Can you tell what it is yet? – An introduction to theories of realism

(Ivan’s Lecture on 10^th November 2011)

Realism means “Close resemblance to what is real; fidelity of representation, rendering the precise details of the real thing or scene.” (Oxford English Dictionary online)

There are two different views describing the concept of Realism, one is Nikolai Chernishevsky (1828-89), he said “The first purpose of art is to reproduce reality.” Whereas Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) said “‘Realism is a corruption of reality.” These are two completely different opinions reinforcing their concepts of Realism, and for me, I would say I would agree with Wallace Stevens because of the world we live in, the 3D/VFX/Games technology have advanced so fast, their work have become so realistic that nowadays we cannot recognise [unless we get told otherwise] which is real or not. Sometimes it feels like we live in the world of Matrix. So I would think that Steven’s theory would apply to the world we live in now. Even though Nikolai Chernishevsky, his theory would in a way apply to the 3D and VFX artists because we are thriving to create realism in our work. Both opinions are completely different but both reinforced the hypothesis of Realism.

Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin: their theories of Realism

Remediation is a dream of media is to erase itself

Immediacy means the medium vanishes, e.g. ‘getting lost’ in a book, suspending disbelief in a film (note: immediate means ‘without mediation’, i.e. real)

Hypermediacy is the medium draws attention to itself, e.g. judging book by cover, marvelling at special effects.

Ivan then started talking about computer games, compared to retro games in 1970s to now, in 1970s, they’re more basic and too simple and limited vector based, like for instance, Space Invaders, Asteroids, or Sonic the Hedgehog or old Sega games. And now, we have Call of Duty, Halo, Need For Speed, and so on, all becoming so realistic in visual aspect. You can see that the convention of Realism have changed, because back then, there were plenty of room to improve their quality of the games and films, they are more fun, and more recognisable on what’s real and what’s not. But now, the technology are unbelievable (well technically the 3d work are very believable but im not referring to that, I meant unbelievable as in amazing!) the tech went from 2D to 3D to 4D! there are already realistic holograms, like you used to see in Star Trek and Star Wars, but now it had become a reality. Before it was just dreams and designs but now all have come alive (virtual speaking)  

The main goal of Realism is to interact with the audience, to get them to be involved with their awe virtual world, and also they give the audience a chance to escape from the real reality to weird warp fake reality.

Telling Tales: ways of thinking about narrative from Aristotle to Aarseth

(Alison Gazzard Lecture on 3rd November)

Starting this blog post with Aristotle’s quote

           

“We’ve considered that a tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete in itself because it’s a whole of some quantity (because a whole doesn't’t have to have a quantity). Now a whole in something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning isn’t necessarily after something else but it is followed by something. An end naturally follows something – either as necessary or as consequential – and has nothing following it. And a middle follows something and is followed by something else. Therefore a well-constructed plot cannot begin or end at any point the author would like”

–      Book 7, Poetics

 

Nice words from Aristotle, one of the Greek legends! Now what he said, basically he said every story always have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Now some definitions!

narrative [na-ra-tiv], a telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator to a narratee (although there may be more than one of each)… A narrative will consist of a set of events (the story) recounted in a process of narration (or discourse), in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order (the plot). The category of narratives includes both the shortest accounts of events (e.g. the cat sat on the mat, or a brief news item) and the longest historical or biographical works, diaries, travelogues, etc., as well as novels, ballads, epics, short stories, and other fictional forms.

Chris Baldick, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 145.

What a mighty long definition, Narrative in short definition is either a spoken or written account of connected events; a story of a bare narrative of the details. 

Narrative = story + plot

Story = what it is about?

Plot = how it is told?

Now one of the best parts!! I think this theory is really interesting and very seemingly correct as I’ve been reflecting on all those movies I have watched in my lifetime (those I can remember!)

The theory is called “Freytag’s triangle”

 

 

Gustav Freytag’s theory is a narrative structure that divided a story into five parts, which play the important parts in narrative story. These parts are: exposition (of the situation); rising action (through conflict); climax (or turning point); falling action and resolution.           

Now next one is about “Propp’s Character Types”, this made up of seven roles which, by the way, are always available in any narrative story out there.

The seven parts are

•The villain—struggles against the hero

•The donor—prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object

•The (magical) helper—helps the hero in the quest

•The princess and her father—gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished

•The dispatcher—character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.

•The hero or victim/seeker hero—reacts to the donor, weds the princess

•False hero—takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

I applied that theory to one of “The Simpsons” episodes in our lecture seminar, it was very challenging, because you cant tell which role but hard to apply to the characters in The Simpsons because some of the characters, i.e. Lisa Simpson, is she the Hero or False Hero, its hard because some of the characters does share two types or even three. It was fun! Mind-numbling it was.

Nothing new: intertextuality

(Thurs’ Lecture on 27th October 2011)

The word “intertextuality” is derived from the Latin “intertexto”, which means ‘to intermingle while weaving’. Intertextuality is a term, whom was first introduced by Bulgarian-French Semiotician Julia Kristeva in the late sixties.

This quote by Graham Allen, titled ‘Intertextuality’ in ‘The Literary Encyclopedia’, “The fundamental concept of intertextuality is that no text, much as it might like to appear so, is original and unique-in-itself; rather it is a tissue of inevitable, and to an extent unwitting, references to and quotations from other texts.” Its quite interesting, it means something that we created or wrote or drawn or any type of verb, aren’t ours to begin with, in fact it would be influenced or possibly mimic by something or someone in the past that we never knew or subconsciously knew, something that built up from the past to now. Its like information are being recycled, it’s the same but in different manners as it was carried through the time from the beginning to now. 

As the word ‘text’ suggests, originally related to literary culture (novels, poetry, etc.), but has since developed application to cultural artefacts in general - to films, fashion, product design, games, etc.

Two kinds of intertextuality:

•  unconscious - true intertextuality: beyond author’s control

•  (self-)conscious - what Kristeva calls ‘the banal sense of “the study of sources”’ (Kristeva Reader, p.111)

Which now bring us to authorship and originality of the Intertextuality,

(this part is copied from the powerpoint slide as I think its really good and well explained)

Traditionally, focus has been on the character of the author (the inspired creator) and the work (as unique production). Intertextuality:

•            shifts the emphasis from ‘author’ to ‘reader’

•            views the work as part of an infinite web of other works, not simply on its own terms

This includes:

•            remakes, sequels, prequels within same media

•            translations between media, e.g. novel to film, film to computer game (and vice versa)

•            transition between genres, e.g. Seven Samurai remade as Magnificent Seven

•            relation of artefacts within a genre group, e.g. between different episodes of the same TV soap opera, or between different TV soap operas

The following are crucial to understanding intertextuality:

•            nothing is truly original (in the sense of unique, pristine, one-off)

•            authors can’t control the ways in which their works are read and understood

•            authors can’t even fully control the content of their works: inevitably there will be meanings they didn’t intend.

So basically it means everything we do (intertextuality speaking) aren’t original, this topic kind of really make me think, it’s like everything I do or say were already spoken by someone else in the past. It’s weird to look in this point of view, if I was to define this “intertextuality”, I would say, “we are currently making a new footprint step, continuing the footprints that was made behind us”, I hope that would make sense. But the important thing is that I do understand what intertextuality means!

The next part is from Ivan in his notes.

Hypertext – It is possible that the rise of the digital has intensifed the processes of intertextual mixing, in particular the ‘hypertextual’ linking of media forms such as the internet:

‘Perhaps the most obvious and potentially far-reaching application of intertextual theory and practice in recent years, however, has come in the realm of information technology… A hypertext materially appears to demonstrate its lack of autonomy with regard to meaning. It dramatically opens itself out to the intertextual, disturbing that chronological, consumerised approach to reading that Kristeva and Barthes were so keen to challenge…’ (Graham Allen)

What a reality check that was! Why do I think that? because this quote above is reminding me how time does really travel through, changing so incredible fast at a increasing speed, the technology in our society are getting better and better, stronger even, but also it reminded me that now it slightly lost the true values of what we used to had in old time.

Now im ending this post with Ivan’s last quote to this lecture (kind of symbolic don’t you agree?) “Confounding the realist agenda that “art imitates life”, intertextuality suggests that art imitates art.” (Chandler)