the aesthetic and reality

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....

Chatman describes the aesthetic as "that which comes into existence when the observer experiences the real object aesthetically. Thus it is a construction (or reconstruction) in the observer's mind" (27). The question of reality and the aesthetic really stuck out to me. And since this class is mainly focusing on video games, particularly alternate reality games, I began to relate these ideas to this. So what Chatman is arguing is that the object is no longer just an object in reality, but it becomes an abstraction, an idea because we can envision the actual object. The aesthetic is what makes the object real to us through the reaction and the emotions entailed. Video games explore this further because they test our ability to aesthetically create whole worlds. "A medium - language, music, stone, paint and canvas, or whatever - actualizes the narrative, makes it into a real object" (27). Video games could also act as a medium to "actualize the narrative."

On page 28, this idea goes even further to explain the narrative's use of communication through two parties: a sender and a receiver. A video game seems to unite or even transcend these parties because the player interacts and dictates the movements, choices, and outcome of a story. The player becomes both author and audience to fully experience this aesthetic and in this sense it mimics reality.

-Katie