How does narrative work?
Our Producing and Directing semester begins with evaluating scripts. Are they unique? Are they complete? Are they producible? As student-producers are choosing scripts to revise and ultimately produce, understanding how narrative projects work is essential. Here, author Danny Vagnoni responds to the article Emotional Curves and Linear Narratives by Patrick Keating.
Modes of narrative production and affect in Patrick Keating’s Emotional Curves and Linear Narratives
by Danny Vagnoni
Patrick Keating’s Emotional Curves and Linear Narratives describes three established modes of rhetorical meaning-making and narrative production in Hollywood films, as well as an aggregate new mode that Keating himself synthesizes. Keating writes that the three modes are classical, alternation and affective. In each of these models, other authors argue for various levels of conflict between two systems: the linear narrative (or syuzhet, from the work of Russian authors Propp and Schklovsky) and the attractions. Important to note here is that ‘linearity’ in Keating’s usage refers to the forward momentum of the narrative, not necessarily the linear progression of time or characters. “Breaking Bad” with Walter White’s degeneration of character, or Lynch’s Mulholland Drive with nonlinear “casual chain[s]” would thus here still be considered linear (Keating, 2006).
In the classical mode, for instance, the narrative is the dominant mode, with other ‘subordinate’ subsystems. The alternation model, however, asserts that narratives trade dominance with other systems, such as what Keating calls stunts or attractions – broadly defined as breaks from pure exposition, such as comedic relief in slapstick. The affective model posits another perspective entirely, that the linear narrative itself is subordinate to the emotional affect it generates in viewers (Keating, 2006).
Keating’s model is cooperation, positing that narrative and attractions mutually support one another to generate emotional affect in viewers. Of the four models presented in Keating’s work, his own cooperative model is by far the most complete. In this model, Keating proposes that narrative, sympathetic characters, and attractions (or stunts) operate not as dominant and subservient subsystems, but as “mutually intensifying examples where narrative and attraction work together, such as when a sad song expresses the mood of a sad moment or when a dangerous stunt increases our fears” (Keating, 2006, p. 10).
In relation to our project, Juniper Spring, this article is useful in describing how to understand the relation between exposition and affect. Our project is strongly rooted in a galvanizing real world issue, and so it may be tempting to let the issue itself do the heavy lifting and be somewhat didactic. However, while it’s true that the narrative stakes will necessarily be heightened by their connection to real world issues, it remains important to have a coherent piece of art that does not condescend to the viewer with exposition or heavy-handed moralizing. Instead, we can articulate our viewpoint just as clearly by creating a strong affect with the main character, and by using attractions, in Keating’s parlance, to heighten the stakes.
I was not completely compelled by the three classic modes, and while I found Keating’s model much more complete, I still found it to be worthy of some criticism. I took issue with the binary way the three classical models described systems within a film, though there is occasionally value in examining things this way. Keating’s work was far more complete – but I was nonetheless still puzzled by the insistence on dividing narrative from attractions. I also believe the transformation of the film industry under the auspices of increased monopoly power problematizes all four models. Large franchises subsume the traditional narrative and economic logic of a film release almost entirely, with Keating’s anticipation-resolution cycle happening on the scale of not one but multiple films. Economically, the logic of such a monopoly on spectacle in entertainment evokes Adorno and Horkkheimmer’s concerns about the culture industry far more than the scope that this article was concerned with. You cannot, for instance, have realistic dramatic tension around a character who will necessarily survive for ten more films because of the need for cultural production and merchandise sales.
However, Keating’s fusing of the three classical modes of rhetorical production does make sense, and it resonates with me on a level that, at their best, films aren’t just good because of a coherent narrative, but for the catharsis they can produce, and the representation of humanity they portray (Keating, 2006).
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References:
Keating, P. (2006). Emotional curves and linear narratives. The Velvet Light Trap – A Critical Journal of Film and Television, 4-15.
Image credit:
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash