Media, Week 8
The Lectorial
In Week 8’s lectorial we began with a quote that underlines the importance of narrative and helps to explain its popularity in many aspects of media. ‘Story is a way of structuring existence, amplifying it, focusing on aspects of it.’ Through the use of narrative people can express things that can’t be conveyed in any other medium, it allows for people to express thoughts and feelings in an abstract, therapeutic and ultimately truthful way. On the train to University today (before the lectorial) I was reading a short story by John Cheever titled ‘The Country Husband’ which demonstrates a pragmatic use of narrative that allows Cheever to demonstrate the inner moral decay of man that is in contrast to the ‘clean’ society that characterises the suburbs. This narrative was written by Cheever as an allegory criticising the stifled 1950’s society he believed to be full of ‘weeds’ e.g the protagonists name is Francis Weed. Cheever’s use of narrative demonstrates a quote Dan put up in the lecture that states ‘narrative takes from the intangible and converts the experience to something tangible’. Due to narrative Cheever can take an abstract idea that can’t necessarily be convincingly conveyed, and change the form of that idea into something that bares weight and holds meaning to a society.
This relates to my current studying of ‘mediums’ for project brief 4. Narrative is potentially the best medium in regards to entertainment and arguably the most relevant in the realm of present day popular culture. Demonstrating this is the amount of instantly recognisable conventions that embed mainstream narrative genres, that are obvious to even the most passive audience member. For example The Western has been defined by stock tropes since the early 20th century; some of these tropes include a righteous hero, a morally corrupt evil figure, horses, guns and the prairie landscape. These tropes in relation to the narrative define the genre and create certain expectations in the audience that can be played or subverted by the media maker in all areas of media, regardless of the medium.
Another particular exercise I found interesting was the one demonstrating the idea that non-narrative can’t exist in film regardless of the disparity between shots. In the abstract ‘we decided not to die’ short film the images conveyed were barely correlated yet a student in the lectorial stated afterwards that it was ‘brooding with meaning’. The fact that someone can be shown something this abstract yet still make meaning out of it demonstrates the idea that ‘Everything possesses some kind of story, regardless of how specific or clear cut the narrative is’. Some things I found from the narrative were
– They seem thematically connected forming an overarching narrative in regards to the theme of life/death. Patterns of representation.
– The film maker signposted the different events, the different parts of the story suggesting that each scene is connected, we are supposed to know that one scene follows another, for a reason.
– The headings gave it a sequential structure and feel
– They break out of the confined nature of their environment.
– Each scene had a climax, they both had resolutions.
– All characters were breaking free, breaking out, each scene sped up.