Week 7 - VISUAL NARRATIVES

This week we were taught about Visual Narratives in the Media. In this topic we learned about the component and structures of narratives as well as structuralist and post-structuralist narratives. For this week’s journal, I will be  investigating post-structuralist narratives. The reason why I wish to investigate on post-structuralist narratives is because I am very faithful to movies which follows the traditional narratives structure and following post-modernism, post-structuralist narratives has always created an incongruent effect in me thus I feel that it has affected my views towards such movies.

First of all, “Narrative is a representation of an event or a series of events”( Abott, p.13). Narratives of different kinds exist as long as they fit the rules of having a series of events, however, here we will only focus on visual narratives.

According to Aristotle’s Dramatic Structure, narratives consist of a beginning, middle and end. This is the traditional narratives which we can find in fairy tales such as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and many others. We as human beings cannot imagine a world without narratives. According to a novelist Paul Auster, “A child’s need for stories is as fundamental as his need for food”( p.3, n.d).  This shows that narratives plays an important role in every human’s lives.

Narratives are composed of paradigmatic and syntagmatic features. For syntagm, the elements in the narratives has to have a linear configuration and plots. On the other hand, paradigm has characters which can appear in any parts of the narrative and it can be substituted by another element which belongs to the same category.   Structuralists started in the 1950’s where a number of theorists such as Strauss, Saussare and Barthes has contributed to the narratives. For structuralist, narratives  follows a binary system where they have the good and the bad, conflict between two qualities, weak and strong etc.

Let me use an example of a classic traditional fairy tale, Snow White where  it follows the traditional narratives according to Aristotle’s Dramatic Structure and also the  structuralist narratives. The cartoon Snow White consist of a binary system such as a hero and a princess, a bad witch and good dwarfs, castle in the city and house of the seven dwarfs deep in the forest. Here, the genre of the movie is a fairy tales where it involves discourses such as love, evil ,jealousy, friendship, death etc. The point of focalisation of this cartoon is Snow White herself as this tells a story from Snow White’s perspective.. The story is presented in a mimesis where “the poet tries to give the illusion that another-whom we call the character speaks” (T.S. Dorsch, 1965, p.11). This emphasises on the direct speech where the characters speaks for themselves.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarf. An example of a traditional narrative

However, nowadays following post-modernism, not all movies follow the traditional rules of narratives. These kind of movies are called post-structuralist narratives where it creates incongruency for the viewers.

Below is a short trailer on “Kill Bill” which is a movie that demonstrates a very post-structuralist narrative. In this trailer, the producer breaks the rules of how traditional narratives is suppose to be. According to Barthes, in post-structuralist narratives, “the author is dead” and it is up to the interpreter to interpret the meaning of the text.

Video Clip of Kill Bill

In this movie, the Bride or Beatrix Kiddo ( Uma Thurman), plays the character of a member of an assassination squad. Here, there is evidence that this movie breaks the rule of traditional narratives because this is a counter-ideology of a woman where the ideology of a woman is shy, quiet, needs  a man to protect her etc.  Instead, Kill Bill portrays the character of a woman playing a role of a man who is fierce, violent and brave.  In the trailer, we are also able to see the use of silhouette of the actors which is used when the a violent scene is portrayed on the screen. Silhouettes  is not found in the traditional narratives and the use of shadows and silhouettes to portray actors in action is very post-structuralist. Another interesting point to highlight about this trailer in regards to post-structuralist narratives is mixture of animation or cartoons in the movie itself.

There are critiques to structuralism narratives, as Derrida, a post-structuralist theorist claims that “narratives has an  arrogance that a text has fundamental truths and meanings as intended by an author.”According to structuralists, “Narrative cannot be arbitrarily constructed because it must have coherence and fidelity”. However, according to Fisher, “stories connect together when the audience are sure that the narrator has not left out any important details.” For him, “the ultimate test for narrative coherence is whether we can count on the characters to act in a reliable manner.”( Fisher, p.303, n.d)   

In conclusion, I understand that narratives helps to structure an individual’s point of view and that there are however no conventions or set rules or universal method as to how a post-structuralism in narrative is suppose to be. Post-structuralist narratives are indeed  created how the producer intended it to be although it maybe incongruent at times  it doesn’t necessary have to have a coherent story line in order for people to understand it. 

REFERENCE

Griffin.E, (2009), A First Look At Communication Thery, Seventh Edition. USA, New York : Mc. Graw Hill.

Huisman, R. (2005) Narrative concepts. In Fulton, H., Huisman,R, Murphet, J. and Dunn,A (eds.) , Narrative and Media . Cambridege : Cambridge University Press.