I no doubt went into hypertext fiction excited. When we briefly discussed it in class last Thursday I was intrigued by the power the reader had. It was up to each individual to decide in what order they wanted to read the story, by clicking on the passages, words, or numbers they felt were important. While the structure of hypertext was conducive to my short attention span, keeping me engaged throughout with snippets of a wide range of story lines (Charmin' Cleary), there also is a demand for deep concentration due to the story’s non-linear form. After reading some of the responses to the hypertext works, I feel that most criticism sprung out of impatience due to the foreign nature of the form. While I can certainly understand people’s frustration, I feel that they could enjoy the genre eventually. Non-linear form is far from a new concept, it just doesn’t seem to be as popular in literature as it has in film.
While time follows a linear progression, people’s thoughts and memories rarely do. Why then, do we enjoy our reading in a linear fashion? This might be harder to answer then you think since this structure already has deep roots in literature, and we have been inundated to believe it’s the most effective simply because it’s the most popular. While linear structure is no doubt a popular form in film, I feel that many more examples exist in this medium and have had greater success. Someone had mentioned the movie Pulp Fiction in a previous post as having a non-linear structure and how it was the first of its kind. While this movie fits into the category it was certainly not the first of its kind. Orson Welles was known for this type of structure dating back all the way to his iconic film Citizen Kane in 1941 and even more so in his last film F For Fake which came out in the 70s.
When thinking about why film might be a more effective medium for hypertext fiction I think back to McLuhan and his discussions on visual media and its effects on human stimuli. Images seem to impose their will upon human memory unlike text which makes you have to create the visual setting in terms of people, places, and emotions. This extra work might keep you from maintaining a large focus on the plot or storyline, so when the information is coming at you in disjointed parts you seem a bit lost.
While I feel the reader’s freedom of choice is simply an aspect you would have to get used to if you ever wished to enjoy hypertext fiction, I feel that aesthetic changes could be made to the form in order to be more effective. These changes might include the use of images or other visual stimuli, a more clearly defined way to announce to the reader when it ends, and better markers throughout to better keep track of characters and events.
The point that I was making about Pulp Fiction was that it is a movie told in a non linear structure. In the film Tarantino does not follow basic cause and effect rules and he a major distortion of real time. The viewer doesn’t know the exact pattern or order of when the events did take place. One of the best examples of this is when Vincent is shot dead by Butch, but then is alive the rest of the movie.
ReplyDeleteCitizen Kane does not follow this bizarre structure. Citizen Kane is a story about a man who never gets over the reality of being alienated as a child. The story is told in a linear manner, it is very much straight forward. The narrative of the story is chronological, unlike Pulp Fiction. Throughout the movie there are five different narrators accounting different phases of Cane’s life, and they start at his childhood and then progress in a chronological order until his death, this is very much a linear style, the movie is easy to follow, the viewer understands what time the scenes are taking place and then the next scenes are effects of the previous scenes.
The reasons why Citizen Kane was controversial in its time does not relate to linear structure. It was so controversial because it was an ambiguous character study of real person. The mystery of the movie is what makes it great and its breakthrough achievements in cinematography were like the icing on the cake.
As for F is for Fakes, that film is a documentary and though it is creative there it is not a traditional story with a traditional plot. Though the documentary is about trickery, doesn’t mean it is told in a non linear structure. The documentary is straight forward and easy to follow, but there is a mystery or ambiguity to it like Citizen Kane, but the documentary is told in a linear pattern, events happen in a logical order which is the biggest difference between Pulp Fiction and these two Orson Welles films.