notes on narrative in a vidding context
laurashapiro asked: What's narrative? What follows are my tentative notes towards a possible answer (or several). Dialogue welcome.
In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H. Abrams defines narrative as "a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do." This definition is accurate as far as it goes, but it' ( Read more... )
In A Glossary of Literary Terms, M.H. Abrams defines narrative as "a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do." This definition is accurate as far as it goes, but it' ( Read more... )
I like the literaray comparisons, and for story purposes, it seems to fill the bill. (I've been thinking about which of my vids goes where. See below.) I believe, too, that many memorable vids use elements of all three. I want the vids to make sense. I want the vid to be visually appealing. I want the vid to convince me of something. So, maybe *I* am the problem here!
You mentioned slash vids, and I think that by definition they're argument vids. The vidder is (usually) working with text that has nothing to do with the relationship she's trying to present in the vid. I've made several slash vids, and I've sort of taken that argument as a moot point. I've developed the vid from foundation of "they're so doing it" or "they're so gonna be doing it by the time I'm done with them," and I've tried to bring a deeper emotional *tone* to it. For example, I don't view So Real as strictly a slash vid. It's there already. Wes loves Angel. What's important is what has happened to that relationship. I guess what I'm saying is that it's *such* a moot point sometimes that's it's secondary. Does that even make sense?
Thinking about my vids:
Evil Angel is the most structured, chronologically (linear) narrative vid I've done, in terms of story, and even that used flashback. However, I used many different tools to tell the story, and "narrative" doesn't really cover it all, I don't think. I'm arguing that Darla actually has a case, for one thing, and that she has incredibly passionate and human feelings for Angel. I used tinting and color to promote that argument, not to mention clip choice and how I manipulated the clips. And maybe I'm totally out in left field here.
Don't Panic is a lyric vid, I think, using your definitions. I tried to convey a mood of isolation and existential despair. heh. And I think the use of longer clips and all of the clips of light helped make it a sort of jarring vid. I hope. I mean, that was my goal.
I'd characterize End of the World as a lyric vid. There's only a loose narrative, but the vid has mood.
I just finished Prophecy, and these thoughts (without your nifty one-word identifications!) were always in my mind. I wanted to tell a believable, understandable story. I made an argument that Wes discovers the mindwipe (I hope). So, it's a narrative that sisabet and I jokingly referred to as the Pulp Fiction narrative--out of chronology, but totally understandable in its entirety.
I'm still thinking.
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But "Wes discovers the mindwipe" isn't an argument. It's an event, or possibly a plot. "The mindwipe is a betrayal and an injury and fucked Wes up terribly, and discovering it fucks him up even more"--*that's* an argument. The argument lies in how the event is interpreted.
Does that make sense?
On reflection, I'm not sure slash is an argument, or if it is, structurally it's the same argument as a canonical relationship, which is why just making the argument that "This relationship exists" is really dull once you get over the first thrill/surprise/startlement/disgust (depending on your reaction to slash in general or a pairing in particular), and a really good slash vid, just like a really good het or gen vid, will attempt to say something else about the relationship: "Spike/Angel is all about the ways Angel is afraid he's too much of an animal and Spike is afraid he isn't animal enough" ("Closer"), "Wes/Angel is about the ways Angel uses those he loves for the sake of those he loves more" (most of your W/A vids), "Buffy/Faith is about Faith being unable to decide whether she wants to do Buffy or be Buffy", etc.
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I see your point. I was saying that I'm "arguing" for the validity of the narrative. (I saw the idea has having to be "defended" so as to be believable.) So, as usual, I'm thinking next to the point. LOL
On slash, yes, that's it. I was, in my roundabout way, trying to say that once the slash issue is out there, for all practical purposes, it's settled, and it's what you do with it that counts.
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I do think slash is an argument. Particularly in vids, which can't wander off into things that never happened on the show in quite the same way fic can, a slash vid is arguing that a particular relationship is more important, more fraught, more sexualized, or whatever, than it's been understood to be within the context of the original text. I don't think that kind of argument is *limited* to slash; I think the same kind of argument would need to be made for any non-canonical couple. Desires that are text are facts (although one can make arguments about their meanings and ramifications); desires that are subtextual have to be argued into visibility.
That said, merely arguing "this relationship exists/matters" *is* dull -- in exactly the way that "omigod Buffy and Spike are so hot!!!" is dull. The fact that it's a crashingly uninteresting argument doesn't make it not an argument, though.
Now I'm wondering about the status of opinions vs. arguments, since, as I tell my students all the time: if it's not supported it's not really an argument, it's an ill-informed opinion.
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But I think what Lum's saying is that many slash vids -- and I would say this is particularly true of our present generation of slash vids -- aren't in fact making that argument. They are taking the slash as read. Their argument isn't that this relationship is more *something* than it is on the show. They assume that the characters have such a relationship, and they assume that the viewer agrees that the characters have such a relationship -- so there's no need to make that particular argument. Instead, these vids are making an argument about some aspect of that assumed relationship.
There are, it's true, a whole realm of slash vids out there (and 'shippy vids in general) which are just about "these two are *so* in love/doing it/hot together" -- you are not alone in finding them, generally, less interesting than vids which are making some other argument about that relationship. Even so, I think there is a real pleasure to be gained from watching a vid like Seah and Margie's "Kryptonite" or Sandy and Rache's "Happy Together." A slash vid that's just "they're so doing it" can be done brilliantly, and those vids serve a purpose within the larger context of fandom (especially for viewers who are not also vidders or invested in the vidder subculture we've got in our little corner of the universe).
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Quite right, but that doesn't make the slash not an argument. It may not be the *primary* argument, it may not be the most important argument given that the intended audience is already persuaded, it may not be something that the vidder thought about as an argument, but that doesn't mean it doesn't count. (It's like what mely said about vids that don't look like they have an argument because the argument corresponds so closely to that of the original text.)
Structurally, in this case, "slash exists here" would become what Toulmin (my favorite theorist of argument) calls the "warrant" for the main argument: it's the background, the premise one must accept in order to find the main argument persuasive. A warrant is always itself argumentative (in contrast to evidence and backing, which are factual, for whatever value of "factual" applies in the field). To put it another way:
Instead, these vids are making an argument about some aspect of that assumed relationship.
I would say "in addition" or "more importantly" rather than "instead."
A slash vid that's just "they're so doing it" can be done brilliantly, and those vids serve a purpose within the larger context of fandom...
Of course, and I'm sorry if my remarks about complexity of argument seemed to suggest a judgment on overall brilliance, interest, or quality. I don't think the complexity of a vid's argument is necessarily the measure of its quality. Pleasure matters. And a vid with a very complicated and interesting argument could certainly be sloppily made, or visually boring, or otherwise not fun to watch (though in that case I wonder how well the argument would come across).
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Then there are AUs, like that Willow/Legolas crossover, which are only arguments for the weirdness of the vidder.
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