| | Cinema has nothing to do with storytelling
Current mood:  calm
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities I know that a few people misunderstand certain arts like abstract cinema and music and call them storytelling or narrative. All anyone has to do to is look up the dictionary definition and etymology of these words(www.dictionary.com and www.etymonline.com) to understand their real meaning. The words have simple definitions and easy to understand etmyologies in older languages like greek and latin. The words "story" and "narrative" have nothing in common with the etymology and definition of "music" and "melody", for instance. Any art that is abstract automatically can't be referred to as narrative or story. to do so is invalid, an oxymoron. Literal events and characters are really the only thing that those words ever refer to going by their etymologies and definitions. They never were meant to encompass abstract moods, feelings, emotions or thoughts. Look it up: if you can't accept it, than don't bother me with your petty false use of certain words. I personally don't care about storytelling, characters, or plot, and I don't have to. I enjoy some fictional literature like "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, and "The Lake" and "Snow Country" by Kawabata, but I could do without storytelling. I'm much more fascinated by nonstory nonnarrative arts like cinema, music, dance, poetry, and painting which are all at their best and most valid when artists use them in pure and autonomous ways. Even in my favorite so-called "narrative cinema" movies like "JFK", "Apocalyspe Now", "2001", "Blade Runner", "Vertigo", "October", "Once upon A Time In The West", "Donnie Darko" and especially the feature films of David Lynch, the things i love about them have nothing to do with their stories and characters(nor acting and dialogue for that matter). I love experiencing a world they create, or certain moods and atmospheres evoked by their brilliant use of non-narrative elements like sound, editing, visuals, pacing, and camerawork. When I was a teenager and fell in love with cinema I didn't have any conception of cinema theory or history, and even then without knowing it I experienced my favorite theatrical films as really abstract movies. The stories and literal content was always secondary in my enjoyment, or even sometimes completely irrelevant, while watching them. I loved certain camera shots or combinations of sound and picture, or certain cuts and montages, completely for their own beatuty, force, and pleasure! I was especially blown away by certain prolonged stylized sequences in features, what i would call formal structured "set pieces": vignettes shot and edited so beautfiully, formed and organized so powerfully, that they are really abstract non-narrative shorts that can be taken out of the story of the film and enjoyed for non-literal non-narrative aesthetic reasons. Set pieces like the Ride of the Valkyries helicopter attack from "Apocalypse Now", or the shower slashing in "Psycho", or any jaw-dropping gunfight of John Woo's Hong Kong triad films, not to mention the brilliant standoff duels in any of the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns. And a "vignette" is not a story, it's only one moment or short group of actions, that can then be attached to a story or not. Once again, look it up in the dictionary. I have also heard music and melody used in invalid contexts as well. I've looked them up in a few dictionaries and they both only refer to "sounds" and how they can be arranged to create moods and emotions and distinct musical phrases or ideas. Any other use is invalid. And if you want to make an analogy between music(or anything else) to story and narrative, it stays an "analogy", nothing more - and the analogy itself is not a given, it could be used for comparison incorrectly as well. You can make an analogy between almost any 2 things in the known universe - it doesn't mean anything. Even extra-musical programmatic symphonies aren't always inspired by a story, sometimes it's a "place"(like Mendelssohn's Fingals' Cave) or an "abstract idea-metaphor"(like Richard Strauss's thus spake zarathustra) or some other non-narrative subject(like Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" suite or Holst's Planets). In my opinion, even the programmatic symphonies that are based on a story still aren't "telling" that story. No one listening to them could ever know what kind of story, if any, was being told to them by the emotional experience they're having. They just feel a mood, an atmosphere, and enjoy its beauty or the intense emotional experience of it just the same as "absolute" or "pure" music. Reading the title of the piece or reading about it is the only way they would know about its extra-musical inspiration and that is just reading about the music, not listening to it. Even when pop songs have lyrics telling a story, the melody of the vocals and the accompanying music melody or rhythm, are still effective for nonstory reasons - same goes for Opera - I love wagner's and verdi's melodies even when listened to alone and I love listening to powerful opera singing in a another language I don't even understand. It's all powerful or fun for reasons that have nothing to do with storytelling. Another misconception: when an objective person looks at the real dictionary definitions and etymologies of "narrative" and "story", they'll see that they're never defined as any art or thing that is "linear" nor as "a progression through time", nor do they refer to just any kind of "structure" or design in an artwork - these are not what defines the words. So why the bizarre invalid understanding by certain people in this regard? Even a few artists working in abstract and experimental cinema and visual music, have these misconceptions. I don't have any idea why. My common sense understanding has always been, without even thinking about it, that these two words mean merely one way of expressing yourself in the arts and that there are many other kinds of creative expression that have nothing to do them. And when i looked them up, their dictionary definitions and etymologies confirmed my presupposition. I hope that these few misguided abstract filmmakers will junk their lame misconception about these words and embrace the fact that their films are nonstory noncharacter forms of pure cinema and be proud of it! Abstract filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Ron Fricke, George Lucas, David Lynch, Peter Greenaway, Dziga Vertov, Jordan Belson, Jon Behrens, Alfonso Alvarez, and Patrick Halm, to name only a few, all understand their movies as non-narrative works. One of my biggest inspirations is the french "cinema pur"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_pur) avant-garde of the 1920s and 30s, all of whom boldy exalted in getting rid of storytelling concentrating instead on the pure elements of film form in fascinating experiments such as "Entr'acte" and "Emak-Bakia" and "Ballet Mecanique". And while I'm not sure how certain filmmakers I love like Arthur Lipsett and Norman McLaren defined their own work, I do know that they never went out of their way to categorize them as story films. Same goes for my favorite musicians like Beethoven, Holst, Bartok, Jimmy Page, Kurt Cobain, and John Lennon. None of them ever refer to themselves as storytellers to my knowledge. I don't write any of this to offend anyone. If you're really so petty and immature as to be offended then you shouldn't be doing dangerous things like reading other people's opinions and referencing dictionaries anyway. I just want to clear up this fraudulent misconception and I hope it takes a long walk in the future. Further reading: http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=99&part=all 4:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
nirvanacinema's journal
Previous
determined 
