Bordwell & Herman lay out a cognitive approach to narratology, exploring how we comprehend and construct storyworlds from the narrative discourse (or fabula from the syuzhet). What ideas from this approach seem particularly productive for you? How might it help us understand any of the examples we’ve watched thus far? And are there aspects of this approach that seem less convincing to you?
5 thoughts on “Responses for 9/21”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Bordwell: I have never thought about narrative as something that demands a sort of activity from the consumer. It makes sense though, when you think about it. If consuming narrative (film, for example) were passive in nature, why would we prefer to watch certain films when we’re tired and wish to be lazy and other films when we’re hopped-up on coffee and full of mental energy? Because the films we typically watch when we want to be lazy are usually the most archetypal, ‘cannonical’ type narratives—the kind that demand the least mental activity from us. (Think romantic comedies). The films we enjoy when we’re full of energy, on the other hand, are the ones that demand more of us, that structure narrative cues in a more a more difficult way to comprehend. (Ghostwriter is one that I saw recently.)
Bordwell and Portal: Once we see narrative consumption as a fundamentally ACTIVE endeavor we have a much easier time applying narrative principles to video games like Portal, which we would more traditionally think of as active narratives.
I think someone talked about this on the Portal thread, but I’m interested in how the idea of narrative retardation in syuzhet applies to Portal. (I’m still thinking about whether the categories of syuzhet and fabula even apply to Portal, but let’s assume they do.) Retardation involves, among other things, withholding information in the syuzhet that is present in the fabula and revealing it piecemeal (strategically) to guide or cue the spectator’s narrative activity. One retardation technique quoted in Bordwell is a “rhetoric of anticipatory caution” (56), which involves giving intimations of impending dangers without revealing exactly what they are, creating a heightened sense of caution, then revealing the identity of the dangers (maybe at a moment of climax).
Playing through the narrative in Portal I feel this retardation strongly. Many dangers—unexpected dangers—exist in Portal, and the way they are revealed to me effects my experience of the narrative (manifest as fear and alertness mostly). An especially effective use of this ‘rhetoric of anticipatory caution’ is when Glados says that the next arena has been accidentally repurposed for “live fire training.” “What the hell is live fire training?” you’re thinking. You know it can’t be good. You’re afraid. Then you get in there and get shot up by a sentry. NOW you know what “live fire training is,” and now you know that part of the fabula of Portal involves machine gun sentries, and you can expect more in the future. Another cue has been added to your repertoire.
i just read more in Bordwell and i realize i misinterpreted ‘rhetoric of anticipatory caution,’ which actually refers to ‘caution’ in the sense of considering first impressions of syuzhet to be provisional rather than concrete, recognizing that they might turn out to be wrong later on.
still, i think what i described (above) in reference to ‘caution’ as it relates to danger can also be considered a kind of ‘retardation.’
Most interesting to me from the Bordwell reading was how intertextuality plays into our construction of narrative. We all know that genres have specific conventions which classical examples of specific genres adhere to. The knowledge of these conventions serve as cues to the viewer to make specific hypotheses about the outcome of events within the fabula. The degree to which a narrative plays with these conventions can readily create suspense, short/long term misunderstanding, or increased interest in the narrative.
For example, in the superhero film, Kickass, the hero’s first fight against crime ends with broken bones, a knife wound, and him slipping into a coma for a week. In superhero films, the hero is very rarely affected by such mundane maladies as knife wounds and broken bones and the style of the film affirms this assumption until the hero is stabbed. The music remains upbeat and inspirational while the hero confronts the muggers. However, once the hero is stabbed the music abruptly distorts and fades out. We abruptly and shockingly learn that we are not in experiencing a standard superhero film.
One way in which this can apply to Portal (although I don’t think I can go very in depth with this) is that Glados is another addition to a long line of untrustworthy robots in sci-fi narratives. Glados’ calm voice and camera-design echoes that of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. As soon as I heard and saw Glados, my mind jumped to the actions of HAL and I became untrustworthy of Glados. Although, I will have to keep playing to see if my hypothesis is correct.
I didn’t find any of the aspects less convincing.
I was going to to make my own post, but responding to this seems to make more sense.
Both the Bordwell reading and Mittell essay discuss the employment of schema, or a set of inherent norms for a particular social class, occupation, setting, etc. in film and television, like an audience assuming that a doctor character is intelligent and practical. However, particularly in Bordwell’s case, there is no discussion of “anti-schema”, to which I think Matt’s Kickass reference is a perfect example of. While the discussion of schema is a helpful one that is still very relevant today (and especially relevant during Bordwell’s writing of the book when buddy cop shows and Blockbusters ruled mass media) I believe (especially today but still in Bordwell’s time) that the “anti-schema” discussion, film and television using established schemas for opposite results, is also an important one. The Deer Hunter is so shocking a film because it portrays the horrors and trauma of war in contrast to the light, heroic “good guys always win” schema established during the war films of World War 2. Chinatown, in which main character and classic hard-boiled detective Jake realizes there are individuals who are willing to commit acts so evil they are outside of his understanding and power to stop, a shocking realization in light of the classic detective film schema, where everything is resolved once the protagonist figures out what’s going on. While I may be jumping the gun and the very next Bordwell chapter will discuss “anti-schema” narration, I am a little confused by it’s ommision from the schema discussion.
sorry for the lack of paragraphs