story and discourse

This blog entry will make no sense unless you watch THIS first.

If you recall Chapter 4 of Story and Discourse, Chatman delineates a few examples of "non-narrative" discourse, where an omniscient narrative voice is eschewed for a more intimate perspective of a character's thoughts. Instead of watching a story unfold from the perspective of an external narrator, the reader (or audience) is immersed directly into the character's consciousness.

Specifically, Chatman describes a soliloquy as:  read more »

• The character speaks
• Either he's alone, or his direct surroundings are unaware of his speech
• Traditionally, he faces the audience
• The audience may be anonymous, in that the speaker may not always name the audience
• The style and diction is typical of the character's normal language
• The content reflects the character's situation

So i recently saw Atonement in theaters, and as I was reading over the section on order and duration in Story and Discourse, I kept thinking back to this film because it employed many of the concepts Chatman discusses, particularly with regard to anachrony. The entire film is a bit hard to follow at first if you haven't read the book because many scenes are revisited with slightly different angles at numerous points in the story. Every event is given new light each time it is revisited, and new information is learned that helps the viewer piece together the truth of the plot. Chatman refers to this as repetitive anachrony, which he defines as an anachrony that repeats what has been stated before though with a different slant on original events. In the case of Atonement, the "slant" is the particular character's point of view, which serves a mainly expository function. There are also some ellipses in the movie that jump over a significant amount of time, leaving the viewer to piece together the untold events. One such instance is when the movie quickly transitions from the scene of Robbie's arrest to his departure with the army.  read more »

Okay, so I found the character chapter in Story and Discourse particularly interesting because I read a lot, and this chapter presented a lot of alternate definitions for the word character. For novels there are terms like "flat characters" and "cardboard cut-outs" which are usually negative terms that mean the author's characters are stereotypical and/or lacking depth. I always considered a "real" character to be a complex thing with traits, personality quirks, goals, fears, relationships, and backstory.
But what about the theory that all a character has to do to be a character is do stuff? After watching Animator vs Animation, I considered the stick figure and the cursor to be characters, even though they didn't fit my definition. And what about video games? You're controlling the character. You could make them run into walls repeatedly if you wanted to. But what about the cut-scenes where characters display certain traits?
I guess there are many different "types" of characters. Someone should make a nice Chatman-esque chart with a hierarchical structure-- and plenty of arrows and lines.

For two years, I've been involved with Theatre Strike Force, the improvisational comedy group on campus – and if there's a good way to learn the importance of narrative (as far as keeping an audience's attention), improv is probably one of the best teachers you can get. Having just been to an audition on Thursday night for the TSF-affiliated long-form improv groups (and not doing too well, I might add – for reasons both in and out of my control), the aspects of narrative that Chatman describes in Story and Discourse (Ch. 2) certainly pertain even to completely made-up situations, although at times, improvising wholeheartedly ignores or breaks the 'rules' or necessities of narrative.  read more »

[sigh] Seymour Chatman, I would admit, seems like a very scholarly theologian, but for our reading purposes he can be hell (at least to me). Personally I think he goes on, and on about a topic and loses the reader’s attention. That is to say, he dives deep into one topic and literally loses the reader when he tries to get back to the main point. I mentioned in class on Wednesday that I was rather confused about his two possible dispositions of events. I'm sorry I can't recall who gave the example in class, but I am thankful for their input. This blog is basically to summarize what I think he means on pages 66-67. Hopefully it helps others who are also confused by this elaborate theory. When he is trying to describe the two types of story-strands the second 'type' gets confusing. The first sequence, as you all of you may have gotten, was the continuation of one story to another. [Story A starts -> Story A ends -> Story B Starts -> Story B ends etc]. The second sequence however, is somewhat like this (I think). [Story A starts -> Story A ends -> Return back to the beginning of Story A, -> Story B starts -> Story B ends -> both Story A and Story B ends at the same time].  read more »

Over the course of my college career, I’ve gradually gotten used to reading analytical and theory texts. Some are wonderfully constructed, concise and insightful, and others… not so much. I’m still on the fence as to how I regard Chatman’s Story and Discourse. I admit that at times I don’t feel like I have the proper background necessary for maybe not comprehending but appreciating the Chatman’s efforts with this book. He mentions the work of many other scholars, including Propp, Todorov, and Genette. Honestly, I have not read any work by these people and it might be a stretch to say that I even know who they really are. So, I guess, consider this a disclaimer for whatever follows.  read more »

From the title of the Chuck Jones short "The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics," the audience can already make a number of assumptions about the plot of the narrative. Cultural knowledge of what constitutes a romance in Western civilization tells us that two characters will fall in love and live happily ever after, but only after overcoming some obstacle separating them.

But the genre label does not only inform the story; it also dictates the kinds of characters that will appear. This narrative stars a dot and a line, characters that (Freudian symbolism aside) have no presupposed gender identity. Even without the help of the narration, however, the audience can identify the line as the male character and the dot as the female by virtue of their actions. The line is the pursuer, the dot the pursued; the line is persistent, the dot fickle; the line must improve himself and impress his intended, the dot need only exist and be aesthetically pleasing to attract the attention of her suitor.  read more »

So I began reading Story and Discourse and quickly got bored. I've sure had my fill of literary theory at UF. I always find them to be redundant and somewhat pretentious. Anyway, I continue reading and it's all in one ear out the other and full of silly diagrams. Then I get somewhere around page 27 and it starts to make more sense. I read further and I start connecting it to some of the themes in this class. So I think I'll attempt to tackle this theory material....  read more »