This week’s readings explore the concepts of narrative complexity and formal play. How do these ideas help explain various examples that we’ve viewed this semester? What particular pleasures might be important for viewers with such films and television shows? Are there concepts that seem more or less useful as part of our “theoretical toolbox”?
7 thoughts on “Responses for 10/12”
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I think that “Trapped in the Closet”, for all its dynamic uses of storytelling, is an awesome complex narrative. This series somehow blurs the line between music videos, serial television, and web series. It is truly self-conscious as it pokes fun at its own absurdity. Furthermore, it has the ability to weave together multiple storylines and introduce new collisions between groups of characters. Much of the show’s pleasure comes from keeping track of the elaborate relationships between these characters. R. Kelly also makes for a compelling narrator. First off, he seems aware that he is R. Kelly as he plays a character very similar to himself. Secondly, he has the ability to suddenly appear in the scene smoking a cigar, invisible to everyone but the audience. As R. Kelly experiments with the combination of a serial music video, he sets the stage for creativity.
I’m really interested in the “meta-reflexive” mode of viewing that Mittell talks about, and I think it’s useful because it is not often talked about in our experience of viewing. Most narrative theorizing assumes total immersion in a story. But if you think about it, it is not often the case that we are totally immersed as viewers. Often we are NOT immersed, we are rather reflecting on ourselves viewing the narrative. In other words, there are levels of narrative reflection and often times we are not just reflecting on the narrative, but also on OURSELVES as consumers of the narrative. The ‘meta-reflexive’ acknowledges that fact, and legitimizes that upper level of reflection (the meta-level) as a legitimate tool of narrative construction.
I notice this especially watching Arrested Development, where the plot lines can get so convoluted and contrived that it often seems the task of the narrative is to choose plot lines that are as dissimilar as possible and wrench them into a unity at the end. It’s as if the writers are playing a game with each other. One writer proposes a set of initial plot trajectories that he thinks will ‘stump’ the rest of the writers, then it is up to the rest of the writers to join those trajectories into One as naturally as possible. But within the course of 23 minutes it can’t possibly be natural, and that is what results in the meta viewing, the admiration of the shear mechanics contrived to achieve the final conjoining. Seinfeld did this, too. But Arrested Development took it to an extreme, almost a caricature of the Seinfeld meta-viewing.
I’m still thinking of other narratives that draw attention to their own mechanics, and not only draw attention to them but use them for humor or for other effect…
I remember that when I watched The Sixth Sense a second time, something in me recalled how audiences and critics noticed clues that weren’t just about Bruce Willis being dead–they had to do with the stylistic choices M. Night Shyamalan used to play around with the whole theme of death. When I watched it again, I noticed the obsession with the color red, on the doorknob to the basement Willis struggled with, Haley Joel Osment’s sweater, his tent, the balloon at the birthday party, etc. As I watched this and observed this “game” or pieces to a “puzzle” I did feel like I was somewhat rewarded, especially as I saw this motif repeated more than once.
Groundhog Day also has its own share of perks, and both Simmons and Newman touch upon that as well. Simmons brings up “forking-path narrative” and how Groundhog Day (might have been Elsaesser who drops the title) fits this category because of the different trajectories the film takes after Bill Murray gets stuck. Newman points out that there are those types of indie films with interconnected characters, and while Groundhog Day isn’t that “indie” or “ensemble-based” per say, you do witness interconnection among a lot of the supporting characters Murray meets in the various paths of the narrative. He explains to Andie McDowell their lives in the diner and we also see how he’s affected everyone individually when they thank him as a group at the party. There’s something special in seeing them together there because it make’s Murray’s impact on these interrelated people all the more special.
LOST has more of that “Eureka!” moment of interconnected characters throughout the series in more ways than one…Serialization actually buttresses this because there is so much pleasure in the viewer recalling what happened seasons ago, especially with characters and identities, and especially with LOST. It feels like a prize to the puzzle has been rewarded.
There are tons of songs with narrative (Eminem’s “Stan,” Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant,” John Lee Hooker’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”) and countless more music videos that have a semblance of narrative, if not a full story. What R. Kelly does that is so utterly different is that each song is a prelude to the next… it’s a serialized story. I did some research to see if any other music artists did this… I couldn’t really find any, but it would be rather epic if a band like Coldplay or Muse did something like this. Some long narrative in the form of song. What R. Kelly does is extremely innovative… unfortunately, as funny as it may be, the content takes away from its underlying brilliance.
Wouldn’t concept albums like The Who’s Tommy or Greenday’s American Idiot fit that mold? I haven’t listened to either of those albums enough to know if the narrative within them is as explicit as Trapped In The Closet (and I doubt that they are) but Tommy tells the story of a dead, dumb, and blind boy who starts a religious movement and American Idiot follows the journeys of a suburban everyman. Also, the narrative in American Idiot was just recently transferred into a musical that is currently on broadway. R. Kelly just seems to be doing the concept album on a much more explicit, self-aware level.
I know a lot of concept albums quite well, and none of them so explicitly narrate a story like Trapped does – typically, they are songs sung from a character’s perspective, or describing a situation. But Trapped reads more like a sung screenplay than a typical concept album.
Tommy has also been made into a movie, but it’s one of the weirder things ever to be put on film because almost all concept albums are first and foremost about the music with an attempted story line taking a back seat. R. Kelly, in a stroke of pure genius, reverses the normal concept album roles. The music is not interesting at all, with the same beat and flow being utilized in every sequence. The music is a backdrop for the story to unfold and a tool to tell the story in an interesting way.