Please each parts one through four on temporality and narrative, Post your initial response then as usual wait and post a follow up response to a post from someone else.
I LOVE NARRATIVE, and I have really broadened my concepts of what narrative is and how it is viewed since the start of this class. We talked a lot about how contemporary media breaks the old narrative paradigm, and I just had a few thoughts about that that seemed rather long to express during class. The internet – The internet really is an ongoing narrative. A webpage shows us information and gives us narratives, and it is true the NARRATIVE may have similar structures, but with things like automated scripts, stories can be endless or ongoing. For instance, I have an idea for a project (COPYRIGHT haha) where a person goes into a site, adds words (anytime, any amount) that are adjs, nouns, verbs, etc. and each time a visitor enters the site it takes a word from the database and creates a story, and keeps going forever, in that instance, the story would go on forever. I was also thinking a lot about “what constitutes narrative” and my definition has always been “anything” haha, but I thought about friendships as a very dynamic narrative. Sort of how we were saying narratives sometimes contain smaller narratives, friendships are like that. You have the story of your friendship (the things you do etc.) but then you tell stories to friends, which then are like substories. In reality, any relationship is like this. It is like those Russian dolls that fit inside of each other. We have the narrative of the universe that zooms into the narrative of our planet -> continent -> country -> state/provident -> town/city -> community -> person -> mind -> cells. Now the last two are interesting to think about. The mind is constantly telling a story because the way we think about the world is different than what actually happens (the same with memories, what happened and what we remember are two different narratives). Therefore, the mind is always constructing stories about events because our past experience inflicts bias. The second portion is cells. Now, cells have memories, and they have actions, therefore it could be concluded that their makeup has a narrative in itself. We often do not know what is going on in the world of our bodies, so I would say biology has a type of narrative as well. Now to zoom out a little, I wanted to bring up a movie I love. The film is called The Final Cut with Robin Williams. The film takes place in a world where chips can be implanted into people and when they die their lives were recorded through their eyes. The ZOE company that markets them, markets them as a type of immortality, the ultimate gift. The film is interesting because after a person dies a “cutter” puts together all the best parts of their lives for their “re-memory” which is like a funeral where everyone watched a movie through the eyes of the life the person is. This is a VERY interesting commentary on film, cinema and really the controversy with documentary that “are we seeing the whole picture”. The cutters are hired by loved ones, and obviously they only show the good things, but it is a film to check out and really plays with the temporal elements of a PERSONAL NARRATIVE, which I find rather intriguing. Overall , class went well, and the discussions about time and narrative were very thought provoking (especially for 8AM !)
It's always fun to see when different classes of mine begin to interact, and that was the case this morning with our discussion of narrative. I am an English minor, and the past few semesters have been taking creative writing classes - currently I am enrolled in ENG 406: Advanced Creative Writing. In that class, we recently had to write 500-word "flash stories" - very short stories (obviously) with the typical narrative structure of rising action, climax, and falling action. As we discussed these ideas in class it became very apparent that this structure really governs over almost everything we do. I did, however, think about one of the many ways that we can make exceptions to disprove this rule.
Channel surfing. When you are flicking through channels on TV, you are only catching bits and pieces of various narratives. One instant you might be at the rising action of one show, then the next you're at the falling action of another, then the next you're at the climax of another. Though independently you might be in one particular section of that show within the strict 3-part narrative "structure", piecing them together has an entirely different result. This is because "narrative" is so dependent on time. If you take the rising action of a story and swap it with the falling action, do they still retain their original designations? Or does the falling action become the rising action despite its content?
I also started thinking about these ideas in a more abstract way. Can we apply this narrative structure to other things? What about sounds? In some way, there is always a fade in and a fade out. Even a loud bang noise has to start somewhere. When the gunpowder combusts, it isn't all of a sudden. It starts as a little sound then amps up to a loud bang, but it undeniably doesn't happen all at once. Then you can back up and look at not just the sound but the firing of the gun. The trigger is pulled - that is the rising action. The gun fires (climax). The sound echoes, the bullet has found a target, and smoke begins to clear (falling action).
Often things are broken up into just "action" and "reaction". You hit someone, they hit you back. But something has to cause the action. Why did you hit someone? Whatever the reason may be, it is the rising action.
This might be slight different than the argument I was making about channel surfing, but I have come to realize that the 3-part narrative structure encompasses far more than it may seem.
The discussion on narrative was a great reflection on the current state of cinema and how we tell stories. Yes, we can trace the formula of narrative through centuries and come to the realization that it really hasn't changed.
It is evident that the narrative in cinema has very little room for change in how they tell stories. Because a film-makers vision ( more often than not)is limited by a budget, and the audience has been limited to only viewing films that are chosen to be viewed at cinemas-they too are are conditioned to accept cinema narrative as normal.
Now, there have been great films that have been excepting to a mass audience that were talked about in class such as Momento and Run Lola Run, two fantastic films that not only break out of the current cinema story-telling structure but also become marketable films where a mass audience can be exposed to it. I am sure there are many other films out there that have broken narrative normalcy, but unfortunately there are non that I can recall.
Matthew- Your idea is a good one and I would hate to be the bear of bad news but Jasper Turcotte has done this for Joline Blais' class last semester. I do not believe it is up anymore, but I'm sure he still has the code. He also explored how narrative has a certain structure and that if we change nouns and adjectives they give a completely different meaning. Do not let what someone has done stop you from doing it yourself, maybe there is something you can add to it- like changing children's stories?
In this lecture about the temporal attributes to narrative I found that it was an interesting discussion of what is the traditional scope of a narrative structure and how we tend to follow the Aristotelian model, but at the same time we are varying our uses of that model. A story has the three main parts, a beginning middle and an end; the typical is a slow build up to a climax and then a quick downfall to the ending. This model has been played with but still every story has the three main parts to them, sometimes we show the beginning as the ending or vice versa and then sometime there are multiple climax points that lead up to the downfall of the story, the point is that we are exploring the idea of how we make narrative.
The other thing we discussed that was very interesting was what makes narrative a narrative in the first place, when we reflect on our own lives and our own vision of who we are how do we explain where we are in a narrative structure. How do you describe life’s narrative? When we look back on what has made us who we are we are pausing in time, in reference to a narrative, to look at the things that have happened the things that have formed the story thus far. These pauses in our personal narratives tend to happen at pivotal points in our lives, when we graduate, deaths, things that jar us, change us, and challenge who we are as people, but also as a person in the sense that we are constantly learning and changing through time.
We discussed the way that we experience life and asked if while we are going through life is that a narrative? The story of what I am currently doing, where does my narrative climax, and where does it end or begin to end. It was said that through our lives as individuals what we have are segmented narratives, small narratives that help us discover and discuss who we are. But that the over all narrative is that of the human race, history. History is the narrative or story of the human race; it is the continual story of what has made our cultures, our societies. What things like you tube and the internet allow is a place for people to post their own stories, their own experiences expanding the boarders of history to include everyone, including the common, up until l this time of equivalence, history has been reserved for those who have been deemed worthy of being part of it. Those who have been selected to be immortal; what the internet has allowed is a place for the common person to be as important or even more important in peoples eyes than even some of the most famous people. The Internet has immortalized us in some shape or form, which is something humans seemed to have been obsessed with the idea of living forever. The internet allows this to happen to some extent, it allows a piece of us to be projected into the world for what seems like it could be forever, also it allows us to be exposed to millions of people.
Though the internet is great and it shares our own personal history with the world, it is still somewhat lacking in its content, it is only sharing the lives of the people who are able to access it, its missing the people from all the third world countries and the poverty stricken, where is there ability to become immortalized? Look beyond even yourself and share with the world not only your experiences but try to tell the important stories of your life, tell of your life changing events, tell of the choices you have made t get you to where you are, reflect on yourself and compare it to the reflection of your peers, your world. Br aware of where you come from, but also be aware of how you can help reflect more of the world that makes you to the world itself, the internet could be considered a mirror of our society, but at the moment that mirror is blurred with the confusion of a lack of understanding for what makes you who you are, what makes you different from the person sitting next you, what constitute an important point in your life, I can not tell you, that is for you to decide, but I can tell you that when you choose to reflect inward think then of how you are projecting outward. Narrative is in the combined stories of our lives our simple yet complicated lives.
The discussion on narrative is always a good one to have. To talk about how we tell stories, and how we interpret stories through the narrative is something we should be aware of. All of the greatest comedians might not tell the funniest jokes, but it's the way that they set them up through the narrative that makes us laugh.
Thinking about what Steven said about the narrative in cinema and the current state of it, I sense a bit of distaste for "the current state." I would agree completely. I have a hard time watching new movies because the narrative these days is just another carbon copy of a film released 4 years ago. Plot lines and twists have become the same for the most part. In the entertaining movies that my mother likes to watch, it is the same story told in the same narrative, something that would put me to sleep. I have found that the non traditional narrative suits my cinematic tastes much better because it isn't the same old boring ups and downs of a movie such as Wedding Crashers. I don't mean to offend if it's anyone's favorite movie.
The whole narrative process throughout cinema hasn't really changed. I'm watching Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" right now and the narrative structure in that is still the same as the narrative structure today.
Thinking about the narrative structure of anything, cinema, novels, comic books, or even a story from one person to another, is something that we take for granted on a daily basis. We talk to one another and it is the same structure as everyone else. Narrative is a hard thing to break up and have it still make sense to the average person. It is a hard thing to change, but it needs to change for cinema or any other type of media before it gets to be the same and we all get sick of it.
That's it from here. See you next Thursday. I'll be in my PJ's!
is class I had always thought of a narrative as being confined to books or movies. I certainly never considered something like Jerry Springer to have a narrative. But now that I think about it, it truly does. There is a rising action, conflict and Jerry at the end trying to wrap the whole thing up nicely with some dime store philosophy. So this got me to thinking, "if Springer can be a narrative, then what else does?"I like Matthew's comment about the internet. Websites (although non linear by definition) certainly have a narrative but I do not think this narrative is confined simply to the content on it. Even the interaction and the actual process in which a user navigates from page to page or site to site could be considered a narrative. In this example, I suppose that the internet itself could be considered a kind of story (a very new age choose your own adventure style story but one none the less). In this cyber story, the individual websites would be chapters.
Raph mentioned video games and the sub stories that make up our life. This got me to thinking about something Joline had said in my 303 class. She was very interested in the idea of a video game character becoming aware of the fact that he is in a story (much like Neo in the Matrix, Jim Carey int eh Truman Show or any of us who has looked around and got the feeling they where part of something much bigger and weirder then they could imagine). Well, I rented the new Simpson's game for my daughters this week and to my surprise the entire game is based around the concept that the characters learn that they are actually part of a game. It even ends with the family confronting God who is forced to admit that their entire world is a game made by computer nerds for other computer nerds to play and that the true meaning of life is that these computer nerds are part of a much larger game called "The Planet Earth". God then says the best quote imaginable to describe our existence here on this world. "Its so great. You can get out of your car and raise and family. I play it 24 hours a day." The Simpson's game, according to God, is just a mini game in the big game that is us playing it. Pretty metaphysical stuff for a kids video game.
I also agreed with what Eric had to say about the story structure that we use in America and how it governs not only our books, movies and games but every aspect of our existence. We have become so ingrained with the idea of a rising action, a conflict and a resolution that there is not a single area of our society, media or thought process that does not involve this. War, the school system, our search for a career, our system of electing leaders. There is not a single action or narrative that we undertake in Western culture that does not follow this pattern. It is no wonder then that we are a conflict based society or that we have such trouble thinking outside this paradigm. Even movies like Memento, which attempt in vein to break this pattern by messing with the order of time, still hold true to the same structure in the sense that the viewer is still seeing the actions (although out of order) in terms of rising, conflict and falling. I am told that other countries (many from the far East) use very different story structures then this). My question then is, if this conflict pattern of story telling is so much a part of our society and our own psyches, then can we ever truly relate on the same wavelength with people who use a drastically different pattern? Fundamentally, this has to cause a major gap in the way our minds take in information and react to events. I don't know. Maybe I am thinking to much about this and perhaps there is not enough of a difference between the story structure of human cultures to make it of any real importance. But I believe this summer I will write a book called "Culture Gap" (COPYRIGHT) that involves mankind meeting an alien species that uses an extremely different story pattern. I think that we would find it nearly impossible to find common ground with a culture that had no concept of rise, conflict and resolution.
Narrative is the most basic form of communication that we have. Starting in Lascaux, France with the cave paintings, we were delivered narrative about their way of life. Granted, these are not "New Media," but like you, I am a skeptic on the topic, but I digress. We are continually finding new ways to deliver narrative, and each and every time it becomes more and more lifelike, almost to the point where we feel as if there is a mirror replicating our fantasies.
Kory- To state that narrative hasn't evolved is a bit of a bland statement to make. I feel that we have changed narrative by merely creating new methodology of doing so. Sometimes we need to take a step back and merely take delivery into account, and start from there. HOWEVER, with stating that "psycho" is no different than today, is almost true. It is film, and like now, we deliver narrative through film; but we mustn't forget that we now have this gorgeous thing called HD, which changes the delivery ever so slightly, but it is the ever so slight step towards real.
As far as broken narration is concerned... Is it really broken? Or are we just forced to think a little bit more than we are used to when viewing such films. I mean sure, Memento is disjointed, but it all ties together in a linear thought process at the end. /Shrug, perhaps I'm too narrow-minded to not accept "reality."
7 comments:
I LOVE NARRATIVE, and I have really broadened my concepts of what narrative is and how it is viewed since the start of this class. We talked a lot about how contemporary media breaks the old narrative paradigm, and I just had a few thoughts about that that seemed rather long to express during class.
The internet – The internet really is an ongoing narrative. A webpage shows us information and gives us narratives, and it is true the NARRATIVE may have similar structures, but with things like automated scripts, stories can be endless or ongoing. For instance, I have an idea for a project (COPYRIGHT haha) where a person goes into a site, adds words (anytime, any amount) that are adjs, nouns, verbs, etc. and each time a visitor enters the site it takes a word from the database and creates a story, and keeps going forever, in that instance, the story would go on forever.
I was also thinking a lot about “what constitutes narrative” and my definition has always been “anything” haha, but I thought about friendships as a very dynamic narrative. Sort of how we were saying narratives sometimes contain smaller narratives, friendships are like that. You have the story of your friendship (the things you do etc.) but then you tell stories to friends, which then are like substories. In reality, any relationship is like this. It is like those Russian dolls that fit inside of each other. We have the narrative of the universe that zooms into the narrative of our planet -> continent -> country -> state/provident -> town/city -> community -> person -> mind -> cells. Now the last two are interesting to think about. The mind is constantly telling a story because the way we think about the world is different than what actually happens (the same with memories, what happened and what we remember are two different narratives). Therefore, the mind is always constructing stories about events because our past experience inflicts bias. The second portion is cells. Now, cells have memories, and they have actions, therefore it could be concluded that their makeup has a narrative in itself. We often do not know what is going on in the world of our bodies, so I would say biology has a type of narrative as well.
Now to zoom out a little, I wanted to bring up a movie I love. The film is called The Final Cut with Robin Williams. The film takes place in a world where chips can be implanted into people and when they die their lives were recorded through their eyes. The ZOE company that markets them, markets them as a type of immortality, the ultimate gift. The film is interesting because after a person dies a “cutter” puts together all the best parts of their lives for their “re-memory” which is like a funeral where everyone watched a movie through the eyes of the life the person is. This is a VERY interesting commentary on film, cinema and really the controversy with documentary that “are we seeing the whole picture”. The cutters are hired by loved ones, and obviously they only show the good things, but it is a film to check out and really plays with the temporal elements of a PERSONAL NARRATIVE, which I find rather intriguing.
Overall , class went well, and the discussions about time and narrative were very thought provoking (especially for 8AM !)
It's always fun to see when different classes of mine begin to interact, and that was the case this morning with our discussion of narrative. I am an English minor, and the past few semesters have been taking creative writing classes - currently I am enrolled in ENG 406: Advanced Creative Writing. In that class, we recently had to write 500-word "flash stories" - very short stories (obviously) with the typical narrative structure of rising action, climax, and falling action. As we discussed these ideas in class it became very apparent that this structure really governs over almost everything we do. I did, however, think about one of the many ways that we can make exceptions to disprove this rule.
Channel surfing. When you are flicking through channels on TV, you are only catching bits and pieces of various narratives. One instant you might be at the rising action of one show, then the next you're at the falling action of another, then the next you're at the climax of another. Though independently you might be in one particular section of that show within the strict 3-part narrative "structure", piecing them together has an entirely different result. This is because "narrative" is so dependent on time. If you take the rising action of a story and swap it with the falling action, do they still retain their original designations? Or does the falling action become the rising action despite its content?
I also started thinking about these ideas in a more abstract way. Can we apply this narrative structure to other things? What about sounds? In some way, there is always a fade in and a fade out. Even a loud bang noise has to start somewhere. When the gunpowder combusts, it isn't all of a sudden. It starts as a little sound then amps up to a loud bang, but it undeniably doesn't happen all at once. Then you can back up and look at not just the sound but the firing of the gun. The trigger is pulled - that is the rising action. The gun fires (climax). The sound echoes, the bullet has found a target, and smoke begins to clear (falling action).
Often things are broken up into just "action" and "reaction". You hit someone, they hit you back. But something has to cause the action. Why did you hit someone? Whatever the reason may be, it is the rising action.
This might be slight different than the argument I was making about channel surfing, but I have come to realize that the 3-part narrative structure encompasses far more than it may seem.
The discussion on narrative was a great reflection on the current state of cinema and how we tell stories. Yes, we can trace the formula of narrative through centuries and come to the realization that it really hasn't changed.
It is evident that the narrative in cinema has very little room for change in how they tell stories. Because a film-makers vision ( more often than not)is limited by a budget, and the audience has been limited to only viewing films that are chosen to be viewed at cinemas-they too are are conditioned to accept cinema narrative as normal.
Now, there have been great films that have been excepting to a mass audience that were talked about in class such as Momento and Run Lola Run, two fantastic films that not only break out of the current cinema story-telling structure but also become marketable films where a mass audience can be exposed to it. I am sure there are many other films out there that have broken narrative normalcy, but unfortunately there are non that I can recall.
Matthew- Your idea is a good one and I would hate to be the bear of bad news but Jasper Turcotte has done this for Joline Blais' class last semester. I do not believe it is up anymore, but I'm sure he still has the code.
He also explored how narrative has a certain structure and that if we change nouns and adjectives they give a completely different meaning.
Do not let what someone has done stop you from doing it yourself, maybe there is something you can add to it- like changing children's stories?
In this lecture about the temporal attributes to narrative I found that it was an interesting discussion of what is the traditional scope of a narrative structure and how we tend to follow the Aristotelian model, but at the same time we are varying our uses of that model. A story has the three main parts, a beginning middle and an end; the typical is a slow build up to a climax and then a quick downfall to the ending. This model has been played with but still every story has the three main parts to them, sometimes we show the beginning as the ending or vice versa and then sometime there are multiple climax points that lead up to the downfall of the story, the point is that we are exploring the idea of how we make narrative.
The other thing we discussed that was very interesting was what makes narrative a narrative in the first place, when we reflect on our own lives and our own vision of who we are how do we explain where we are in a narrative structure. How do you describe life’s narrative? When we look back on what has made us who we are we are pausing in time, in reference to a narrative, to look at the things that have happened the things that have formed the story thus far. These pauses in our personal narratives tend to happen at pivotal points in our lives, when we graduate, deaths, things that jar us, change us, and challenge who we are as people, but also as a person in the sense that we are constantly learning and changing through time.
We discussed the way that we experience life and asked if while we are going through life is that a narrative? The story of what I am currently doing, where does my narrative climax, and where does it end or begin to end. It was said that through our lives as individuals what we have are segmented narratives, small narratives that help us discover and discuss who we are. But that the over all narrative is that of the human race, history. History is the narrative or story of the human race; it is the continual story of what has made our cultures, our societies. What things like you tube and the internet allow is a place for people to post their own stories, their own experiences expanding the boarders of history to include everyone, including the common, up until l this time of equivalence, history has been reserved for those who have been deemed worthy of being part of it. Those who have been selected to be immortal; what the internet has allowed is a place for the common person to be as important or even more important in peoples eyes than even some of the most famous people. The Internet has immortalized us in some shape or form, which is something humans seemed to have been obsessed with the idea of living forever. The internet allows this to happen to some extent, it allows a piece of us to be projected into the world for what seems like it could be forever, also it allows us to be exposed to millions of people.
Though the internet is great and it shares our own personal history with the world, it is still somewhat lacking in its content, it is only sharing the lives of the people who are able to access it, its missing the people from all the third world countries and the poverty stricken, where is there ability to become immortalized? Look beyond even yourself and share with the world not only your experiences but try to tell the important stories of your life, tell of your life changing events, tell of the choices you have made t get you to where you are, reflect on yourself and compare it to the reflection of your peers, your world. Br aware of where you come from, but also be aware of how you can help reflect more of the world that makes you to the world itself, the internet could be considered a mirror of our society, but at the moment that mirror is blurred with the confusion of a lack of understanding for what makes you who you are, what makes you different from the person sitting next you, what constitute an important point in your life, I can not tell you, that is for you to decide, but I can tell you that when you choose to reflect inward think then of how you are projecting outward. Narrative is in the combined stories of our lives our simple yet complicated lives.
The discussion on narrative is always a good one to have. To talk about how we tell stories, and how we interpret stories through the narrative is something we should be aware of. All of the greatest comedians might not tell the funniest jokes, but it's the way that they set them up through the narrative that makes us laugh.
Thinking about what Steven said about the narrative in cinema and the current state of it, I sense a bit of distaste for "the current state." I would agree completely. I have a hard time watching new movies because the narrative these days is just another carbon copy of a film released 4 years ago. Plot lines and twists have become the same for the most part. In the entertaining movies that my mother likes to watch, it is the same story told in the same narrative, something that would put me to sleep. I have found that the non traditional narrative suits my cinematic tastes much better because it isn't the same old boring ups and downs of a movie such as Wedding Crashers. I don't mean to offend if it's anyone's favorite movie.
The whole narrative process throughout cinema hasn't really changed. I'm watching Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" right now and the narrative structure in that is still the same as the narrative structure today.
Thinking about the narrative structure of anything, cinema, novels, comic books, or even a story from one person to another, is something that we take for granted on a daily basis. We talk to one another and it is the same structure as everyone else. Narrative is a hard thing to break up and have it still make sense to the average person. It is a hard thing to change, but it needs to change for cinema or any other type of media before it gets to be the same and we all get sick of it.
That's it from here. See you next Thursday. I'll be in my PJ's!
is class I had always thought of a narrative as being confined to books or movies. I certainly never considered something like Jerry Springer to have a narrative. But now that I think about it, it truly does. There is a rising action, conflict and Jerry at the end trying to wrap the whole thing up nicely with some dime store philosophy. So this got me to thinking, "if Springer can be a narrative, then what else does?"I like Matthew's comment about the internet. Websites (although non linear by definition) certainly have a narrative but I do not think this narrative is confined simply to the content on it. Even the interaction and the actual process in which a user navigates from page to page or site to site could be considered a narrative. In this example, I suppose that the internet itself could be considered a kind of story (a very new age choose your own adventure style story but one none the less). In this cyber story, the individual websites would be chapters.
Raph mentioned video games and the sub stories that make up our life. This got me to thinking about something Joline had said in my 303 class. She was very interested in the idea of a video game character becoming aware of the fact that he is in a story (much like Neo in the Matrix, Jim Carey int eh Truman Show or any of us who has looked around and got the feeling they where part of something much bigger and weirder then they could imagine). Well, I rented the new Simpson's game for my daughters this week and to my surprise the entire game is based around the concept that the characters learn that they are actually part of a game. It even ends with the family confronting God who is forced to admit that their entire world is a game made by computer nerds for other computer nerds to play and that the true meaning of life is that these computer nerds are part of a much larger game called "The Planet Earth". God then says the best quote imaginable to describe our existence here on this world. "Its so great. You can get out of your car and raise and family. I play it 24 hours a day." The Simpson's game, according to God, is just a mini game in the big game that is us playing it. Pretty metaphysical stuff for a kids video game.
I also agreed with what Eric had to say about the story structure that we use in America and how it governs not only our books, movies and games but every aspect of our existence. We have become so ingrained with the idea of a rising action, a conflict and a resolution that there is not a single area of our society, media or thought process that does not involve this. War, the school system, our search for a career, our system of electing leaders. There is not a single action or narrative that we undertake in Western culture that does not follow this pattern. It is no wonder then that we are a conflict based society or that we have such trouble thinking outside this paradigm. Even movies like Memento, which attempt in vein to break this pattern by messing with the order of time, still hold true to the same structure in the sense that the viewer is still seeing the actions (although out of order) in terms of rising, conflict and falling. I am told that other countries (many from the far East) use very different story structures then this). My question then is, if this conflict pattern of story telling is so much a part of our society and our own psyches, then can we ever truly relate on the same wavelength with people who use a drastically different pattern? Fundamentally, this has to cause a major gap in the way our minds take in information and react to events. I don't know. Maybe I am thinking to much about this and perhaps there is not enough of a difference between the story structure of human cultures to make it of any real importance. But I believe this summer I will write a book called "Culture Gap" (COPYRIGHT) that involves mankind meeting an alien species that uses an extremely different story pattern. I think that we would find it nearly impossible to find common ground with a culture that had no concept of rise, conflict and resolution.
Narrative is the most basic form of communication that we have. Starting in Lascaux, France with the cave paintings, we were delivered narrative about their way of life. Granted, these are not "New Media," but like you, I am a skeptic on the topic, but I digress. We are continually finding new ways to deliver narrative, and each and every time it becomes more and more lifelike, almost to the point where we feel as if there is a mirror replicating our fantasies.
Kory- To state that narrative hasn't evolved is a bit of a bland statement to make. I feel that we have changed narrative by merely creating new methodology of doing so. Sometimes we need to take a step back and merely take delivery into account, and start from there.
HOWEVER, with stating that "psycho" is no different than today, is almost true. It is film, and like now, we deliver narrative through film; but we mustn't forget that we now have this gorgeous thing called HD, which changes the delivery ever so slightly, but it is the ever so slight step towards real.
As far as broken narration is concerned... Is it really broken? Or are we just forced to think a little bit more than we are used to when viewing such films. I mean sure, Memento is disjointed, but it all ties together in a linear thought process at the end. /Shrug, perhaps I'm too narrow-minded to not accept "reality."
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