Jour 485 Notes packet #4 Prof. Greg Blake Miller University of Nevada Las Vegas Contents: Additional McLuhan notes Stuart Hall, encoding and decoding Narrative theory Dictatorship of the Narrative vs. Integrity of the Image To McLuhan Print=Sequence fragmentation of our lives into steps, and therefore fragmentation of our very being. Mechanistic Linear Sequential i.e. Capitalist Electronic=Spontaneous=Simultaneous Wholeness Structure Full-field awareness McLuhan believes the full-field awareness harkens back to ancient village life, creating sort of a global campfire, a global village. Importance of media: Media shapes How we think How we thing shapes Interpersonal relations, which shape Social and community relations, which shape Economic relations, which shape Political relations To McLuhan Media are extensions of the senses They shape The pace, scale and pattern of our lives.... to the extent that we often don t even understand what media is doing to us McLuhan calls the failure to grasp the way that media shapes our lives The Narcissus Trance
McLuhan argues that the real impact of media on our lives is at the grand scale of pace, scale and pattern, where content is irrelevant and the medium itself determines how your life is transformed i.e. the medium is the message. For instance if you are feeling breathless and hurried and attached to the constant needs and opinions of others and you cannot put down your phone, it s not the content that is reshaping your life, it s the medium itself. I would argue that, while McLuhan is correct at this grand scale, there is a smaller scale at which content really does influence the way we live. This is the level Horkheimer is discussing when he describes the way that thoughtless mass art degrades our capacity to think for ourselves. His plea is one for content that ennobles rather than enfeebles us (though he believes that the capitalist culture industry is not set up to allow the emergence of such thoughtful content). Historic McLuhan: Media change creates psychological, social and economic disturbance, which is intensified by the Narcissus Trance our ignorance of the degree to which media is controlling the pace, pattern and scale of our lives. We don t know what s bothering us, so we can t fix it. But he believes that the artist is well positioned to see the hidden levers and understand them. He sees the solution to the disturbances of media and the blindness of the narcissus trance in art. The irony is that art is content, which McLuhan has told us does not matter. Stuart Hall, Encoding/Decoding Media messages do not simply arrive to us whether by hypodermic needle or by two-step flow ready-made for acceptance or rejection. Rather, they have been encoded with certain values and assumptions a certain frame of reference and must be decoded by us, the viewers. We have the power, moreover, to decode them using an entirely different frame of reference than the one from which the product was encoded. Therefore, we can process a media product in an entirely different way than the media producer/transmitter intended. In other words, we can create our own noise between transmitter (the producer) and receiver (us). Encoding: Dominant/Hegemonic (dominant ideological/social mode of thinking and looking at the world) Professional (coding of media product in keeping with the standards, procedures and folkways of the profession) The more deeply ingrained a social code in our own lives, the less likely we are likely to challenge it or think critically about it in media. Decoding: Dominant/Hegemonic: Professional
If we decode the media product with the same code/frame of reference as it was encoded, we are receiving the producer/transmitter s message exactly as they want us to receive it. This is called Correlation of Codes. Negotiated Here we may read some elements of the product from the same frame as the producer/transmitter intended, but our critical thinking allows us to question the codes and see things in a different light, sometimes agreeing with the transmitter s frame and sometimes seeing the content in a wholly different way. Oppositional We arrive to the product prepared to question and undermine every element of its encoding. We are prepared to undermine and deconstruct the transmitter/producer s frame of reference. Denotation: What a sign literally stands for Connotation: What associations does a sign raise in our minds Narrative theory: Vladimir Propp: The Morphology of the Folk Tale Fabula Just the events, in the exact order they happened or are imagined to have happened Syuzhet The story, with events reorganized and reinterpreted for effective storytelling.\ In syuzhet, the nature of time changes Time expands at certain points for dramatic emphasis Time contracts at other points to speed the narrative along We alter time to create suspense and emphasis In syuzhet, things are left out. So we have to ask ourselves: What is being rearranged, reinterpreted and emphasized in the syuzhet and why? Why syuzhet, for all its departures from the raw truth, is still useful: Entertainment value/suspense Efficiency. We cannot convey information in a meaningful, palatable, comprehensible way without leaving some of it out. Transparency about our fundamental subjectivity (i.e. Is the fabula really as reliable as we think? Who put those scenes on the original timeline, after all?) Meaning. Through syuzhet, we apply human intelligence to the string of unprocessed events, allowing us provide emphasis and interpretive context. After all, life is not lived only on
a chronological axis. We cannot create meaning without context and emphasis. (Of course, different intelligences will define different contexts and choose different emphases.) What are media outlets trying to say to you? Is it simply an expression of their internal priorities? Or: Is it a sophisticated sale attempt based on what they think you want. Dictatorship of the Narrative vs. Integrity of the Image Some dangers of standard narrative thinking: 1. Conflict must be elevated and central 2. Protagonist and antagonist must be clear 3. Causation must be found and demonstrated 4. Correlation always = causation Dictatorship of the Narrative: Every moment or image becomes a unit of currency in a narrative economy. It no longer is valuable for its own sake. It matters only in its ability to contribute to the narrative arc. In the dictatorship of the narrative, the relationship between moments and images is sequential and causal. X leads to Y, and X causes Y. Integrity of the Image: The maintenance of meaning for the unitary image or narrative moment, allowing it to have value and meaning in its own right. In works created with concern for the integrity of the image, the relationships between moments and images is not always causal and sequential; often the relationship is associative. X makes me think in a way that relates both to my own life and the external world and to the world within the work. Image/Moment X makes me think about image/moment Y in a different way, and Image/Moment Y makes me think about Image/Moment X in a different way. They are mutually constituted meaning that the two images do not necessarily cause one another, but that they shape and re-shape one another in our minds. Regardless of the order they came in, a later Image/Moment can influence your perception of an earlier moment. Creating with Integrity of the Image in mind: Look openly at the moments and images in life (or in our fabula) See how the moment is relevant for its own sake, not just for its place in the chain of causation. Think about the value of the moment or image: Its meaning, its beauty, its power as a narrative unit. Think about how it is associated with other moments and images, both within the story you are telling and outside of that story. How do the moments and images in your story associate with the larger social, historical and psychological context? Can weaving those contexts in enrich your story?
Therefore: At the outset of a project, think of the moments and images in your story not as sequential moments in a causal structure, but as images in a set of associated images. Then decide how the images might be associated: Some connections may be causal, some merely chronological, some thematic, etc. Note: Even when you create a story with the Integrity of the Image in mind, you will still be subject to narrative forms and biases. Awareness of Integrity of the Image simply helps you to tame those biases and create a richer, broader and more flexible field of action in your story, inviting you to rethink emphases, acknowledge quiet or underestimated moments and characters, and find the relevance in the seemingly irrelevant. Narrative is an intellectual technology for delivering information in a compelling way. Like any medium, it has biases and limitations, and we should know them. Narrative biases: Narrative has a bias toward conflict, with a protagonist and an antagonist: Man vs. Man Man vs. Nature Man vs. Society Man vs. Self Narrative has a bias toward the traditional arc Narrative has a bias toward pre-existing stasis (or status quo ante) a perceived, perhaps even invented time of calm before an inciting action set the plot and conflict into motion. Narrative has a bias toward causality: One thing must cause (and be caused by) another. Narrative has a bias toward sequence: One moment or image leads to the next, which could not have existed if not for the one before it. Usually this sequential relationship is causal: Moment X causes Moment Y, which follows it chronologically. Narrative has a bias toward apotheosis or climax, the moment at which the great clash is settled and all is made well, often meaning it is broad back to the status quo ante the time before things got bad but with certain critical changes in the order of things (in fairy tales, this is often a marriage, or the restoration of the rightful ruler to the throne) and in the growth of the characters (the timid become brave, etc). In the movies, a third-act reversal often precedes the climax a moment where, just when everything seemed OK, something else goes wrong and reaggravates the conflict. Narrative presents the temptation to remove the messy nuance from reality. Not all narratives show all of these biases, but they are present in the majority of conventional narratives. Another word for conventional is generic. This doesn t mean plain or boring, but simply that the narrative exists within an established narrative category, or genre, in which along with common emphasis in content, tone and theme certain structural rules and habits are repeated from story to story. (E.G., the final act of the romantic comedy splits the couple up, after which one member of the couple will end up sprinting through the rain to save the romance.) A genre offers a familiar, customary mode of storytelling, inviting the audience in with a well-known structure and communicative code. When we read or watch a generic cultural product the mystery novel, the cop show, the romantic comedy, the sci-fi movie, even the evening news we know the broad structural outline and tone of what we re getting into. We can be surprised by content, but rarely by form, unless the author is deliberately trying to
subvert the genre. Below: The Narrative Arc, from stasis to rising tension to apotheosis to denouement. Scales of Narrative: Unitary narrative: A single story or storyline created by an author or team of authors. This narrative is a single product a book, a movie, a magazine article with unified authorship and a beginning, a middle, and an end. (In the case of a TV series, the end might take a while to get to, but the intent is to complete the arc at some point.) Media narrative: A shared cultural story developed, curated and continuously rehashed by a large community of unrelated producers and (in the digital age) prosumers (consumers who also produce via social media). The media narrative is not coordinated by a single author but rather is a conversation on a particular issue or theme that develops all of the traits protagonists, antagonists, conflict, rising tension, apotheosis of the unitary narrative. It s like a movie accidentally written by thousands of unrelated people. Examples: Watergate, Lewinsky, Kaepernick, Email-gate, Deflate-gate It s interesting how often media narratives get the suffix -gate! Sometimes a media narrative gathers so much cultural steam that editors ask individual reporters to set their unitary narratives i.e., their individual stories within the broad context of the big media narrative. This creates a situation where pre-existing biases in a broad media narrative are imported into more and more individual works, which contribute to furthering the media narrative. A narrative snowballs, fixed assumptions are not challenged, and mistakes are made. (E.G. the weapons of mass destruction narrative leading up to the Iraq war in 2003.)