JAN 22-24
In these first four weeks, I will introduce students to the basic structures of narrative form, specifically the distinction between "story" and "discourse" and between the "proairetic and hermeneutic codes" of narrative. Students will also begin to analyze film, thus becoming familiar with those terms from film theory that we will build on over the course of the semester. Two pop cultural shows (Star Trek: The Next Generation and The X-Files) and one experimental film (La jetée) will serve to help us in our exploration of the narrative limitations of human consciousness.
This week, we analyzed "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," what could be called the Citizen Kane of X-Files shows. The episode allowed us to continue our discussion of focalization techniques, particularly as these apply to frame narratives and, even more specifically, framed narrations. As you pointed out in the first week of the class, narration is another example of the discursive manipulation of story. That is, given a certain sequence of chronological events (the story), an author can choose to relate those events either through third-person omniscient perspective or by way of a narrator (first-person narration), who could be any one of the characters involved in the actions. One can also have a third-person narration that is focalized through a single, main character, as we saw in “Cause and Effect.” (See third-person-limited narration.) The choice of narration completely changes how we have access to the story, but the story itself (what actually happened) does not change, even if certain narrations may be misleading or even plain wrong. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" does the same thing: we assume that an actual story does exist ("the truth is out there"), that there is one explanation that accounts for all the elements of this narrative; however, through various conflicting and questionable narrations, we are left questioning what that story might be. The episode, along with the entire series, thus also invokes the hermeneutic code: we keep watching because we want to learn the "truth," however evanescent that truth turns out to be. This particular episode extends as far as possible the implications of our difficulties in understanding "the truth." As Jose Chung states early in the episode, "truth is as subjective as reality," or, as he states a little later, he is fascinated by how our very perception of reality can be "transformed by words, mere words." As the Man in Black later tells Roky (the science-fiction writer and, later, cultist), we don't even understand how our brains process supposed "reality," so how can we be sure of anything, or, as Lieutenant Jack informs Fox Mulder in the diner scene, "I don't know if any of this is really happening. I don't even know if you're real." Fox's response: "I can only assure you that I am real." Of course, as a viewer of this fictional series, we can't help but realize in this scene that, indeed, Fox is not real but a fictional character. The show could thus be said to be quite postmodern in its self-consciousness and self-reflexivity. Even the claim that "seeing is believing" is questioned in the episode, for we see (through a reference to Roswell) that even recorded "reality" can be edited to seem like most anything one wishes. Through the constant cutting from one framed narrative to another to yet another (even the first sequence with the red and grey aliens turns out to be a scene from Roky's science-fiction screenplay), the viewer becomes so disoriented that we are made to experience precisely what the show is about: "truth is as subjective as reality."
THE FALSE ESTABLISHING SHOT
FRAME NARRATIVE
HYPNOSIS
Of course, the hypnosis scenes are also clues that the writer of this episode would like us to interpret the show through a psychoanalytical lens. One fascinating aspect of the two scenes of hypnosis is that the characters/aliens in each are perfectly matched up with the figures in the objective scene (including, most notably, the figure who holds a coffee—or cup of glowing yellow liquid—in each ‘frame.‘ We have two explanations: 1) the suggestion is thus made that the figures in the objective scene are influencing what Crissie recalls under hypnosis, thus putting under suspicion anything she says; or 2) there really was a trauma that Crissie experienced and she’s dealing with it through Freud’s transference—replaying her violation through three different scenarios. The other psychoanalytical term we witness is the ‘abject,’ on the topic of which you’ll be reading Julia Kristeva in a few weeks. Blaine is perfectly fine witnessing a dead, alien body, but once he recognizes it as a human body, he is confronted by Lacan’s Real and vomits, much as Clyde Bruckman did in last week’s episode.
POSTMODERNISM
This week, we also began to discuss postmodernism. I stated that this episode is highly postmodern, as are each of the shows and films we'll be seeing from here on. So, I asked students to start characterizing what constitutes a postmodern work (as distinct from 'postmodernity,' which refers to the world around us—see Linda Hutcheon on this). Some of the elements you identified include: self-reflexivity (e.g., about the scriptedness of the fictional show being presented to us [the repeated bits of dialogue, the fact that Roky's rendition of events is put in screenplay format] or the way the show comments on its own discursive tricks, as in the editing of the autopsy in the 'Alien Autopsy' segment); intertextuality (e.g., all the B movie references, as Geoffrey Bruening pointed out); self-consciousness about genre and the ways genre bends our perception of reality; a self-consciousness about mediatization (the medial transfer of the episode, hence the importance of the mise-en-abyme home video of the 'Alien Autopsy')—as Aaron Wagoner and others pointed out; a camp sensibility--hence, the purposively hoaky aliens in the opening sequence; and finally, the breakdown of the distinction between fiction and reality. I suggested that the lattermost point provides us with a way to distinguish 'postmodernism' from 'modernism' to which it is clearly related. The modernists are best characterized by the rupture and "modern" rethinking represented by the great, revolutionary thinkers of the period 1850-1950: Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud. What could be said to mark the postmodern break is the loss of the belief that, through some sort of radical rethinking of ideology or the world order (hence the proliferation of manifestos in the modern period), we can get to the REAL truth. The shift from Einstein's theory of relativity to Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and quantum physics generally, which suggests that reality itself is not stable once one reaches the quantum level of existence (which has led to such contemporary theories as many-worlds interpretation, including string and superstring theory), is exemplary of this shift. On the level of psychoanalysis, the same shift can be seen in the shift from Freud (who wanted to believe that there is some buried truth at the heart of the psychoanalytical treatment) and Jacques Lacan who argues that our very entrance into language and what he terms the symbolic order means that we are forever dissevered from what he terms the Real. Freud’s Wolf Man case, which Peter Brooks discusses in Reading for the Plot, is particularly significant on this score.
THE LITERALIZATION OF STORY BY DISCOURSE
We discussed a number of discursive techniques as well throughout the two classes. We examined how a "collapsed cut" and sound bridge during Roky's narration of his encounter with the Men in Black serves to underline the breakdown between subjective treatment and objective treatment. We think we are inside his narration (a subjective treatment) only to realize that we are, in fact, back in the more or less objective frame (Roky recounting his events to Scully and Mulder). A similar technique is used in the interrogation of the boy in the episode.
An analogous trick occurs later in the diner scene, when we see Mulder asking the owner of the diner questions while eating pie. Right after he asks "have you ever experienced missing time," we have a jump cut, which is literally an example of "missing time": an edit that jumps forward in time, creating a jerky sequence. The discourse thus, once again, perfectly mirrors and literalizes a story element.
Synopsis for Jan 22-24
ENGL 373H: The Theory of SF&F
INSTRUCTOR : Prof. Felluga
OFFICE : HEAV 430
OFFICE HOURS : T,Th 1:30-2:30 (or email me)
E-MAIL: : felluga@purdue.edu