the text. But then again, it does. 

So in revisiting my question (do aberrant modes of viewing affect narrative) I’m going to have to answer a resounding yes. Whether it be internet clip viewing, extra-textual knowledge, rewinding to rewatch, watching at a drive in, or just seeing 2 frames per second, our mode of viewing has an immense impact on the narrative we end up constructing. 

New Ways of Viewing

Yesterday I watched a significant number of Bones episodes in reverse chronology because that was how they were listed on Hulu. Silly? Yes. Lazy? Absolutely. But an interesting experience nonetheless. 

Angela Ndalianis would probably classify Bones under her fourth prototype:

The fourth schemata relies on the technique of ‘variation on a theme’ and on the personality of the main character … There is no overall series story that closes the show’s form and, like examples in the third prototype, the series could continue indefinitely … Episodes build upon the model established in prior episodes. The episode narratives remain the same (a crime is committed in the beginning and the investigators solve it), yet different in that there are always slight variations in terms of the method of the crime, and in how the main characters expose the criminal. 

For those who don’t indulge, Bones charts the crime fighting skills of forensic anthropologist and FBI agent duo, Bones and Booth. Most episodes begin, much like Law and Order, with the discovery of unidentifiable remains. Booth and Bones solve the crime using sleuth and forensics (on the victim’s skeleton), while indulging in the requisite witty banter and personal growth. I’m not giving it a good sell here; Bones is an entirely entertaining crime procedural show. 

Ndalianis examines in her essay how different prototypes describe the way different television shows are constructed. It’s not much of a stretch to apply her arguments towards the way shows are consumed: how we viewers recognize prototype and the ways applying these schemata affect how the show is interpreted/understood. But what then of my backwards watching? Much like the color bits of Memento, I saw the results before the causes, and got to chart the ‘rising’ sexual tension between Bones (female) and Booth (male) backwards to its inception. Did watching half a season in reverse radically change my understanding of the narrative? No. I fancy myself a savvy consumer. I was able to fit the pieces of the puzzle I created back together. But my viewing practices point to an under-studied issue in film and (especially) television scholarship: aberrant consumption. 

These days, viewers practice what would be considered aberrant viewing on a shockingly regular basis. Not only DVDs (with scene selection making it easy to leap-frog through an intended narrative), but DVD extras like commentary and making-of documentaries have drastically changed the way our generation views media. Research has shown that 43% of the online population in America have watched their favorite television show online. In the 24 hours before this study, 25% watched a prime-time show time shifted, online or on demand. With online video networks like revver, youtube and hulu flourishing, and exclusively online content practically exploding onto the net, the norm of media consumption is clearly being redefined as aberrant. In a world where my grandmother sends me as many youtube specials as chain letters, and where the president elect is switching from weekly radio to online addresses from the first laptop in the Oval Office, I think it is exceedingly important to consider how these viewing practices affect the consumption of the original narrative. Not too long ago, fast forwarding through an unenjoyable part in a movie was revolutionary. Now we just clip our favorite moments and post them online to share with an ever increasing worldwide online population. 

Yet media is still produced as if it will be consumed in its original form, namely, the whole text in one temporally continuous sitting. Exclusively online media is usually shorter, cutting out the first act, to account for the short internet attention span, but still assumes a text-chronological, continuous viewing mode. If this is clearly not how media is consumed in practice, how do we, as film scholars, rectify this disconnect? Does it matter when we view aberrantly, or do we always simply (as I did with Bones) construct the intended narrative?

The Narrational Modes of Annie Hall

In class today, we discussed Annie Hall in relation to the modes of art cinema, classical Hollywood and a touch of parametric narration. At the time I had a half-baked sort of though about historical-materialism, but couldn’t formulate it enough to possibly warrant mentioning it in class. But now that I’ve had a chance to marinate, here it is for your consideration:

Annie Hall can be considered with respect to the historical materialist mode. Not in terms of editing, obviously. In fact, not in terms of most of the salient features of historical materialism, but stick with me for a minute here. 

A few features of historical materialism, as laid out by Bordwell:

1. The syuzhet is both a narrative, and an argument.

Alvy is clearly presenting an argument about his actions over the course of the film. 

2. Typage defines characters as belonging/representing a prototype of an entire social group. 

Could Alvy Singer be more of a prototypical neurotic jew? His very appearance and physical mannerisms define him as such.

3. The end of the film is pre-determined, so the film is interested in how history unfolds.

From the get-go, we know that Alvy and Annie will break up. The film is interested in meditating on how this occurred. 

4. Overt-narration is used to identify the filmmaker, including defamiliarizing classical notions of time and space, self-conscious use of formal elements, and frontal staging of action, where characters directly address the camera.

I’m sure none of us would argue that Woody Allen, the filmmaker and authorial presence, has no bearing on Annie Hall. But more than that, the film does do it’s best to disrupt classical norms of “film reality.” Alvy will interrupt a scene to directly address the camera. Time and space are fluid concepts. Woody Allen self-consciously uses film form, including animation and subtitles, to further confuse classical notions of narrative. 

I’m not arguing that Annie Hall and October are genetically related. Annie Hall follows some of the generalized conventions of historical-materialism, but certainly not in the way the Soviet’s intended. I guess my point is, it is easy to write off the historical-materialist tradition as a discrete, and specifically historical (as in “in the past”) film movement localized to the Soviet Movement and solely concerned with films about the success of the socialist revolution. But looking at the movement as a mode, and as one including, but not limited to, Soviet notions of montage, opens the historical-materialist tradition and allows it to apply to such Hollywood creations as Annie Hall. 

Final Paper Proposal

As I stated in my paper topic post, the trailer’s main function is to entice the viewer to view the upcoming film. The generalized beginning of “In a world where …” applies to all trailers, but most especially to the science fiction/fantasy genres. Not only do these trailers have to provide a narrative hook for the viewer, they must construct and legitimize a world, often in opposition to our own. To introduce us to the world of the film, these trailers rely heavily on genre conventions but must simultaneously leave clauses hanging to engender spectator curiosity. For the subgenre of action/science fiction/fantasy, the trailer must also include a montage of exciting shots/stunts/CGI that straddle the boundary between a narrative and a “cinema of attraction” function. In this specific case, identifying the viewer as a spectator is not far off–at points these trailers are closer to fairground attractions than solid narratives. 

My paper will examine this phenomenon in the specific cases of the trailers for Men in Black, Lord of the Rings, Blade Runner (the original release), The Matrix, and The Terminator. Most of these use a narrator to guide our brief trip into the films’ realities, either in the form of voice over, or intertitles, or both. They also include a “montage of attractions” that details enough story to maintain interest while simply advertising the “thrills” to be had during the feature presentation. The Matrix emphasizes it’s unique graphics, The Terminator relies on the construct of Arnold Schwarzenegger (as Men in Black does on Will Smith and Blade Runner on Harrison Ford), and Lord of the Rings plays on the classical plotlines of the epic quest and the hero’s journey. This is obviously a simplified picture, but these are a few of the ways that these trailers operate within the larger fantasy/science fiction/action framework.

Using Bordwell’s schemata as a model for viewer interpretation, I intend to examine how genre, star texts and the device of the narrator function in each of these trailers to construct a fantasy world apart from ours and set up a typical narrative within that world (romance, the quest, personal awareness etc.), while occasionally sliding into pure spectacle. Most basically, my question is: How do these trailers work? Or, more specifically, how do they both participate in, and set themselves apart from, a tradition of storytelling in the science fiction genre, and in Hollywood modes in general, to (ostensibly) sell a narrative to the audience? 

Potential Sources:

Brooker, Will. The Blade Runner Experience. New York, Wallflower Press: 2005.

Gray, Jonathan A. Unpublished chapters from his upcoming book (how do I cite this?)

Horsley, Jake. The Blood Poets. London, The Scarecrow Press: 1999.

James, Edward and Farah Mendlesohn, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2003.

Kerman, Judith B. Retrofitting Blade Runner. Bowling Green, Bowling Green State University Press: 1991.

Kernan, Lisa. Coming Attractions. Austin, University of Texas Press: 2004.

King, Geoff and Tanya Krzywinska. Science Fiction Cinema. New York, Wallflower Press: 2000.

Lichtenfeld, Eric. Action Speaks Louder. Middletown, Wesleyan University Press: 2007.

Mathijs, Ernest, ed. The Lord of the Rings. New York, Wallflower Press: 2006. 

Perkowitz, Sidney. Hollywood Science. New York, Columbia University Press: 2007. 

Rickman, Gregg, ed. The Science Fiction Reader. New York, Limelight Editions: 2004.

Sella, Marshall. “The 150 Second Sell, Take 34.” The New York Times. 28 July 2002. 

Thompson, Kristin. The Frodo Franchise. Berkley, University of California Press: 2007.

Classical Hollywood versus Art Cinema Modes

A la the closing comment of Professor Mittell yesterday, I left class thinking about the distinction between Hollywood and Art Cinema as modes of narration, and how they applied to our screenings thus far. Reflecting on the year to date in light of these distinctions, I find our first screenings to be the most interesting blend of Classical and Art modes. Stranger than Paradise and Delicatessen both blend elements of these modes without fully subscribing to either one.

At first glance, Stranger than Paradise seems to be the epitome of the art mode. The style is self conscious: long takes separated by black of varying lengths throughout the film. There is almost no “plot” as the Hollywood mode would conceive of it, and what little there is, is explicitly interested in the character’s psychology. The film is author-driven, especially once you discover the way it was funded and filmed. However, there is really no blurring of objectivity and subjectivity, which is part of the Classical Hollywood mode. Additionally, the film is temporally linear, the narration is omniscient, there is a tenuous thread of causality tying the plot together, and the film is fairly redundant. But what causes me the most problems when trying to categorize Stranger than Paradise is the character psychology that would seem to place it in the art cinema mode. Yes, the film is interested in the murkiness of Eddie’s mentality. But we are never really let inside his mind. In La Jettee (which we described as an unabashed art film) we know what the protagonist is thinking. We follow his logic through the voice over. In Stranger than Paradise we are never really sure why Eddie does what he does, or even if he goes through a psychological arc. Is it necessary to experience the character’s psychology in the art mode? Or just to understand that it is operating below the surface?

The case of Delicatessen is the reverse. The story circles around a goal driven protagonist and an antagonist. Questions in the plot are quickly answered and the story moves forward efficiently and in a linear manner. But the style is not completely in service of the narrative. Yes, the color scheme serves to identify the world as apart from ours. But the rhythmic editing does little for the story, and, in fact, distracts the viewer in its purely formal aspects. Once again, a film doesn’t fit into either mode completely. Which begs the question, does any film completely subscribe to a single mode as described by Bordwell?

A New Narrative for Pushing Daisies

When the editing assignment came up, I immediately wanted to play with my favorite (currently airing) show, Pushing Daisies. As for a partner, I mentioned my plan to Scotty, who happened to share my passion for an undead girl and her pie-making love. As for the process …

Problems accumulated quite quickly. As many of you have experienced, Snap-Z is not a cooperative program. But once we figured that out, we had to set some parameters. We decided to limit ourselves to the first three episodes of season 1, with a concentration on “Pie-lette,” for simplicity’s sake and so everyone in the class could keep track of what was going on. Once we started editing, we realized that the thoroughly engrained musical soundtrack would be pretty detrimental to a radical re-editing of the content. 

As for direction, Scotty and I hit upon the idea of turing Ned into a serial killer quite early in the process. With all the talk of murder and dead bodies littering the scenery, it seemed the most logical way to twist the plot of the show. We decided to remain true to the format of the series: begin in childhood with lots of voice-over, transfer to the present with not as much, and include a voice-over recounting of the crime. We’d show Ned not overcoming his traumatizing childhood, and it turning him evil. The advantage of doing the assignment with a television series was that we had lots of cohesively thematic material to work with from each of the three episodes. Need a conversation about death between Emerson and Ned? Not that hard to find. Need flashes of Chuck seducing Ned? Also not hard to locate. 

The hardest part, for me anyway, was not forcing the material. I wanted a statement to the effect of “That guy we killed,” for voice-over. I could have made it happen, but only by cutting together single words from different episodes, which is not faithful to the assignment, or the material. In the end, Scotty and I managed that transition a way much truer to the material. 

So, enough talk. Here is our version of Pushing Daisies, “Two TIme Pie.”