Overview

Baudrillard analyzes the role of the object in modern consumer culture. He weaves Freudian and Saussurian (semiotic and psychological) analysis into a Marxist explanation of the commodity in society. Baudrillard looks at advertising, functionality, collection: the various social constructs that have evolved around objects which have come to represent much more than mere utility. Some of the original ideas were relating object dependence to works like The Sims.

Notes

The system of objects is a system of meanings. Modern objects are rooted in their technology, the technological qualities of objects are essential, whereas in the psychological and sociological sphere, the things that happen to the object are inessential. The technology is bound and inextricable from the object, making it a concrete unit. Production yields equivalence of objects. Software takes this to a natural extreme. Consider the psychological or sociological relation to objects, namely referencing George Mead, wherein objects are things that have been enacted. (p. 5-6)

On form and function in objects: In some cases, form is totally functionless, but rather, it operates as a sign. But… the sign is the function: it evokes an imaginary ideal function, beyond the limited real one. This is allegorical form, which does no more than to signify the idea of the function. Specifically, Baudrillard is talking about tail fins in cars, which serve no practical purpose whatsoever, but their form evokes idealized fastness. (p. 59) An interesting tangent: Considering functionalism and software or games. Software aspires to functionalism like physical objects do (Consider Norman, DoET and Emotional Design). What about games? Play has [ostensibly] no function, save pure indulgence. They probably are equated with entertainment like TV and film? Consider games as Objects of Products? (p. 64)

On collecting: The purpose of objects is to be put to use or to be possessed. A practical object like a utensil or a refrigerator is put to use in some fashion. The object’s materiality is less important than its function, as such it is equivalent to all other objects of its kind. A collected object is abstracted from its use, and becomes a thing that is possessed. Possession is thus a source of anxiety over the ambiguity of the uniqueness of an object. Compare with Geertz on the metaphysical ambiguity of life and the role of religion therein! The collection is a means to overcome the ambiguity of uniqueness. (p. 86) Collection transforms “having” into “being”: The object becomes an extension of the self. To have sequestered a prized object is to be castrated. (p. 98)

Automation and personalization: An automated objec is anthropomorphized by its supposed self-direction. But with object identification, this leads to self-functionalization, seeing oneself as an automated object, reducing the self to mere function. Compare here w Weizenbaum. Again, this is independent of AI or science as an ideology, but a property and effect of production. It also requires several steps to come around. (p. 112)

Choice causes us to participate in the culture value system. This is not freedom, but an imposed structure. Choice relates to AI and class dynamics. The idea of “personalization” is an ideological concept in order to integrate people effectively. (p. 141) The model of an object is just the idea of the model. It is the “generic image manufactured through the imaginary assumption of all relevant differences” Differences and choice: Self individuation is based on serial distinctions. “Personalization and integration go strictly hand in hand. That is the miracle of the system.” (p. 144)

Advertising and the pleasure principle: Gratification and frustration. Compare with sociological roles/acts and their models as objects. (In role-performance theory, roles are chosen according to gratifications). What are the advertisements of roles? Surely roles are advertised somehow, are portrayed as good or idealized to us in different ways (portrayals and depictions). “We must not forget that the image serves in this way to avoid reality and create frustration, for not only thus can we grasp how it is that the reality principle omitted from the image nevertheless effectively re-emerges therein as the continual repression of desire (as the spectacularization, blocking and dashing of that desire, and, ultimately, its regressive and visible transference onto an object).” (p. 177)

Consumption is an active process; objects are not the objects of consumption, rather, consumption is of meaning and signs by means of the objects. Traditional, functional objects were not arbitrary, but modern objects [as signs] are. Signs are necessarily arbitrary, and by objects operating as signs, they must be arbitrary as well. The nature of signs depends on difference. Compare with analogy, allegory? (p. 200)

Overview

Chandler summarizes the theory of semiotics from a multitude of backgrounds and perspectives. The book reviews the history of semiotics and the various models of sign systems, how they have been applied to analysis of speech and language, and how these have changed over time. The text serves to emphasize some of the moral and cognitive qualities that semiotics has in that interpretation of the world can shape the world.

Notes

Chandler first defines a sign as something that stands for something else. “Semiotics involves the study of not only what we refer to as ‘signs’ in everyday speech, but of anything which ‘stands for’ something else.” Semiotics works to analyze signs in context of a sign system, such as a medium or genre. (p. 2)

Semiotics appears as a rival to “content analysis”, which often resorted to qualitative means. (This mirrors development in sociology from statisical sociology to symbolic). It addresses latent and connotative meanings (as opposed to ostensible textual meanings, then again, textual meaning often derives from metaphorical/semiotic attribution…) “While content analysis involves a quantitative approach to the analysis of the manifest ‘content’ of media texts, semiotics seeks to analyse texts as structured wholes and investigates latent, connotative meanings.” (p. 8)

Semiotics uncovers ideology: moral implications of signs. “Contemporary social semiotics has moved beyond the sctructuralist focus on signifying systems as languages, seeking to explore the use of signs in specific social situations. Modern semiotic theory is often allied to a Marxist approach which stresses the role of ideology.” Saussure separates Langue-Language from Parole-Speech. Differences between system/usage structure/event, code/message, all emphasized in classic structuralist dichotomy. (p. 12)

Study of semiotics denaturalizes signs and makes them visible where normally transparent. Especially relevant in simulation… “Through the study of semiotics, we become aware that these signs and codes are normally transparent and disguise our task in ‘reading’ them.” (p. 15)

Critique of traditional model (Saussure): both signifier and signified are abstract, form rather than substance (speech and idea). Material need arises in sign system… (p. 18) Separation of sign systems. Saussure’s system was structural and relational, not referential. Value of sign is determined by other signs within the system. This descends into Baudrillard’s simulation. (p. 22)

Signs are arbitrary. “The arbitrariness of the sign is a radical concept because it establishes the autonomy of language in relation to reality. The Saussurean model, with its emphasis on internal structures within a sign system, can be seen as supporting the notion that language does not ‘reflect’ reality but rather constructs it.” Heayv Baudrillard connection here, also tradition in AI, gives way to closed disembodied systems. (p.28)

Another model of semiotics, the Piercian model (Charles Sanders Pierce): Has emphasis on process, rather than structure. Divides three part model of signs: Representamen (form sign takes), Interpretant (sense of sign, cognitive value), Object (to which the sign refers). Notion is that interpretant is a sign in eye of interpreter, so the semiotic reflection experiences endless regressesion. Any interpretation may be reinterpreted. Method later adopted by poststructuralists. (p. 33)

Types of relations of signs. Signs relate to each other and reality in a variety of ways. These seem to be from Saussure, but Chandler explains them more here. Symbolic: sign is arbitrary or conventional, relationship must be learned. Iconic: sign resembles object, but generally superficially or exaggeratedly (part stands for whole). Indexical: sign is directly connected in some way, but may be interpreted (readings on thermometer). Can extend: Symbol-AI, Icon/Symbol-Sim/Games, Index-?? (p. 36-37)

Reality is created by the representable. But who represents? What media? Resembles Levy: we affect the world via thought. “A radical response to realists is that things do not exist independently of the sign-systems that we use; reality is created by the media which seem simply to represent it.” (p. 57)

Platonic philosophical idealism: sign of object is Ideal, an Essential object. Saussure can be interpreted towards this perspective. Variations of perspectives: idealist, realist, constructionist. (p. 59)

Film theorist Andre Bazin describes the ‘reproductive fallacy’ of representation. Namely, exact reproduction cannot be made of an object (a text, specifically). Namely this bears on adaptation or translation in representation. Symbology comes into play for psychological or emotional realism in observation of a text (like a tv show), where it may seem true to life. Note that 1) text reproduction is interesting with mechanical reproduction, and 2) reproduction complex on personal level. This is a very extendible thread here… (p. 63)

Analysis of Magritte painting. “The Treachery of Images”: ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’. Process becomes one of defamiliarization. Compare with the analysis of simulation. (p. 65)

Chandler specifically uses the term ‘transparency’ in application to language. Modern language makes invisible the abstraction and arbitration of signs and denotative nature of language (speech acts) in reference to real world. Consider relation of transparency to realism. Realism necessarily implies representation, (much like immersion), and realism cannot really work if it is meant to be transparent. A work may not be real but also transparently refer to something, right? Presence of image implies absence of referent. (p. 73)

Explicit Baudrillard ref here. Signs point beyond themselves and form simulacra in their own system. (p.76)

Chandler defins two axes of understanding: Syntagm and Paradigm. Relates to meaning and media, and the neutrality of the medium. These axes define characteristics of relations of signs. “Paradigmnatic relations can thus be seen as ‘contrastive'”, ie, differences between shapes, colors, between like concepts of a kind. A syntagm is a chain of meaning. “A sentence is a syntagm of words”. There are large units of syntagms composed of smaller units. Maybe not linear chain, but order? (p. 81)

Syntagmatic relationships tend to be…. conceptual, spatial, or sequential. Narrative is especially dependent on this characteristic of sequence. Syntagms can be montage and conceptual flows, but do not need to be narrative explicitly. But is this the case, given concepts and understanding of narratives, is something sequential not a narrative in some degree? Goodman 1990, and Easthope 1990 split structural conventions into “masculine” and “feminine”, masculine structures are “‘tight’, orderly and logical… defensive structures”. It is unclear what feminine structures are, although it is interesting to see the emphasis on gender in reasoning, especially with its attribution to modes of thought. (p. 84-85)

Overview of narrative form from semiotic perspective: “Narratives help to make the strange familiar. They provide structure, predictibility, and coherence. In this respect they are similar to schemas for familiar events in everyday life. Turning experience into narratives seems to be a fundamental feature of the human drive to make meaning.” (p. 90) Narrative is natural the way that language is natural, in that it is familiar and transparent. It is, however, like language and semiotics, deep with room for extra meanings, moral, epistemic, and ontological choices. Consider and compare with Foucault’s “ruptures”: discontinuities, disjunctions in structures and sequence.

Analysis of Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. Flows into structuralist semiotician “Algirdas Greimas” who proposed a grammar for any known narrative structure. (in 1938, 1987) Split up narratives into three syntagmatic categories: Performanciels, contractuels, disjuntionnels. These are defined by binary oppositions called “actants”: subject-object, sender-receiver, helper-opponent. Jonathan Culler criticizes Greimas’ methodology (1975). (p. 95-96)

One feature of sign structures is the naturalization of binary opposition, a “us and them” mentality. Paradigmatic distinctions lead to matters of difference and dyadism. These are naturalized in their usage so it is hard to imagine conception without that distinction. Self is defined in terms of negation of other. Relates to Lacanian mirror stage, etc. (p. 104)

Discussion of figurative language. Literal and figurative blend. Eventually tropes appear in semiotic model (figurative becomes literal definition). According to some (Lakoff, Jakobson) metaphor integral to our understanding of meaning in everyday life. Compare w Foucault’s lingistic determinism, that tropes determine what can be known in an age. (p. 124-126)

Types of ‘master’ tropes: Metaphor, Metonymy, Synechdoche, Irony. Consider difference between literal, ironic, lie. Meanings are doubled in semiotic frame… (p. 135-136)

Analysis of codes in society: Codes are domains and partitions and frameworks of interaction and discourse. These define procuedural, functional boundaries. Define cultures and domains. Jameson: Perception is interpretation. There are social codes, textual codes, and interpretive codes. Codes may be applied towards the world, medium or genre, or modality (which is which). (p. 148-150)

In social codes, social determination occurs via codes: consider determinism in simulation, based on codes and grammar. Social differentiation is over-determined by codes. Codes may be verbal, physical, presentational (dress, conduct), etc. Compare w Goffman, treat sociological behaviors as codified? (p. 154)

“Realism involves an instrumental view of the medium as a neutral means for representing reality. The signified is foregrounded at the expense of the signifier.” (p. 161)

Discussion of speech and meaning transmission, models of discourse. Consider instead variation of process, what happens in communication? Empirically what changes other than the transmission of ideas? What does the transmission of ideas DO? (p. 177)

“As an approach to communication which focuses on meaning and interpretation, semiotics challenges the reductive transmission model. Signs do not just ‘convey’ meanings, but constitute a medium in which meanings are constructed. Semiotics helps us to realize that meaning is not just passively absorbed, but arises only in the active process of interpretation. Even within the structuralist paradigm, someone has to relate signs to each other and to the codes within which they make sense.” (p. 217)

Overview:

This book covers roleplaying as a social system. Of particular concern in this are the social interactions between players, and the relationships between person, player, and character. There are a great deal of essays and varying studies of gaming groups. A number of authors connect Erving Goffman’s notions of performance and frame analysis to understand the layers of interaction present in the games.

Notes:

Introduction:

The editors introduce the idea that roleplaying is a form of simulation. Fantasy roleplaying is based on social situations that do not actually exist. This idea suggests that roleplaying can be used by players to explore ideas and identities in a safe environment, without consequences to actions performed in game.

Also mentioned is the connection to ludology. The study of games in this context is separated into three main areas of study: social reality, identity, and experience. Social reality is something that derives from Berger and Luckman (1966) and argues that common interpretation of reality is socially constructed. Social construction applies to game worlds, but also the culture of gaming itself. The breakdown of topics into these categories does not emphasize the fictional aspect of gaming, specifically the imaginary worlds that are created through the roleplaying. For more on this, see Mackay.

Also worth investigation: James Gee: “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.” (2003)

Dennis D. Waskul: The Role-Playing Game and the Game of Role-Playing

This interesting essay connects RPGs with Goffman and Huizinga. The connection is social construction of reality and performance. The essay specifically is using Goffman’s 1961 “Encounters”. Establishment of identity and play seems reflective of Goffman’s work on Frame Analysis, as well. Waskul also discusses Fine’s ethnography of roleplaying groups. The intention of this essay is to understand better the relationship between players characters and extend this to the relationship between individuals and their social roles in reality.

Over the course of gaming, there are several distinct sides to the players: Person, Player, and Persona. Normally these are managed as distinct and separate frames, and they are kept separate with a great deal of discipline and rigor. However, this is not always the case, many occasions these boundaries blur or rupture. The conflict occurs in negotiating the various aspects of self from other, and becoming the other. This idea derives from Herbert Mead (1934).

Waskul describes an interesting episode where one of the players in a game was experiencing guilt because he was not used to playing a character with a particular alignment. The character was doing things that were in character, but this was at odds with the player’s own ethics, and this was creating a sense of unease. So gradually, the player would act out of the alignment and this created a feeling of guilt.

“Because he ended up role-playing in ways that were out of moral alignment for his persona, ‘he’ felt guilty. The irony is that fantasy personas are purely fictional and thus cannot ‘feel’ guilt any more than the player who plays them. Does the persona have a ‘guilt complex’ or is the player merely guilty about how he has played him? Clearly the answer is an ambiguous both but neither; his persona has a ‘guilt complex’ and the player feels guilty about how he has played him — the guilt is real and exists in two simultaneous frames of reality.” (p. 32)

Realness and the porous nature of imaginary constructions are anchored together. Waskul gives examples of how with families created through anonymous sperm donors, the idea of fatherhood is constructed and made more real through the fragmentary descriptions given by the donors. Another example is with actors in theatrical performances, where the characters in the performance are created not only by the actors, but by the audience suspending its disbelief. The social construction of reality is something grounded in the tradition of symbolic sociology. Roleplaying is a game of self and fictional identity.

Sean Q. Hendricks: Incorporating Discourse Strategies in Tabletop Fantasy Role-Playing Gaming

This paper discusses the way in which the participants in an RPG use discourse to construct the game world and simultaneously separate in-game activity from out of game activity. The underlying idea here is the idea that the participants maintain a single shared vision. The definition Hendricks uses derives from several authors, notably Fine, Goffman, and Lakoff and Johnson. The ideas developed seem to hinge most strongly on Goffman’s notion of framing and keying. That idea is that cues exist around the discourse (keys) that enables the frame wherein the underlying game takes place. The two frames that exist in roleplaying are the frame of the game itself, and the fantasy wherin the story takes place.

This logical separation makes a lot of sense for roleplaying, but it can also be extended beyond that, to other occasions, such as electronic games. These are notably different in that the game and story are fully developed artifacts in electronic games: they are not co-constructed, so the fantasy aspect in electronic games must be presented to the player, and the player can only view it. There is an oppositional nature inherent in that, even when in tabletop gaming the GM is responsible for developing the world. In tabletop, the world does not exist without the involvement, and witness of the players.

On discourse strategies: when players enter and exit the frame of the game, there is a period of transition wherein the players come to get used to their characters, and essentially come to inhabit them. This connects to many traditions present in improv.

Discourse in games tends to fall under two primary categories: description and action. Actions consistent with goals have the effect in games of unifying: they connect the player to the character. Description does the opposite, it asks the player to visualize a world where the character is present, but this makes distinct the difference between player and character. This is common knowledge in GMing practice: a gamemaster should end a first game session with a battle to make the players feel invested and connected with their characters through a common goal: don’t let the character die! Again, this emphasizes the difference between tabletop and electronic games. Electronic games can not do anything but describe, and their representation of worlds might be characterized as opening a window, but that still emphasizes that the player is on the other side. It is difficult to have games where the player and character are acting with mutual and synchronous goals.

Discussing language: In discourse in tabletop games (and also in MMOGs), language becomes a hybrid of in-world language, colloquial or regular language, and meta language. This must also be accomodated in other adaptation targets, where in-world ideas are represented with different media affordances.

Michelle Nephew: Playing with Identity

This essay discusses unconscious desire and sublimation in roleplaying games. Nephew uses a Freudian psychology in the tradition of Larua Mulvey, to analyze a particular roleplaying group’s positions towards masculinity and morality. Aspects of roleplaying have been studied by Keith Hurley in terms of therapy and learning to adopt and work with roles. Developmental psychology has used the idea of role-taking towards social function. Accustoming oneself to a role is a form of “systematic desenitization”, that can be used in therapy.

Nephew’s finding is that roleplaying enables players to act out their subconscious desires safely through their character’s actions. Characters can be used to explore latent desires that would not be socially acceptable, but these fantasies can be enacted in a social setting through roleplay. “In this chapter I develop the argument that role-playing’s use as a medical therapy underscores the supposition that during an RPG session a player’s character acts as a latent aspect of himself, played out publicly; the role-playing game is a text shaped by unconscious desire.”

Part of this assessment is absolutely true, but the character’s behavior in a game does not need to be necessarily subconscious: Therapy requires a sort of conscious roleplay, and Sherry Turkle would argue that these games allow for an experimentation of identity, where the player may “try-out” roles to incorporate into their own identity. It has been my experience that players who are less-aware of their character’s motivations are generally much less mature, either as players or as people.

Nephew spends more time focusing on the D&D alignment system, expressing that the appeal of such a system reflects the desire for a world where moral dilemmas are much simpler, and can easily be made into black and white. Additionally, in a game with this system, the label of “good” can give a moral blank check to a player, allowing them to commit atrocities and have this be excused through the work of the alignment system.

Additionally, Nephew finds that the standard misogynist portrayal of female characters in fantasy are also used in roleplaying games. Performance and gender relate to the scopophilic desire to objectify others. Playing a female character is not “experiencing as” so much as “posessing”. There are also attempts to defeminize characters, in order to take away the feminine elements that are so objectionable.

Nephew’s research is extremely valuable, and her findings address trends of distressing misogyny that are extremely prevalent through fantasy, gaming, and the geek culture from which roleplaying emerged. However, I am finding myself very defensive, as, while these problems belong to the larger culture of gaming, this does not imply that all gaming must ascribe to these values. In Turkle’s studies of chatroom culture, she found that gender play was about experimentation and not posession. In the age of Second Life and visual representations of characters, the posessive scopophilic desire becomes more pronounced. Roleplaying exists in between these extremes.

Notes

Chapter 1. Narrative, Media and Modes

Opening in Avatars, we see her discuss the birth of narratology, through an issue of the French journal Communications in 1966. It contained articles by Roland Barthes, Claude Bremond, Gerard Genette, and others. This point marked the understanding of narrative as something that transcends medium, and universal across culture.

Subsequently, with the influence of Gerard Genette, narratology became more focused on written literary fiction. Ryan is attempting to argue for the trancendence of narrative, as transmedial and transdiciplinary. She argues that a core of meaning is transferred whole, but how it is rendered may change and be actualized differently. The idea of this core implies the existence of certain essences in narratives.

This viewpoint is countered by a some narratologists, and this derives from the position that defines narrative as speech act or language based. This is represented by Prince, Genette, and Chatman. This discounts many modes of narration, and is also reflected by Aarseth in his quest paper noting that Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture merely scores the battle of 1812, rather than telling its story. Ryan notes that some narratologists use a metaphorical model, where films or plays or overtures are metaphorically referencing speech acts. Advocates of this are Christian Metz, Seymour Chatman, Fancois Jost, and Andre Gaudrault.

Another counterexample to this is what Ryan calls radical media relativism. This is the idea that works are totally different across media, and that adaptations nave no strong relation to their source material. (Strong in this sense evokes a mathematical strongness in definition.) This idea is grounded in semoitics, and implies that the signifier cannot be separated from the signified. This approach misses the effects of remediation, where practices and terminology are borrowed from one media discipline to another. This approach also is one that, in an extreme form, would argue that works are essentially untranslatable. When the idea of audience or affect comes to play, this trend could go down the path of rigid structuralism, or utter alienation of experience with postmodernism.

Ryan looks to define a broad concept of narrative to encompass transmedial narratives, but to keep it focused enough that everything does not turn into a narrative. She adopts the definition defined by H. Porter Abbott: “Story is an event or sequence of events (the action), and narrative discourse is those events as represented.” Narrative is orthogonal to the story then: The narrative is the “textual” story, while story is the “virtual” narrative.

Story is representational, but it is encoded in mental images, not material signs. Narrative has the capacity to evoke stories to the mind. Ryan further sees the narrative capacity of a work as a scalar, rather than binary value. On this, Ryan expands a bullet point definition:

1. Spatial dimension:
   Narrative must be about a world populated by individuated existents.
2. Temporal dimension:
   This world must be situated in time and undergo significant transformations.
3. The transformations must be caused by nonhabitual physical events.
4. Mental dimension:
   Some of the participants in the events must be intelligent agents who have a mental life and react emotionally to the states of the world.
5. Some of the events must be purposeful actions by these agents, motivated by identifiable goals and plans.
6. Formal and pragmatic dimension:
   The sequence of events must form a unified causal chain and lead to closure.
7. The occurrence of at least some of the events must be asserted as fact for the story world.
8. The story must communicate something meaningful to the recipient.

This set of points constructs a formal, but curiously focused definition of narrative. Many texts could be construed as satisfying some of the points and not others. (For example, recipes, stories about the Big Bang, etc) The effect of this is to understand narrative as a category with multiple dimensions and open to varying perspectives.

Ryan looks to define modes of narration. She does this by exploring a number of characteristics, or dimensions, that narratives can have or perform:

• External/Internal. This is explicit textualization, as opposed to internal imagery.
• Fictional/Nonfictional.
• Representational/Simulative. Representative illustrates consequences in a world formally, while simulation is seen as more abstract and algorithmic.
• Diegetic/Mimetic. In representation, diegetic narration is declarative, while mimetic is reproductive of the source material, eg, drama, cinema.
• Autotelic/Utilitarian. Utilitarian uses the story for a purpose, such as illustrating morals, etcetera.
• Autonomous/Illustrative. Autonomous stories stand as new and independent examples, while illustrative stories are retellings, or rely on the audience’s knowledge of the plot, such as in illustrations or myths.
• Scripted/Emergent. Scripted is the reliance on the text. Emergent narratives permit significant variance from that script, such as in live performance and improvisation.
• Receptive/Participatory. This defines the role of the audience in the story. A participatory narrative is one in which the audience gives feedback to the story itself.
• Determinate/Indeterminate. This is determinance in interpretation. A determinate narrative is explicit and does not open up interpretation. Indeterminate has sufficient ambiguity (Lady or the Tiger).
• Retrospective/Simultaneous/Prospective. This is the temporality of a story. A live news feed is a simultaneous narrative.
• Literal/Metaphorical. Metaphorical narratives relate abstract concepts as agents within a story.

Understanding the transmedial nature of narrative requires an understanding of media itself. Perspectives on media tend to depend heavily on the perceiver’s role with it. Media can be considered channels of communication, or a material or substance for expression. Ryan notes that the first type are conduits, while the second are languages. However, due to the nature of affordances and embedded value systems, media can more broadly be understood as both conduit and language.

Writing and narrative developed and were made complex and refined with the inventions of technologies and the emergence of theories. Walter Ong traces the emergence of narrative writing. Since Aristotle, drama represented a very deliberate and focused rise and fall of tension. With print, novels emerged, and took on new directions of complexity and meaning. Novels gave rise to both an extension of Aristotelian theory (novels with carefully developed tension and plot arcs), as well as an introspection and inward looking at characters. With high modernism, the focus becomes so introspective, that narrative action becomes nearly impossible. New media enables further developments, it but remains to be seen on what those will be.

Ryan outlines some bullet points on qualities of media from the perspective of transmedial narratology:

1. Spatiotemporal extension.
2. Kinetic properties.
3. Number of semiotic channels. (kinetic, temporal, tactile, visual, etc)
4. Priority of sensory channels.

Chapter 5. Toward an Interactive Narratology

Ryan attempts to return to the application of narrative to cybertext. To do this, she looks at the properties of digital systems and interactive texts.

• Interactive and reactive. (Responsiveness to the user)
• Volatile signs and variable display. (Visual representation of changing information)
• Multiple sensory and semiotic channels.
• Networking capability.

Interactivity is the most important point in Ryan’s view, and is necessary to justify that a digital text be digital (otherwise it could be transcribed and represented nondigitally). Chris Crawford has championed interactivity and placed it as absolutely grounded in user choice.

I would actually caution this, as there are other means of telling stories nondigitally that are interactive, the most notable of these being tabletop roleplaying.

Interactive narratology requires the modes of simulation, emergence, and participation. Ryan uses some diagrams to illustrate the graphs of plot in non-interactive narratives (p. 101), and then graphs of some interactive forms (p. 103). Notable forms are: network (the classical hypertext), sea-anemone (or tree), vector with side branches (resembling console RPGs), and track switching.

Ryan notes that a diagram that permits return to previous nodes counters the temporal nature of narrative. This aspect leads to problems, though, since nodes could be considered as temporal, and may not need to be seen as absolute. A hypertext fiction that treated each node as an occurrence of the node seems problematic. Further, this treatment of stories as composed of nodes betrays the simulative power of computation. It moves the story from a world to a dot.

Ryan sees to classify several forms of interactivity through the binary pairs internal/external, exploratory/ontological, which were adapted originally by Aarseth’s typology of user functions. Ryan’s approach aims to categorize the user’s relationship to the world. Internal interactivity occurs when a user controls or identifies with an avatar, and external modes place the user detached and outside the world. Exploratory modes are focused on navigation and exploration of a plot, whereas ontological allows the user to change the outcome of the story. It is not exactly clear how the term ontological comes to serve this purpose here.

There’s a note here in the scanned pdf, that describes Ryan as saying that narrative is incompatible with full participation. However, in the actual body of the text, the argument is more subtle. “The Aristotelian plot of interpersonal conflict leading to a climax and resolution does not lend itself easily to active participation because its strength lies in a precise control of emotional response that prevents most forms of user initiative.” (p. 113) This can be interpreted as caution against traditional Aristotelian dramatic structures. Conventional narratives and interactive experiences by far do not need to rely on these dramatic structures anyway, and it’s probably for the best that they don’t. Aristotle is certainly not the have-all and be-all of narrative, so the exclusion of Aristotle is not the end of the world.

Simulations, and specifically the variety of god-games that Ryan looks at (Simcity, Simlife, Caesar, The Sims, Civilization, Babyz, etc), are listed as External/Ontological. These are narratives in the sense that user actions produce coherent development in the system. Players are powerful, but not omnipotent, in that they must abide by the rules of the game world. These straddle an interesting perspective on narrative in their detached external nature, these games are rather systems of objects.

The really rich category of games is that of Internal/Ontological, and most games with direct player agency fall in this category. There is a wide, huge spectrum of these, and it is problematic to attempt to speak of them with any categorical generality. Ryan does note of them (I would say a subcategory of them): “Generally modeled after the nondigital role-playing games Dungeons and Dragons, worlds of this type almost invariably implement the archetypal pattern of the quest, as described by Joseph Campbell and Vladimir Propp.” (p. 117) Aarseth has made his claims against narratology in understanding of quests, though. But seeing quests as an adaptation of tabletop games can yield more subtle variation.

A final note occurs on the idea of the “ultimate narrative experience”. Ryan works to debunk the idea that becoming a character in a world is the supreme form of narrative (essentially, the holodeck phenomenon). However, in reading of literary fiction, we are divided between identification and external observation. “We simulate mentally the inner life of these characters, we transport ourselves in imagination into their mind, but we remain at the same time conscious of being external witnesses.” (p. 124-125) Ryan also raises a very fascinating question: Would a user rather identify with Hamlet, Emma Bovary, Gregor Samsa, Oedipus, Anna Karenina, or instead Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, or Sherlock Holmes? “If we pick a character from the second list, this means that we prefer identifying with a rather flat but active character whose participation in the plot is not a matter of emotional relation to other characters but a matter of exploring a world, solving problems, performing actions, and competing against enemies.” (p. 125) This is largely the space that games occupy. These types of narratives are largely favored, and relate to the role internality/externality of the user/reader/player within the game or narrative.

I don’t think this means that narratives with characters with strong internal roles are impossible to adapt, but it does introduce a new set of challenges about experience, and what it means to read and recreate and simulate a world, mentally or otherwise.

Overview

Lakoff and Johnson use metaphor as a means for cognition. Use of metaphor involves adoption of certain cognitive models associated with the models of what is being compared. They argue against the philosophical objective and subjective truths, and instead push to look for an embodied and situated means of truth that operates in accordance to our understanding.

Ultimately, the authors aim to dethrone objective reasoning as viable for understanding the world. Rather, a metaphorical view of statements is more tenable. The authors do not go so far as Rumelheart in On Metaphor and claim that there is no such thing as literal meaning, (although Lakoff did attend that conference before the publication of this book), rather they allow for it in certain situations, such as mathematics. A contemporary alternative would also be programming. While they spend a great deal of time in criticizing Noam Chomsky, their criticism is that Chomsky’s purely formal languages do not relate to the real world.

We can play on this a little bit, conjecturing that objective analysis may be sufficient within a mathematical domain, but in order to apply that knowledge, we must relate it to the real world, which requires metaphor.

Notes

Metaphor is pervasive in thought and action: “The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we thinks what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.”

Metaphor is a vehicle for exposing our conceptual system. “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”

The dilemma that arises here is a matter of reflection and infinite regress. If we are to believe our embodiment advocates, what happens at the lowest level is somatic perception.

Lakoff and Johnson use everyday, conventional examples to uncover common meanings: Argument is war, time is money, etc.

A common metaphorical concept is the conduit metaphor: “The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a bearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers.” This follows through to relate to communication and information theory very closely. Conduit metaphors are meta-metaphors, which describe language as a conduit.

Lakoff and Johnson make an interesting point about the experience of metaphor, though, which ties things back into phenomenology: “In actuality we feel that no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis.” This implies an operation of common experiential interaction that applies to both pairs of concepts being compared.

Oppositional binary metaphors are laid out in terms of up and down. Analogical metaphors occur when two pairs of metaphors relate to the same binary base: “more is better” is coherent with “more is up” and “good is up”. These types of underlying metaphors are culturally embedded.

Ontological metaphors anthropomorphize concepts or equate them to other types of entities. “He broke down” works with “The mind is a machine”.

On truth: Metaphor has a function of categorization. Furthermore, it prioritizes certain categories over others.

For truth to exist, there is needed an experiential gestalt with several categories: (p. 167) Participants, Parts, Stages, Causation, Purpose. This is detailed in the example of “John fired the gun at Harry”

We understand truths in the relation to prototypical examples via categories: perceptual, motor, functional, and purpose. These can vary, of course, but the low level perceptions and prototypes are the foundations of how this metaphorical extension and contextual knowledge may be developed.

Direct Immediate Understanding: Entity structure, orientational structure, dimensions of experience, experiential gestalts, background, highlighting, interactional properties, prototypes. These means of breaking down experience apply to both direct understanding and indirect understanding. Truth is based on understanding: “We understand a statement as being true in a given situation when our understanding of the statement fits our understanding of the situation closely enough for our purposes.”

Both objectivism and subjectivism are myths. Objectivism leads to disembodiment of meaning, and implies that humans are not necessary for there to be truth or language. “Objectivism permits ontological relativity without human understanding.” Meaning is composed from other meanings. This standpoint resembles very closely GOFAI. Metaphor undercuts the objectivist myth.

Overview

Ian Watt looks at novels around the period of time that the novel began to emerge as a literary form. He discusses several exemplary works by some of the original novel writers, and uses those to make various arguments about the qualities of the new medium. The most unusual characteristic of the novel in comparison to other literary forms was the quality of realism in the sense of social realism, as well as in the depth of description that novels contain.

Notes

Watt opens the book with a peculiar question: Is the novel a new literary form? This is very relevant from the perspective of new media. Watt specifically examines Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. (p. 9) The new feature of the novel is realism, which stems from French realists (Flaubert). Realism is the antonym of idealism. “The novel’s realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents, but in the way it presents it.” Correspondence of work with world it imitates, this is an epistemological problem. (p. 11) The novel rejects universals, and focuses on the particular. This is especially of use in distinguishing it from epic or mythic works (NOTE: many games and genre novels do rely on universals, there is a point of conflict here.) The novel is also unusual in fidelity of representing human experience. (p. 12) During the time of the novel’s rise, there is was a growing tendency for individual experience to trump collective tradition. (p. 14) Identity exists through time and contains past thought and action. Past experience cages present action. (p. 22) Time is seen in novels as a variable, flexible, interruptible unit. (p. 26) This collection of changes stems from a great deal of social and philosophical changes, and the rise of the novel could be seen as merely a reflection of these changes. (Much like new media relates to social and technological changes)

Novels, leisure time, and sex. Reading was seen primarily as a feminine pursuit, but this was generally restricted to upper classes. Gradually, the working class became more able to afford books (in terms of literacy, leisure time, and available income). Women generally had more leisure time, even among lower classes and incomes, so they tended to be major purchasers of books. (p. 43) The changing base of readers changed the desires of general readership. Reading seems to begin as a religious activity, and then passes to secular interests. (p. 50) There was some looking down on novels and their writers as having no talent (or genius) that the writers were only out to get money. New novels grew while unaware of literary tradition. (p. 58)

Watt discusses Robinson Crusoe, and how it relates to individualism and capitalism, which were contemporary trends. This is manifest in the novel’s setting, rendering a world with the value system of the new order. (p. 65) Defoe’s world is set back chronologically, but deals with contemporary theory. (p. 72)

Discussing Moll Flanders, subjects of writing are anti-heroes, presenting lower class citizens as ordinary people. The subject matter of the novel changes to the lower class. (p. 94) This novel is an adventure story, focuses on action, but the subject is the protagonist’s character (in sense of Goffman). Action is seen to evidence character, but is not the end goal, as is the case in dramatic narratives. (p. 109)

On ‘Pamela’, Early narrative focuses on idealization of love, so story is about knight’s adventure rather than actual relationship. With realism and mass interest, a broader spectrum emerges, shifting focus to human relationships themselves. (p. 136) There is a complex interplay between individualism and capitalism and marriage. Social conditions deny women individualism and economic power. Marriage becomes expensive as it turns women into trade goods. Marriage was seen as a ‘market’ and its expensive nature led to many extra-marital relationships. (p. 143) Emphasis in narrative changes to domestic setting, variation in extended roles and relationships between social classes. (p. 154) Pamela concludes with traditional marriage and middle class sexual ethics. The puritan ritual bridges the ideal and real, sine the relationship is idealized within the realistic setting. Pamela does not wholly embrace the real, but presents a confused struggle between the ideal and real. (p. 167)

Sentimentalism arises in novel form: Novels do make people cry. This is not because of realness of character, but because of private experience (p. 175) Around the rise of the novel, private space became more commonplace (whereas life used to be much less private in previous eras). Spaces and means of interaction changed. Privacy afforded by suburbia (in terms of areas outside of the city) and letter writing. Privacy, especially a room of one’s own (Woolf) was requirement for women’s emancipation. (p. 188) The novel enables the representation of private affairs that were impossible to discuss openly. Provides an intimate account with characters, and brings the reader into the deepest private concerns. (p. 199) The paradox of private life and the novel: the process of urbanization lead to a way of life more secluded and less social than before, but enables a literary form that was more concerned with private life than ever possible. What are paradoxes of other media and social experience? (p. 206)

According to Watt, Clarissa reflects the maturity of the medium of the Novel. Why? Complication of simple matter and expansion of characters. The implausible and didactic aspects of plot are brought into larger dramatic pattern and form of complexity. “It is this capacity for a continuous enrichment and complication of a simple situation which makes Richardson the great novelist that he is; and it shows, too, that the novel had at last attained literary maturity, with formal resources capable not only of supporting the tremendous imaginative expansion which Richardson gave his theme, but also leading him away from the flat didacticism of his critical preconceptions into so profound a penetration of his characters that their experience partakes of the terrifying ambiguity of human life itself.” (p. 238)

Fielding borrows from epic form. References, but does not actually employ it. Does not use form, but evokes it, alludes to high standards. Part of evoking nostalgia from other great works. (Maybe ref Jane Austen Book Club?) (p. 259)

In later tradition of novels: Psychological distance and authenticity. Austen uses this and juxtaposition. Austen is the successful solution to Richardson and Fielding. “Jane Austen’s novels, in short, must be seen as the most successful solutions of the two general narrative problems for which Richardson and Fielding had provided only partial answers. She was able to combine into a harmonious unity the advantages of both realism of presentation and realism of assessment, of the internal and the external approaches to character; her novels have authenticity without diffuseness or trickery, wisdom of social comment without a garrulous essayist, and a sense of the social order which is not achieved at the expense of the individuality and autonomy of the characters.” (p. 297)

Overview

Roland Barthes work on mythologies extends the field of semiotics to apply to a larger set of cultural phenomena. This book is divided into a multitude of mini-essays followed by an extended analysis that ties all of the examples together under the category of semiotics. Mythologies relates semiotics to cultural analysis on the whole, and has roots in Marxist cultural criticism (Mythologies was originally published in 1957). However, over time, the work began becoming co-opted by bourgeois capitalist control, which (I am guessing) led to its influence in the fields of communication and advertising. Barthes describes these large meaning systems and explores how we view them in their own context, as well as how we may view them from a distance: how their domains of meaning relate to our larger perception of meaning as a whole.

Notes

Barthes opens in the preface (dated 1970) with a discussion that devising an approach to mass culture is important and necessary. Specifically, that semiotics provides an approach that may help unmask how sign and value systems are universalized. Barthes notes that after May 1968, ideological criticism is made especially important and necessary. (p. 9) In the second preface, Barthes notes that he is exploring myths of the French way of life. He is exploring heterogeneous media, where reality is portrayed as natural when it is anything but. There is a confusion of nature and history. Has notion of bits of common knowledge. Semiotics systematizes the language of myth. Barthes is criticising the embedded illusion of objectivity. “What I mean is that I cannot countenance the traditional belief which postulates a natural dichotomy between the objectivity of the scientist and the subjectivity of the writer, as if the former were endowed with a ‘freedom’ and the latter with a ‘vocation’ equally suitable for spiriting away or sublimating the actual limitations of their situation.” (p. 12)

Barthes first example is about the spectacle of professional wrestling. This may be relevant in terms of mythological analysis of story setting. Wrestling is all about spectacle. The purpose of the spectacle: “… it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees.” (p. 15) There is a dramatic, grandiose structure: exaggerated power, emphasis on bodily form. (p. 16) More extrapolation: wrestling is about the cycle of good and evil, cycle of punishment, etc. Cultural symbols are taken to extremes. (p. 25)

The next example is the portrayal of the Romans in films. This is interesting because it explores the popular perception and model of a different society. It informs the translation of popular moral and aesthetic judgements to a classical setting. Focus here is on the audience perception of Romans. What “Roman” means to audience. What are the signs used to portray them? Compare with other adaptations, symbolic meaning out of context: compare with contextual meaning (ie, portrayal of character in context of setting, vs to modern audience). (p. 27)

Blind and dumb criticism: Voluntarily ignorant criticism rejects value of knowledge. Judgement in ignorant criticism is avoidance of self awareness. (p. 35)

Novels and Children: Mini essay describes female writers who have children. Has discussion of ’empowered’ women writers as described by ‘Elle’ magazine. Double parturition by magazine: women acquire self confidence, but are still beholden to the nature of motherhood. “… Like Don Juan between his two peasant girls, Elle says to women: you are worth just as much as men; and to men: your women will never be anything but women.” (p. 51) Summarizes: “A Jesuitic morality: adapt the moral rule of your condition, but never comprimise about the dogma on which it rests.” (p. 52)

The Brain of Einstein: Mythology of genius: knowledge formula. A mechanistic approach to thought. Deep thought can be reduced to an iconic portrayal. (p. 69)

The Blue Guide: this is a guidebook that professes to save labour and identify when picturesque things will happen en route of a journey. The guide gradually causes knowledge to vanish. Rejects explanation and phenomenology. Described as labour saving: denies experience of knowledge. Mechinism of being: guide/formula/algorithm (p. 76)

The Great Family of Man: Exhibition of photographs of people from various ethnographic backgrounds and cultures. Imposition of external morality on photographs in supplying extra context. Interplay of history on nature. (p. 100)

Myth Today: “Myth is a type of speech.” “Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message: there are formal limits to myth, there are no ‘substantial’ ones.” (p. 109) Speech assumes signifying consciousness. Semiotics gives a general approach or understanding of knowledge. (p. 110) The imposition of signified onto signifier imbues the signifier with a new meaning: ie, interrelation of roses and passion. (p. 113) Semiotic structure defines myth as a super-structure ‘metalanguage’. (p. 115)

Myth is characterized by motivation and value. “The mythical signification, on the other hand, is never arbitrary; it is always in part motivated, and unavoidably contains some analogy.” (p. 126) In reading myth: Methods of reading myth as compared to simulation. Myth is a forrm of simulation! Consider the non-false nature, simulation vs hyperreal. (p. 128) The purpose of myth is to transform history into nature. “We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature. We now understand why, in the eyes of the myth consumer, the intention, the adhomination of the concept can remain manifest without however appearing to have an interest in the matter: what causes mythical speech to be uttered is perfectly explicit, but it is immensely frozen into something natural; it is not read as a motive, but as a reason.” (p. 129)

Narrative and history. Writer is expected to signify reality, not represent it. (p. 137) The experience of myth in the bourgeoise world (pp. 150-155):

1. innoculation: accidental evil conceals a principal evil
2. privation of history: history evaporates from objects, becomes private in eye of myth-language
3. identification: other becomes pure object
4. tautology: kills adverse argument, kills reality behind language, authority
5. neither-norism: rejects choice as embarassment, flees from reality by reducing it to dualism
6. quantification of quality: economization of intelligence
7. the statement of fact: myth tends to proverb, becomes adopted as common sense

Overview

On narrative consists of transcripts of the symposium “Narrative: The Illusion of Sequence” held at University of Chicago on October 26-28, 1979. This conference discusses many ways of looking at narrative and of sequence, specifically looking beyond the classic Arisotelian aesthetics. This is made up of several different essays which address different perpsectives and characteristics of narrative.

Notes

Hayden White: The Value of Narrative in the Representation of Reality

Narrative is the transformation from knowing to telling. Compare this to the issues of setting, game, etcetera. “Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling, the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific.” This is a bold proposition, but one that White is going to critique. (p. 1)

Referring to semiotics: in narratives form is highly important. Narrativizing is different from telling. According to Barthes: “Narrative is translation without fundamental damage.” Compare with translation in other forms. What defines fundamental damage? Refusing narrative indicates an absence or refusal of meaning itself. (p. 2)

White discusses works of linguists/philosophers. Differential between narrative and discourse, structuralism, etcetera. Notes: Jakobson, Benveniste, Genette, Todorov, Barthes. (p. 3)

White begins on how narrative relates specifically to histories, and method of narration alters perception of events. This is especially relevant in anything that is a story that is nonfiction. Fictive elements naturally arise in process of telling. White notes terms: There are referents of a discourse, tellers of the narrative. The story itself is artificial, as real events cannot “speak themselves” (p. 4) White addresses histories next, and examines distinctly non-narrative types of them. Some concerns: accuracy, objectivity, correctness, adaptation, etc. Notably forms such as the chronicle an annals. (p. 5)

What is Kariotic time? Vs Chronological time?

White discusses a portion of the annals which represents time in a peculiar and unsettling way: This has a distinct lack of agency or social center, but has no shortage of years. Events just seem to happen. Are some games like this? (p. 11) Narrative requires a subject. Subject requires a law or order, requires difference between self and other. (p. 12) Narratives depend on the notion of a plot, which likens content to sorts of ideals. “This is why the plot of a historical narrative is always an embarassment, and has to be presented as ‘found’ in the events rather than put there by narrative techniques.” (p. 20)

Narrative is a moral judgement, as is film, and all other forms of communication. So too must be simulation! (p. 22)

Discussion of the development of the Id as a narrative structure (p. 27) Freud’s other discussions fall in line with Newtonian physics, likening to operations of human condition as part story, part machine. (p. 28)

Roy Schafer: Narration in the Psychoanalytic dialogue

This is about the use of narration in psychoanalysis. A few interesting tidbits are in here… The Freudian drive is a narrative subject. (p. 37) can’t seem to find much more than that…

Frank Kermode: Secrets and Narrative Sequence

Kermode discusses sequence and means of thinking about stories and such. Motivators, causes of action: Ethos, Dianoia, Mythos. Action occurs because it is motivated by various means, moral issues, character, and also (beyond Aristotle) mythic reasoning. Plot/Action relates to Narrative/Telling. Way events are told compares “Teases out of us thought” vs “Sort of makes us think”. Difference is in how we percieve and are forced to interpret. This interpretation does not depend on narrative sequence, but does depend on relation and association. Compare serious games. (p. 80)

Both interpretation and construction of narrative involve extraction of relevant messages, properties, objects. There is the same selectiveness in simulation: translating means and properties. Where conflict over the final means and interpretation gives way to secrets. These are hidden terms in simulation, black boxes, but is born in the conflict of illusion of narrative sequence. Kermode discusses stories with properties of plot. “Good readers may conspire to ignore these properties; but they are relevant to my main theme, which is the conflict between narrative sequence (or whatever it is that creates the ‘illusion of narrative sequence’) and what I shall loosely, but with pregnant intention call ‘secrets.'”(p. 81)

Conflict of story vs interpretation. There are facts from the story, and then what is between them. Fact vs metaphor, allegory. What is the unit of event? These are put through interpretive systems (layers of them) by reader and context. Narrative IS the product of presentation and interpretation. This definition does NOT rule out simulation or anything interactive. Think “The Sims”. Kermode does not actually say this, but does come close. (p. 83)

The unreliable narrator: Does not need to be a false narrator, but unreliable in terms of inclusion of extraneous information, or leaving out information. Difference between reader’s perspective of relevance and the narrators. (p. 86)

Consider diagetic ghosts and phantoms; information not logically includable in regular course of narrative. Surreal imagery is specialized application thereof. Usually these can be interpreted away or ignored. How do we construct these in games? Dreamy imagery in tabletop roleplaying, etc? (p. 88) Metaphorical secrets form deliberate ambiguity. This serves as direct invitation for reader. This directly applies to tabletop, secrets may coalesce, but this impedes on their nature. (p. 89)

Nelson Goodman: Twisted Tales; or, Story, Study, and Symphony

Distinction here is event and sequence. The order independent of sequence of telling is derived from contextual cues and background knowledge. Goal for observer is to order them. (p. 100)

Goodman examines a significant number of paintings that depict stories, multiple perspectives on the lives of saints in medieval artwork, wherein the saint appears multiple times in different locations in the paintings. This discussion applies narrative analysis to still images. The analysis is not precisely rational, but neither is it inappropriate, as visual spatiality relates to time. (p. 109)

Ordering is a definitive characteristic of narrative. All narratives may survive some reordering, but survival is interesting point. Can identify reordered sequences that no longer can be identifiable as narratives.

Seymour Chatman: What Novels can Do That Films Can’t (and Vice Versa)

Narrative demands a dual time order, event and reading. Compare encyclopedic nature of readings with discourse time. In film and other structures (games?), order is mediated. Maybe fixed, or encyclopedic, or both. Paintings, novels, films, reference books, histories… (p. 118)

Chatman discusses Cinderaella as transmediated: “Narratologists immediately observed an important consequence of this property of narrative texts, namely, the translatability of a given narrative from one medium to another: Cinderalla as verbal tale, as ballet, as opera, as film, as comic strip, as pantomime, and so on.” This sort of translatability is of great interest in the structuralist movement. The differences between media are, of course, highly significant. (p. 118) It is still interesting to note that each of these media express narratives, and preserve the meaning of narrative sequence. Games and interactive domains are not bound to the notion of sequence, and thus are made difficult.

The presentation of details: Small and alternately ambiguous details may follow from written text. Film enables realism, but importance of details is complicated by wealth of information. Visual, filmic language is used for ordering and explaining details. This is of great relevance to cybertexts and games, especially in games which strive for realism. Realism adds additional confusion and complicates purpose and message of the text. (p. 121)

“Why is it that the force of plot, with its ongoing march of events, its ticking away of storytime, is so hard to dispel in the movies? … The answer may have something to do with the medium itself. Whereas in novels movements and hence events are at best constructions imaged by the reader out of words, that is, abstract sybmols which are different from them in kind, the movements on the screen are so iconic, so like the real life movements they imitate, that the illusion of time passage simply cannot be divorced from them.” Compare with the relationship of time and progress in games and cybertexts. (p. 126)

Chatman discusses specifically one film, Partie de Champagne (1936), in great detail. He discusses the voyeurism of the male characters in the film, and mentions its portrayal of the gaze as compensating for the camera’s sexless objectivity. This, as we know, is a highly dubious claim.

Victor Turner: Social Dramas and Stories about Them

Turner discusses in this essay the notion of a social drama and how the drama is related and chronicled. Turner starts with the Ndembu of northwestern Zambia, and the forms and ritualized structures of social drama that they enage in, and then brings this back to western culture, specifically examining the Wategate scandal as a social drama. Turner begins by comparing “emic” and “etic” perspectives. The former explores things within the context of a specific culture or domain, and the etic perspective is alien and external. (p. 141)

The social drama is continuous and event based. As such, it is distinctly non-narrative. The drama has four phases: Breach, Crisis, Redress, and Reintegration or Recognition. “Social dramas occur within groups of persons who share values and interests and who have a real or alleged common history. The main actors are persons for whom the group has high value priority.” Turner differentiates types of groups and social relevance, “Most of us have what I call our ‘star’ groups or groups to which we owe our deepest loyalty and whose fate is for us the greatest personal concern.” This can be explored in a multitude of ways. One is the types of groups of real people around games, how they play games, and for online ones, groups within the game worlds. From a simulation perspective, this offers a great deal of insight in how to relate different social structures in game worlds. (p. 145) “… we find symbolic equivalents of sibling rivalry and parent-child competition among star groupers.” (p. 146) The notions of loalty and alignment to different groups are of a great deal of interest and concern from the perspective of simulation. Group dynamics and relationships are highly symbolic.

Within groups, a dramatic breach (of a norm, morality, law, custom, etiquette, in public arena) can occur as a result of various forces: “This breach is seen as the expression of a deeper division of interests and loyalties than appears on the surface.” (p. 146)

There is an emphasis on action within the social rama: Resources are applied towards dramatic means. (p. 148)

Real drama requires a symbolic rhetorical structure. This needs performers (via rituals) to formalize and legitimize dramatic form. Stage drama and social drama play off each other and build upon one another in order to create a working dramatic convention. This connects highly to Baudrillard, who argues that the difference between symbolic and real drama is eroded to the point where they can no longer be distinguished. (p. 151)

Turner discusses the interpretive process of the drama, and how symbolic dramas are reflective of our own lives, raising consciousness and informing cognition under the rhetorical infrastructure that the drama creates. Turner explores how meaning arrives through narrative interpretation of dramas, via ordering the drama according to the four form structure. (p. 152)

The social drama is the originating structure for many cultural performances. These are things such as rites of passage, and rituals. Turner has described ritual as “perscribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in invisible beings or powers regarded as the first and final causes of all effects.” This persists in opposition to Sir Edmund Leach who frames it without the religious context: “stereotyped behavior which is potent in itself in terms of the cultural conventions of the actors, though not potent in a rational-technological sense.” Ritual is nontheless performance and enactment and not primarily as rules or rubrics (!). Sequence is intrinsic in performance and ritual. (pp. 155-156) We can think of this as a framework for contextualized behaviors, where groups and space allows this sort of symbolic enactment. The question is what is the symbolic language of these groups and how do they relate and compare with others?

Overview

Radway examines the role of romantic fiction in the space of popular literature. She finds that romantic fiction fulfills the needs of middle class women whose needs are not being met by their marriages and roles in life. Radway is approaching this from the perspective of feminist criticism, but finds the role of the romance is extremely nuanced and complex. It is impossible to tell whether romantic fiction is ultimately empowering or disempowering to women in these situations.

Romance serves as an interesting object of study in the analysis of adaptation and simulation, as it is an example of a means of simulation (romances immerse the readers in highly structured operational worlds) that serves an interesting purpose for the readers. Initially it seemed that this would be an interesting text to consider in the aim of extending adaptation games to a broader audience (which did turn out to be the case, Radway describes several concrete things romance readers get out of their fiction), but it also is highly important from the perspective of model reinforcement within simulations. Romances satisfy women’s needs that are not met by patriarchy, yet the texts reinforce that patriarchy is the ultimate happiness and satisfaction. What features of simulation could be employed to subvert this process rather than reinforce it?

Notes

Radway starts by discussing her process as ethnography, and describes Geertz’s take on it as a constructive approach. There is a conflict between empiricism and constructionism, representation and interpretation. The question is ambiguous how much we construct a culture by reading it, versus how much we can observe objectively. (p. 5) The reading process (with romance especially) is a form of construction, to readers serves as a declaration of independence. Communities form around collective interpretation of works. (p. 7) Radway is especially informed by Nancy Chordorow’s work revising Freudian psychology. By that, the way reading serves as need fulfillment illustrates the gap in social structure. (p. 13)

The publishing institution, in its early development, leads to disposable, serial, “formulaic” paperbacks. There is established an orthodoxy of formula and format. (p. 29) Gradually, the publishing system develops a “semiprogrammed issue”, which is a product that has content, but is primarily established by format. Readers know what they are going to get. The need for this relates to middle class anxiety (Paul Fussell reference!) relating expectation to product. Product is content to satisfy expectation. (p. 45)

Dot’s incipient feminism: ostensibly conservative, but espouses progressive ideas in her values. Reflects complex social value system. Views independence and marriage/patriarchy as compatible, wheras feminist crituque does not. Reading is seen as an active activity, rather than a passive one. There are active components in selection of material, and interpretation of such material. (p. 54) One of the important qualities of romance: what it is like to be an object of love / romance. Question of identity and perspective in the view from the heroine; vicarious sensation. (p. 64)

The sexuality of the romance is nurturing in nature, and needs to be uplifting in the end. Successful romances need to pay explicit attention to emotions to be appealing to romance readers. The female sexual emotions revolve around some of the following: Hesitancy, Doubt, Anger, Confusion, Loss of control, Exhiliration. How would these be expressed in a digital form? Requires emotional representation. (p. 70) The most important quality of a romance is a happy ending. This completes the cycle of support and redemption. There is a complex understanding and set of requirements for romance to be successful (or not objectionable). Must reinforce happy monogamy. (p. 74)

There is a matter of relative independence at work in the reader’s minds. “The Smithton women seem ot be struggling simultaneously with the promise and threat of the women’s movement as well as with their culture’s now doubled capacity to belittle the intelligence and activities of ‘the ordinary housewife.'” There is strong importance of the assertion of the heroine’s uplifting identity and intelligence, even though she is shown to be vulnerable and needing to be loved. “In the utopia of romantic fiction, ‘independence’ and a secure individual ‘identity’ are never comprimised by the paternalistic care and protection of the male.” (p. 78-79)

Domestic dynamics of reading (as compared to TV, etc) are an expression of privacy, and essentially resented by husbands. The standard role of motherhood and wifeness requires an effacement and abnegation of self. This contrasts with strikingly solitary and private activity such as reading. In role where women spend all their time caring for others, reading is a self-care activity. (p. 92) Reading is escapism, but also compensatory: relieving tensions, diffusing resentment (!), indulging fantasy. Essentially ‘harmlessly’ expressing suppressed emotions. (p. 95) Romance also considered to be a kind of “education” but this is at peculiar odds with fantastic nature.

The ideal romance challenges the traditional gender roles [before submitting to them?]. Several examples given describe highly independent and tomboyish heroines. (p. 125) Ideal romance tends to subscribe to a Proppian narrative grammar. These still have other themes, but ultimately subscribe to the following model (p. 134):

1. The heroine’s social identity is destroyed.
2. The heroine reacts antagonistically to an aristocratic male.
3. The aristocratic male responds ambiguously to the heroine.
4. The heroine interprets the hero’s behavior as evidence of a purely sexual interest in her.
5. The heroine responds to the hero’s behavior with anger or coldness.
6. The hero retaliates by punishing the heroine.
7. The heroine and hero are physically and/or emotionally separated.
8. The hero treats the heroine tenderly.
9. The heroine responds warmly to the hero’s act of tenderness.
10. The heroine reinterprets the hero’s ambiguous behavior as the product of previous hurt.
11. The hero proposes/openly declares love his love for/demonstrates his unwavering commitment to the heroine with a supreme act of tenderness.
12. The heroine responds sexually and emotionally.
13. The herione’s identity is restored.

Male characters in ideal romances have peculiar characterization. There are double perspectives, must have exemplary or exceptional status as heroes. The male is initially distant or aloof (not nurturing) and later becomes converted or is realized as nurturing. This forms peculiar expectation/fulfillment pattern that implies a thing or two about the husbands in the readers’ marriages. (p. 140)

The ideal romance implies inevitability of love and resolution. The failed romance suggests work and struggle is neeeded to maintain status quo or bar disaster. The labor of the failed romance mirrors the work exerted by the readers as wives and mothers. The structure of the ending is what will allow a text to “make it” to be classified as a romance. (p. 162) Another failed romance, “The Court of the Flowering Peach” makes explicit the fantasy nature of the romance. Implies that the ideal relationship and romance is ephemeral and/or impossible. Sounds like a great story, but fails the happy ending requirement pretty bad. (p. 175)

Earlier, the romance was described to be held by its readers as an educational experience. The escapism is at odds with the education and knowledge building of the real world. After all, ideal world is fantasy and definitionally not real, so how does it build knowledge about the real world? (p. 186) Readers assume straightforward and unambiguous prose. When readers intend to read works, they do not want convoluted subtext and meaning, but rather clear prose/instruction. This reflects sim games without reflection of the rule systems or meanings. Rather, value or rule system is assumed or taken for granted, never addressed explicitly. (p. 190) Romance follows peculiar strain of detail and realism (as compared to the realism of the novel as described by Ian Watt). Descriptions and scenes are heavy with detail, but of setting, not of character or mood. References to Umbert Eco’s idea of “the technique of the aimless glance”. (p. 194) There is a Jane Austen reference! Austen is hard to understand by readers, they wish to be passive recipients of the story, rather than an active interpreter. (Note that this is at odds with claims made earlier) (pp. 197)

Romances work in a storytelling cycle. Since this is semiprogrammed issue, most of the stories are variations on same theme, are essentially retelling tropes with variations, as in the oral tradition. This falls back to the notion of Barthes’ mythology. Umbert Eco points this out explicitly concerning retellings of Roland the Paladin. “Therefore, the act of retelling that same myth functioned as the ritual reaffirmation of fundamental cultural beliefs and collective aspirations.” (p. 198) The mythological sameness of the romantic heroines is predetermined. There is rigid cultural role establishment. The act of reading is a partial protest, but reaffirms the culturally defined female role. (p. 208)

Romance relates to Jameson and the utopian movement. (p. 215) Mass produced art has a cultural power (ideology of contemporary cultural forms), consider other mass produced art, such as games. “If we can learn, then, to look at the ways in which various groups appropriate and use the mass-produced art of our culture, I suspect that we may well begin to uderstand that although the ideological poower of conteporary cultural forms is enormous, indeed sometimes even frightening, that power is not yet all-pervasive, totally vigilant, or complete. Interstices still exist within the social fabric where opposition is carried out by people who are not satisfied by their place within it or by the restricted material and emotional rewards that accompany it.” (p. 222)