Based on different readings of the fillm 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' (Gilliam 1998), this presentation attempts to offer a clear and easy to understand introduction to the diferences between structuralist and poststructuralist narrative methodologies.

1. creative approaches to visual
narratives
Visual Studies – Week 5.

2. creative approaches to narrative
“Within-time-ness ... possesses its own specific features which are not reducible
to the representation of linear time, a neutral series of abstract instants [...]
“Let us say that that a story describes a series of actions and experiences made by
a number of characters, whether real or imaginary. These characters are
represented either in situations that change or as they relate to changes to which
they then react. These changes, in turn, reveal hidden aspects of the situation
and of the characters and engender a new predicament that call for thinking
action, or both [...]
Following a story, correlatively, is understanding the successive actions, thoughts,
and feelings in question insofar as they present a certain directedness. By this I
mean that we are pushed ahead by this development and that we reply to its
impetus with expectations concerning the outcome” ...

3. creative approaches to narrative
“Narratives ... represent a person acting, who
orients him – or herself in the circumstances he or
she has not created, and who produces
consequences he or she has not intended. This is
indeed the time of ‘now that... ,’ wherein a person
is both abandoned and responsible at the same
time.”
Ricoeur, P (1980) Narrative Time, in Mcquillan, M (ed) (2000) the Narrative Reader.
London, Routledge. p 255.

4. creative approaches to visual
narratives
• The Great Shark Hunt : finding universal
forms
• Fear and Loathing of Structuralism
• Songs of the Doomed : searching for
difference
• Generation of Swine : new media, new
“When the going gets
stories?
weird the weird turn
pro” – Rauol Duke

5. DUKE
hitchhiker

6. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms
Logic of Narrative Possibilities – Claude Bremond
Goal attained
(e.g. Act Successful)
Actualisation
(e.g. Act required to
obtain goal)
Virtuality
Goal not attained
(e.g. Goal to be obtained)
Absence of
actualisation
(Inertia, impediment)

7. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms
Amelioration to obtain
Obstacle to eliminate
Possible means
Amelioration process Elimination process
Means to be taken
Means successful
Amelioration obtained Obstacle eliminated
Logic of Narrative Possibilities – Claude Bremond

8. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms
Exposition – Meir Steinberg
‘It is the function of the exposition to
introduce the reader into an unfamiliar
world, the fictive world of the story, by
providing him with the general and
specific antecedents indispensible to the
understanding of what happens in it ... of
the canons of probability operating in it;
of the history, appearance, traits and
habitual behaviour of the dramatis
personae [actants]; and of the relations
between them.’
Steinberg, M (1996 [1978]) What is Exposition? An essay
in Temporal Delimitation, in Onega, S and Landa, G (eds)
Narratology. Harlow, Longman Group Ltd. P. 104

9. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms
Fabula Sjuzhet
Story Narrative
Plot
Steinberg sees the exposition as always being at the beginning of the Fabula or Story.

10. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms

11. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms
“... the time-ratio of a narrative time-span or event generally stands in
direct proportion to it’s contextual relevance: one whose
representational time approximates its represented time is implied to
be more central to the work in question...”
Steinberg, M (1996 [1978]) What is Exposition? An essay in Temporal Delimitation, in Onega, S
and Landa, G (eds) Narratology. Harlow, Longman Group Ltd. P. 111
Our trip was different. It was going to be a
classic affirmation of everything right and true
in the national character; a gross, physical salute
to the fantastic possibilities of life in this
country. But only for those with true grit.

12. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms
Vladimir Propp – Character Types (Spheres of Action)
1. The Villain
2. The donor (provider)
3. The helper
4. The sought for person (and her father)
5. The dispatcher
6. The hero
7. The false hero
A. J. Greimas – Actantial Models
sender object receiver
helper subject opponent

13. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms
Gerard Genette – Narrative Discourse
The narrator can operate inside or outside of the story world.
The narrator can therefore be visible or invisible. The narrator is
NOT necessarily synonymous with the author/director– think
duke (not Thompson), think Robinson Crusoe (not Daniel Defoe).
I remember saying something like: “I feel a bit
lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.”
Subsequent – past tense
Prior – predictive, generally future tense
Simultaneous – present, contemporaneous with action
Interpolated – between moments of action (“What in
broadcasting language is called the live and the pre-recorded
account after the event.”)

14. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms
“Is it not structuralism’s constant aim to master the
infinity of utterances by describing the language of
which they are products and from which they can be
generated?” Barthes, R (1966) Introduction to the Structural Analysis of
Narratives in Ibid.
“A narrating situation is, like any other, a complex
whole within which analysis, or simply
description, cannot differentiate except by ripping
apart a tight web of cennections among the narrating
act, its protagonists, its spatio-temporal
determination, its relationship to the other narrating
situations involved in the same narrative...” Genette, G
(1972) Voice, in Ibid p.174.

15. The Great Shark Hunt : finding
universal forms hidden
“For the traditional critic, the most profound
design in a narrative was its unity”, writes Mark Currie,
and “in the critical quest for unity there was a desire to
present a narrative as a coherent and stable project. In
the view of the poststructuralist critic, this was just a way
of reducing the complexity … of a narrative”. (Currie 1998, p. 3)

16. Fear and Loathing of
Structuralism
“Thought about narrative has traditionally concerned itself with two distinct kinds
of space. The connection between them is profoundly ideological. On the one
hand, there is the space of representation. This is understood as the space of the
real, the homogenous space of the world. On the other hand, there is the space pf
the model or describable form. In this second dimension, the narratological
imaginary has been haunted by something like the reverse of poetic intuition, by
dreams of the geometric.” Gibson, A p. 3
“Narrative theory ... Has repeatedly constructed the space of the text a
unitary, homogenous space, determined by and organised within a given set of
constraints. Narratological space has seldom been disturbed by blurrings, troubling
ambivalences or multiplications. In it, boundaries are clearly defined and categories
clearly distinguished. Proportions and regularities establish and maintain certain
harmonious and orderly relations. The most recent developments in narratology
have hardly disturbed those relations at all.” Ibid. P.7

17. Fear and Loathing of
Structuralism
“*A study of narrative+ must concentrate on perturbations and
turbulences, multiple forms, uneven structures and fluctuating
organisations. The ‘site’ such an aesthetics indicates for the
knower, thinker of observer is not the apparently stable site of
the narratologist.” Ibid,p. 13

18. Fear and Loathing of
Structuralism

19. Fear and Loathing of
Structuralism
“Take... Serres’s account of the metaphors of fire and mist in Zola, of
clouds, flows, turbulences, motors and so on ... Narratives are conceptualised in
terms of a reservoir of metaphors internal to them.” Ibid.

20. Fear and Loathing of
Structuralism

21. Fear and Loathing of
Structuralism

22. Songs of the Doomed : searching
for difference

23. Songs of the Doomed : searching
for differenceand Guattari: its
The term multiplicity is associated with Deleuze
basic definition is ‘a large number or variety’. On one hand we can
make sense of a multiplicity, it can be organized, it can be divided up -
like the specific players of a football team. But on the other hand it is
much more sensual, unconscious, about feelings - like the action and
interaction of football players during a game. (Deleuze and Guattari
1987, p.36) In this way it forms a tension between what we can
understand and what we can’t.
Another philosopher who used the term multiplicity was Michel
Serres, he writes: “We are fascinated by the unit; only a unity seems
rational to us. We scorn the senses, because their information
reaches us in bursts. We scorn the groupings of the world… For us
they seem to enjoy a of the status of Being only when they are
subsumed beneath a unity… A cartload of bricks isn’t a house.”
(Serres 1995, p. 2)

24. Cornelia Parker, Heart of
Darkness (2004) Cold Dark
Matter (2007).

25. Songs of the Doomed : searching
for difference
Anthony Gormley

26. Martin Creed (2007) Work no. 370 BALLS

27. • Matrix Reloaded

28. Generation of Swine : new media,
new stories?

29. Generation of Swine : new
media, new stories?
Miller, Robin and Rand, Myst (1993 Macintosh)
Cyan Worlds

31. Miller, Robyn and Wende, Richard.(1997 win/mac) Riven, Cyan Inc.

33. Demarle, Mary and Saunders, Phil. ( 2001 win) Myst III: Exile, Presto Studios