Week 7 - Narrative and the Media

According to my understanding, Narrative is a story telling. I start to ask myself, what kind of story telling? As I thought about it more, its Narrative and the Media. Once again I ask myself, what does it got to do with Visual Communications. The first thing that came to mind was television. It's visual way to broadcast informations. This does not only apply to televisions but other story telling devices such as photographs, newspapers etc.


As stated by Shlomith Rimmon - Kenan (2002) in his book titled Narrative Fiction "'Story' designates the narrated events, abstracted from their disposition in the text and reconstructed in their chronological order, together with the participants in these events.
Whereas 'story' is a succession of events, 'text' is a spoken or written discourse which undertakes their telling. Put more simply, the text is what we read. In it, the events do not necessarily appear in chronological order, the characteristics of the participants are dispersed throughout, and all the items of the narrative content are filtered through some prism or perspective ('focalizer')" (p.3)

From the above statement there is more to learn about Narrative. Its not just simply a story telling. What, when, how and who created the story in some theoretical aspect that we should look into.

As stated by Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck (2005) in his book titled Handbook of Narrative Analysis, .....Narrative is concerned with the story as it plays out in the text. Whereas linguistic formulation was central to narration, the organization of narrative elements is central to narrative. Narrative does not concern the act of narration but rather the way in which the events and characters of the story are offered to the reader. For instance, a novel starts with the death of the male protagonist and then looks back to his first marriage from the vantage point of his son, after which it looks forward to the end of that marriage from the perspective of his second wife. So the level of narrative has to do with organizational principles such as (a)chronology and perspective" (p.42)

Talking about the chronology, I remembered one of my favorite school books called 'Goosebumps'. Its a horror novel. One of the uniqueness about this particular book was that, readers will always what to know the next thing that happens one thing after another. At the very beginning of the book, the writer would always include a tiny slight riddle and sometimes a catch-phrase to set the mood on excitement  before starting the first chapter. Below are some examples of the books I used to read when I was young.

Other example of Narratives that is now popular use in some movie is the existence of the narrator. This narrator could be the actor him/herself or someone who could never exist or appear on that movie. By means, a story with a narrative will make it easy to understand and not boring because not too much of talking (dialogue) within a long scene that includes in some movie which make the audience change their attention to something else. That is why narrative is important when shaping a visual image to the audience. Horror movie for instance, not only not in chronological order the beginning-middle-end style but sometimes they are using narrator to support the story when it comes to flash-back scene.

According to John Storey (1993), in his book, titled An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture stated that, "Structuralism is a theoretical method and not a political position. Moreover, unlike the other approaches discussed already, structuralism is, as Terry Eagleton points out, 'quite indifferent to the cultural value of its object: anything from War and Peace to The War Cry will do. The method is analytical, not evaluate. It is a way of approaching texts and practices which is derived from the theoretical work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Sassure". (p. 69)

He also stated that, "Post-structuralists reject the idea of an underlying structure upon which meaning can rest secure and satisfied. Meaning is always in process. What we call meaning is a momentary stop in a continuing flow of interpretations of interpretations." (p.85)

If only before I could understand the narratives in old style chronological. I used to hear a fairy tale with a happy ending story from my dad. Nowadays, story-telling can no longer be heard by his beloved daughter or grand-daughter due to the growth of Technologies. Television, for instance play their role in telling a story that includes visual colourful factor on it. Rather then hearing and imagining to what been told.


Bibliography:

Kenan - S.R. (2009). Narrative Fiction. London and New York : Routledge

Herman. L. & Vervaeck.B. (2005). Handbook of Narrative Analysis. Lincon and London: University of Nebraska Press

Storey. J. (1993). An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. The University of Georgia Press, Athens.