No(n) Narratives.

With the past couple weeks having focused around storytelling, protagonists, character development, and non-narrative I thought I would take a moment to explore pieces of media that break the rules of storytelling and narratives.

Clerks is a perfect example of what I consider to be a’slice of life’ piece. The movie focuses around an average day of working at a convenience store. None of the major characters go through much character development and the film never builds up to any specific ‘climax’.

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When it comes to Non-Narratives I’ve had a hard time thinking of examples I have actually watched other The Man with the Movie Camera. And with my somewhat unclear understanding of precisely what a Non-Narrative is.

So I started to try and thinking of other pieces of media that I may have consumed that didn’t tell a story but rather explored a theme or just puts ‘things’ out there for others to make meaning out of. That’s when I started to think about music videos. I feel within the mainstream it much more likely for one to see greater risks being taken artistically through music videos than with commercial films … I can only assume because less money is made off the music video directly. In fact, MTV music video awards from 1984 to 1987 gave out a Most Experimental  Video award. In 1984 the winner was the insanely recognizable to this day Take on Me by A-ha (though experimental for sure has a very clear romantic narrative).

One wonderful example of a music video without Narrative is David Bowie’s The Hearts Filthy Lesson which explores the themes violence and creation through the abstract form by conveying perspective through the visual.