Meta-Fiction in the Controls of Metal Gear Solid 2

With the semester’s essays completed, I spent a good part of the past week playing through Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (I’ve heard good things of the series in general and wanted to see for myself). I’ll have to admit that it took me a long time to become even remotely comfortable with games controls (I’ve never been a fan of the PS controller) and even now I’m not entirely sold on them. At points I found that one of the main challenges presented to me were navigating with these controls. In reflection of my previous blog entry, I tried to figure out why I found these controls so difficult and frustrating.



Last time I wrote about how the first-person shooter genre succeeds in putting the player within the subjective perceptual realm of the in-game character. MGS2 is primarily in third-person, however it offers the option of assuming a subjective first-person mode for investigating environments, and shooting from a vantage point behind the character’s gun.

What struck me instantly was the distinction between these two modes. The third-person view distances the player from the character, while the first-person view provides a very subjective look into the character’s experience providing extra ambient effects such as wind, breath and heart-beat noises. Several segments of the game offer the use of an in-game directional microphone that is used in the first-person mode. When using the directional microphone, the player can only hear what the microphone is pointing at, and if the player isn’t careful, they can miss out on important plot points if they do not point the microphone at specific events.

The third-person mode is seen from a fixed or preset camera position. This is unlike many Nintendo brand games that I’m used to (with the free-roving retro-posited, or player- controlled camera). An example of my preference can be seen here in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This game uses a system in which the camera is easily situated behind the character, at the player’s control. The game also has an optional first-person mode for environmental investigation and arrow-shooting. Since the camera is usually situated behind the character Link, the player shares directional continuity with the character. In the same sense as the first-person shooter, the player becomes more immersed in the character’s physical functions.
MGS2 offers no control over camera angles. The camera has fixed positions and movements that are only affected by character movement. Because of this, the player never becomes immersed in the character, instead assuming the position of an omniscient puppet-master. In Zelda, control directions are always relative to the camera position, so you press up to move Link up, and press down to move Link down. In MGS2, you have no control over the camera but the control directions always stay the same, so you may have to press up on the control stick if you want to move Snake or Raiden down. I immediately saw this as negative, however I did not understand the complete implications of this control scheme until I beat the game. I would argue that the control scheme in MGS2 is a means of meta-fiction which meshes well with many of its narrative elements.



While MGS2 is by no means the first video game meta-fiction (most games address the player when teaching game rules and control functions), it effectively utilizes the video game control functions as a means of further expressing certain plot themes. From this point on I will be spoiling crucial plot surprises from the game.

Metal Gear Solid 2 develops a theme in which the main character Raiden must face questions surrounding the basic truths of his existence (offering a parallel between “real world” military training and “VR” training). Throughout the course of the game, Raiden learns that the woman he loves is a spy gathering information on him, that his commanding officer (whom he corresponded with only over transceiver) was only an AI digital representation, and that his entire life was manipulated by an international organization in an attempt in forming him into a perfect soldier. Raiden’s body is also filled with nano-machines that come to betray his sensory perception. In short, Raiden’s entire life has always been under the control of forces outside of his own. It is my belief that the game’s control scheme purposefully distances the player from the in-game character as a means of indicating the player as a controller of Raiden’s life-actions. Several sequences in the game help to back up this theory. For example, Raiden’s commanding officer Colonel Campbell radio’s Raiden shouting "Raiden, turn the game console off rightnow! ... Don't worry, it's a game! It's a game just like usual. You'll ruinyour eyes playing so close to the TV." This reference to the construct of the game suggests the canon’s willingness to include the player as a recognized controller of the in-game character’s events.



So while I found the game’s controls disruptive, I think more immersive controls would have minimized the distance between the player and the character, thus eliminating this meta-fictitious element of the game’s narrative.

"Subjectivity of the First-Person Shooter" By Adam Slight

Lately I have rekindled my passion for N64’s Goldeneye 007, and since the semester is finally winding down I’m able to find more time to play, both the single player missions as well as some riveting multiplayer matches with James Leclaire. I haven’t appreciated Goldeneye 007 this much since 1997 when the game was released (that was more than 10 years ago!). I recall the attention surrounding the game and its close imitation of the 1995 film Goldeneye. I even re-viewed the film recently and notice precise similarities between spatial layouts of sets/levels, replicated gadgets, and close character details (I recall noticing the Alec Trevelyan character in the game wearing a gold ring on his “finger”).

Playing the game this morning (the facility level) I began to apply to Goldeneye 007 some ideas that I have previously explored. As you may or may not know, I have an escalating interest in the application of cinema (and in extension, video games) to various conceptions of “real life experience” a la Andre Bazin’s “Myth of Total Cinema”. In short, I’m close to comfortable stating that I don’t think Total Cinema (cinema as an attempt at an all-encompassing recreation of reality) is a myth at all. Without getting too divergent on this topic, I’d like to skip ahead a little.

The first person shooter genre is in my eyes a very important step on the path to Total Cinema. As the name implies, in the FPS the player is the “first person” to experience what the in-game character experiences. Alternatively, second-person implies a player address, like in text- based adventures (“You find yourself at a fork in the road. Do you turn right, or left?”), while the third-person perspective suggests the player as an omniscient controller of a visibly “other” character.

First-Person

Second-Person

Third-Person

Implicitly, the first-person perspective places the player within the in-game character. As I mentioned in my colloquium presentation on video-game sound experimentation, the first-person shooter allows the player a subjective experience parallel to the in-game character. If one wishes, they may refer to Bordwell and Thompson’s "Film Art" and their discussion on Perceptual and Mental Subjectivity in traditional cinema. Perceptual subjectivity is simple; the film gives “access to what characters see and hear”. A good example of this is the Point of View shot – the shot that first-person shooter permanently assumes. While in cinema, mental subjectivity is the use of stylistic devices to provide insight to what characters think, FPS’ often simply provide perceptual subjectivity to allow players to assume their own desired mental state. Obviously this is not always the case. In Goldeneye 007 for example, coloured bars appear at the sides of the screen upon character injury (a possible visual cue for “panic”). Similarly, N64’s Perfect Dark applies a trippy, blurred slo-mo effect when Joanna Dark gets punched or sedated.

In my colloquium presentation, I focused mostly on sonic subjectivity in the FPS. Using Call of Duty 3, I indicated to several examples where in-game sound is presented to the player using surround sound technology, subjective to the character's own experience. Environmental and diegetic sounds are heard in subjectivity to the direction that the character is facing, in effect to the acoustics and conditions of the setting. The best example I can present is the “ringing ears” effect, when all sounds are deafened by a constant ringing when a grenade explodes near the character.

While I may seem enthusiastic about the FPS’ subjectivity, there are some problems that I considered while playing Goldeneye 007 this morning. There are many limitations that have yet to be overcome by the FPS’ genre. Most of these limitations are based on player perspective. While it is interesting to consider the physical relationship that the player has with the character (the player physically exerts energy and muscle to push controller buttons in order to “physically” move the in-game character through virtual space) this process is still very crude. Here is a list of limitations that I immediately notice:

- The in-game character lacks peripheral vision. This may extend to the wide-screen cinema which arguably imitates a person’s field of vision. I noticed this as I was swiftly moving around a corner in The Facility, and was unable to quickly check a blind-spot for enemies (much like checking a blind-spot while driving)

- A player’s eyes are indefinitely disconnected from the character’s. Instead of forcing a relationship between gamers’ eyes and character eyes, the game creates a contract between gamer and game which encourages the gamer to assume and inspect the character’s presented field of vision. This problem introduces many other problems such as the quality of the gamers’ eyes, the difference between player depth of field and character’s depth of field etc.

- While recent developments in dual-analogue controls have rendered the character’s legs independent of the character’s waist (players can now move in one direction but pivot/point in a separate direction), independence of the character’s neck has yet to be brought into mainstream consideration. The character’s eyes are inherently connected to the direction that he/she is pointing their weapon. I have seen variations of temporary solutions to this, most of which assume a temporary third-person perspective. This unfortunately removes a level of subjectivity from the mix. I have also seen flight simulators which detach the eyes from the weapon, allowing the player to look from side-to-side within the cockpit.


While normally a first-person shooter, Quantum of Solace also uses a third-person cover system in order to detach the character's eyes from his gun

If anyone can think of other problems with the first-person perspective, or examples that overcome some of these problems, please let me know.

Wall-E: Semiotics and Junk...

While I’ve grown up with Pixar since Toy Story hit theaters, it wasn’t until The Incredibles that I began to discover the rich detail, preparation and thought that differentiates Pixar animated films with other subordinate computer animated productions. It was this affection for Pixar that prompted me to see Wall-E as soon as I could when it was released this summer, despite the fact that I had to go see it alone on a Friday night while my little sister was on a date elsewhere in the theater. After seeing it, a repeat viewing was in order.

Since, I have been attempting to organize precisely what it was that I wanted to say about the film. The ideas were present since my first screening, however I could not find the words to articulate them. It wasn’t until I revisited semiotic theory for the purposes of several assignments in an experimental film class that I’m taking did I figure out what it was I wanted to say. Wall-E is gushing with semiotic theory.

For some time in the past I worried, as our world has become more and more dependent on text due to digital technology. Films are stored on DVD or Blu-Ray and can only be seen on its respective player while Books are only readable with knowledge of language. The reason this worries me is due to an irrational expectation of apocalypse. A sentimentality towards culture leads me to fear that it will become inaccessible.

Wall-E uses the events of an apocalypse to explore semiotics precisely in this way. Since Wall-E is an ignorant a post-apocalyptic product, he is able to live in our world out of human context. Wall-E’s obsession with the tape of Hey Dolly! and the inclusion of an Ipod in his pile of trinkets draws attention to the relationship with medium that our culture has. Wall-E separates the signs of our world from their referents—which is a root of the comedy in the film. Wall-E’s ignorance of what a bra is makes the audience laugh. He puts a bra on his eyes! Wall-E!. The film deconstructs the signs of our world to their units of figurative secondary articulation (smallest possible units of no inherent meaning) and re-constructs them differently. For example, a garbage lid becomes a hat for Wall-E.

This process also attempts to make a statement about universality. Despite Wall-E’s ability to view our symbols without referent, some things such as love seem to be iconic or universal. Wall-E is able to recognize through imitation that his feelings for Eve coincide with the feelings felt by the characters in the tape of Hey Dolly! through the act of holding hands.

Stripped of the signs that the audience are accustomed to, the humans in Wall-E add another dimension of de-contextualization. The most striking instance of this is demonstrated by the captain of The Axiom. As he learns to walk (a first for his species for several centuries), the iconic theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey is heard, mirroring the scene when apes learn to use tools. This simple association demonstrates how something that we consider trivial (walking) is monumental for humanity during this time.

I feel I have merely scratched the surface of Wall-E’s semiotic content. I may feel compelled to explore this topic more when the film reaches DVD and I watch it over and over and over.

"The Dark Knight Rebuttal" by Ryan Bradley

Summer 2005. I walk out of a Batman Begins and want to slap Adam Slight in the face. How dare he make fun of the world’s greatest detective and my beloved Batman? Batman Begins reinvented a series that Joel Schumacher ran into the ground. For that alone Christopher Nolan should be applauded not to mention the fact he delivered perhaps the best superhero movie ever.

Summer 2008. I do in fact see the err of my ways and now accept some of the criticisms laid out by Adam. Batman Begins suffered from poor dialogued and some very dry scenes. The movie was not the perfect film that I once thought it to be. Nonetheless, it was still a decent comic book movie and has earned a deserved place in the superhero world along side the greats; Sin City, Spiderman 2, Batman Returns and Iron Man.

Despite my new found skepticism in this re-amped Batman franchise, I still looked forward to this The Dark Knight. Massive viral campaigning and what seemed like hundreds of trailers showing the same scenes in different orders were constantly thrown in my face. It looked amazing and it appeared that Heathy Boi (R.I.P!11!) was going to steal the show. When I saw the movie I was somehow surprised and even offended once again by Adam's review. Here we go again. Its him vs. the rest of the world – the nerds, the common movie goers and the newly found Ledger fans. Is he right? Was this movie garbage? Should people read his review and take the ravings of a madman as fact? Or Is The Dark Knight one of the greatest movies of the year? Does Heath Ledger deliver an Oscar rumored performance? Should you go out and add to the $158.4 million that this movie swept in over the past weekend?

The first attack by Mr. Slight is aimed at the soundtrack and quite frankly he mostly nails this one. The music is perhaps my greatest criticism of the movie as there are only two songs used. The movie is constantly intense and the viewer is always on edge of their seat especially in the second half of the film. Track 2 :“This Part Is Very Exciting” unnecessarily adds to the already nerve racking intensity of the film to a point where it becomes annoying. You feel like you cannot enjoy the movie at many points because that grinding song is continually playing. Track 1: “This Part Is Very Sad” is meant to be a relief from the only other song in the movie. If anything this song may be the reason that we will not see a Brokeback Mountain 2 because a certain star could not take hearing it anymore. It seemed to be played on loop just at a lower level than Track 2 so whenever Batman was not in the picture this is all you hear.

Let us now turn our attention to the acting which I do have some problems with. I could not help but wish that Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent both got blown to millions of little pieces. I think that I showed more emotion during Princess Diaries 2 after the third time watching it. This lack of emotion was only compounded further by having some of the cheesiest and driest dialogue in what was otherwise a cleverly written movie. Nevertheless, the other characters in the movie were pulled off well while Heath Ledger lead the way. Ledger delivers the Joker in a way that I would never expected. He was tortured and torturing at the same time. Intense and scary as hell. That being said, I do not think that at the end the 5 minute Oscars montage of his mediocre movies that he should be awarded as best actor. Adam is correct - he was great but not worth digging the poor guy up for. Do not forget that we saw Sarah Jessica Parker deliver an amazing performance in this summer’s Sex and The City and she is still in the land of the living.

The final issue with this film is linked to the length, although my view on it differs SLIGHTly from Adam’s. This movie was one of the darkest and most intense movies that I have ever seen in theaters. 2 hours in, I needed a break but it continued for another 30mins. I was trying to take everything in but the length hindered me from doing so. I needed a break, not because of uninspired and bland cinematography but because the movie was so good at keeping me involved in the film. The second half of the movie is in no way like a bad case of diarrhea - unless you get diarrhea whenever you are completed drawn into a movie and never want to take your eyes off the screen. The second half is aesthetically and cinematically inspired and is definitely what could make it the best movie of the year.

The themes and ironies are in evident in this movie but it is in no way as evident and annoying as the repetition of the Fear theme in Batman Begins. All superhero movies have these themes tossed in your face which is necessary to stay true to comic book criteria. Justice and forbidden love are mixed in with the moral ambiguity in manner than it is not repetitive, not easily noticed and not annoying (Unless of course you are the Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End lover Adam Slight).
This movie was excellently executed. Great story, a much better script than Batman Begins, interesting set and costume design, amazing characters and some decent acting – all combine to create a dark and intense movie experience that I have never felt at the movies before. This being said there are some flaws with this film and perhaps it was not exactly the masterpiece that most claim it to be. It was still a great movie and in a year that has not been the best for stellar films The Dark Knight is among the top. It is highly unlikely that you will want your evening back but see it for yourself. Don’t accept this to be a masterpiece until you have thought about it. Ignore the blogs, critics and any chump that tries to tell you that you are an idiot for hating or loving a movie.

"The Dark Knight Review" or "The Friday Night I'll Never Get Back" by Adam Slight

As many have known in the past, when Batman Begins came out I was one of the few people in the world who didn’t like it. For the longest time I fought an exhaustive crusade defending my tastes and position from Batman zealots and radicals. After the dust had settled the trailer for The Dark Knight hit the screens. The funny thing about trailers is that they are designed to make movies very appealing. I thought, “This is nice, The Dark Knight looks a lot better than Batman Begins”. With that thought in mind I decided to revisit Batman Begins with an open mind after all these years in hopes that I could find it in myself to enjoy the movie. Upon reviewing Batman Begins I was able to set aside my previous hatred and enjoy the film as a flawed, but above-average superhero film. I’d put Batman Begins, Spiderman 1&2 and X-2 on the top of the superhero movie food-chain.

So with this new open-mindedness towards the Batman reboot franchise I was growing quite excited for The Dark Knight. The film was treated to astronomical reviews and Heath Ledger’s performance has been heavily decorated for the past few months. I had been assured that this was the movie to see. Last Friday evening I saw The Dark Knight and to put it frankly I wish I could have my Friday evening back.

While I’m normally not a fan of reviews or writing reviews, I feel it is important for me to state why I disliked The Dark Knight so much, as I am up against a world of crazies. I am often accused of having a bias against The Dark Knight, or even a closed mind. If The Dark Knight was really such a masterpiece I think it would be very difficult for me to sustain a closed mind, especially considering the positive expectations I’ve had since the beginning. I tried to like this movie, and trying wasn’t enough.

So here is my review:

The Dark Knight essentially has two songs in the soundtrack: “This Part Is Very Sad” and “This Part is Very Exciting”. The film uses these two songs to instill emotions into the audience, emotions that the film otherwise doesn’t have. A moving soundtrack is a cheap trick that films with no emotional dynamics use to manipulate the audience’s heart-strings. In the case of The Dark Knight, music was used to compensate for the stale, emotionless dialogue being uttered by a predominantly stiff actors. I’m not just saying this. Watch Batman Begins, or re-watch The Dark Knight and actually look for this stuff. Its like being at a funeral for three hours.

One thing I’ll credit the movie for is the set and character design. Aesthetically everything -looked- cool: The Joker’s make-up, Batman’s costume, the towering skyline of Gotham. Unfortunately this rich set-design was wasted with extremely uninspired and bland cinematography. I can honestly say that I can’t remember half of what happened in that movie because so much happened in the same places, and the monotonous dialogue and cinematography gave me nothing memorable to distinguish scenes from each other. Remember, this is the movie whose first hour includes an almost completely unnecessary legal tirade involving a global chase for some accountant guy that really amounts to nothing. After an hour of legal banter in offices I felt like I could pass the bar exam. This hour of office chatter represents a fraction of the copious amounts of filler hot-air packed into this movie. And why do they have this filler in there, when the last hour of the movie is like a bad case of diarrhea: Its all over the place, and it just won’t stop. Ultimately the length of this movie made me feel like it was a long day at work and I just wanted it out of there.

I think the reason why a lot of people didn’t really get bothered by this was Heath Ledger. I’m not going to bash him too much. He was definitely an enjoyable entity in the movie however I’d only say his acting was above average. The thing is, when one or two critics start a chain reaction before long everyone is walking into the movie expecting to see the best performance of the decade. How bad does it look professionally when a critic decides to give a negative review when 90% of the industry is drinking Ledger’s clown piss from a golden chalice? With those kinds of expectations, the late Mr. Ledger has most of the audience eating out of his cold dead hands. He could go up on screen and fart the entire movie and people would love it. I thought he was great, but I don’t think it’s worth digging up his grave to stick an Oscar into his coffin.

Now for the biggest crime of them all: These Batman films simply love to latch onto certain themes and ironies and beat them to a living pulp. Like Batman Begins: OK! We know the theme of this movie is fear! Stop driving it into my skull. The Dark Knight was so obvious about the fact that yes, this movie is about moral ambiguity. We get it thank you. Additionally, The Dark Knight loves to play up the irony card. OMG – the villains are torturing their victims the way they were tortured! How clever! Oh look, its happening again and again and again…this is so dramatic! Repetition is a device this movie thrives on. Is this really the deep writing that critics are all crapping their pants over?

In the end the dramatic scenes were bland and emotionless and far too plentiful and the fighting scenes gave me seizures. This ocean of mediocrity dwarfs the few moments that I thought were actually cool, beautiful and intelligent. Its hard to see past all the clown make-up, but there you’ll see the cold and calculated gears of a movie designed for the sole purpose of tricking the audience into thinking the movie is a masterpiece.

Why do I think this and 99% of the world thinks the opposite? This is a battle I need to fight one inch at a time. If you haven't watched it yet, or plan on watching it again...please try to remember this review!

"Narrative vs. Spectacle 2: Son of Narrative vs. Spectacle" By Adam Slight

In regards to my previous article “Narrative vs. Spectacle: Mortal Combat” and Philip Decloux’s commentary “Narrative vs. Spectacle: Ph.D Chim-Chimes in Support of Speed Racer”, I wish to rephrase my stance as it may have been misinterpreted. Having never seen Speed Racer (which I still intend to see as soon as I can), I cannot claim to have a decent impression of its story or convention-bending visuals, nor was it my purpose make such claims. Neither was it my strict purpose to defend Pirates of the Caribbean 3 or any effect-heavy summer blockbusters for that matter. These were merely analogies to express my rhetorical opinion: Why does story/narrative in cinema matter so much? Why does story matter at all?

While subjective taste towards one movie or another could be argued endlessly, I would like to address Decloux’s assertion that cinema stands for “taking you out of your normal, everyday life and infusing it with concentrated suspense, romance, action, adventure, or comedy”. Decloux’s claim stands as an ideal starting block for the expansion of my original point. Decloux’s opinion is that quality cinema consists of a healthy balance of narrative structure and visual spectacle. While I agree that such a balance can result in strong cinema, I would disagree that strong cinema depends upon this formula.

When I suggest that one ignores a film’s narrative in favour of its aesthetic elements, let me not be misread. I am not suggesting one to mindlessly allow the film’s visuals to filter through their brains unchecked. What makes watching cinema different from reading books? A film’s technical and visual elements can be, and are often more-so, thoughtful than the actual narrative. Should we forget the “suspense, romance, action, adventure, or comedy” in a film’s formal elements in favour of narrative structure? A single shot has the potential to have more meaning than an entire 90 minutes worth of narrative.

And must we condemn a sequence just because it comes with a hefty price tag? Money does not create ideas. I think Evil Dead would look a lot like Spiderman if it had a $150 000 000 budget. A multi-million dollar blockbuster requires immense talent to form a polished finished product. The problem is that these talented people and products do not always mix well with each other. It can be rest assured that a multi-million dollar blockbuster such as Pirates 3 will have a talented editor, cinematographer etc. in order to gain trust from financial backers.

I use films such as Pirates 3 and Speed Racer as examples for the obvious gap between visual and narrative. However, this has seemed to restrict our dialogue to the realm the blockbuster. Afterall, “spectacle” does not have to pertain to high budget effect shots. It can merely be associated with the very “attraction” that a viewer has to the visual presentation of the film. This “attraction” has been written of by soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein as well as the previously referenced Tom Gunning. Similar to that of a carnival exhibition, this “attraction” is the fabric of the visual cinematic spectacle.

Frankly, I think that claiming cinema as an escapist medium belittles the power of motion picture. By lingering around mainstream summer blockbusters we have failed to address other aesthetic functions of cinema. As stated in my previous article, the early soviets used cinema’s purely visual characteristics as a means of indentifying the uneducated masses to the soviet cause. Direct Cinema and Cinema Verité provide cinematic means to their subjects to project their agency upon the viewer. The narratives of these films seem to take a backseat to visual language and/or revelation.

Aside from various forms of documentary, animation (traditional or computer generated), avant-garde and experimental film use film spectacle as a primary means of expression, whether narrative is present or not. And often the narrative does not bear the true crux of a film’s “message” but rather the true message lies within the films’ presentation.

One may argue however that without some (even minor) system of narrative to hold it together, a film would be nothing less than a chaos of visuals. I can draw upon two examples of films that use non-narrative forms of structural organization. For the most part Disney’s Fantasia replaces narrative, instead using music to organize the spectacle of the film. Similarly, Berlin: A Symphony of a Great City uses time of day to structure a visual cinematic meditation of Berlin.

Before I spiral deeper and deeper into what is becoming dangerously close to a rant, I think it is important to address that everyone has different expectations from a movie-going experience. This reflects in the many voices of mainstream critics. Benjamin Wright responded to my “Narrative vs. Spectacle: Mortal Combat” with a noteworthy paradox:“Syndicated film critics are, by and large, trained not in film but in English literature… They can only stand in awe of the visual kinetics or reject them entirely because aesthetic criticism has never been a foundational aspect in mainstream film criticism… The flip side to this coin of criticism is the academic critic. Your only shot at informed aesthetic commentary comes from "intellectual" critics, either film students or academic writers…The problem with many in this category is their rejection of commercial filmmaking in general. So even if you're looking for a thoughtful essay on Speed Racer, you won't find one from them, since they've already dismissed it as crass commercial product or insipid, uninspired Hollywood drivel.”

So in summary, mainstream cinema (such as Speed Racer) is narrowly limited to narrative-based criticism, and most who are trained to lend formally-based criticism to mainstream blockbusters are unwilling to do so. It is not to say that scholarly formal analysis of film is more important than mainstream textual criticism. The only issue here is that the narrative, textual side is given a lot more accessibility and therefore comes to be favoured by the public.

Ultimately, I think this public focus on narrative distracts audiences from other enriched aspects of the medium. While I can not disagree that balanced attention towards narrative and technical is very positive, I think that such a balance is also close to non-existent in the mainstream sphere.

When all is said and done, it is difficult to deny the connection that spectacle and narrative share. Spectacle predominantly requires some sort of context and cause to exist (often provided by narrative). Then to conclude, perhaps I would like to state it is not my purpose to deny the validity of narrative but to open a movie-viewing perspective in which narrative lacks importance. If the film still stinks after distancing story from the spectacle, I assume no responsibility.

"Narrative vs. Spectacle: Mortal Combat" By Adam Slight

Although I have yet to see Speed Racer I have noticed a common trend in its reviews. The line is divisive. On one side critics marvel at the film’s style and breaking of visual conventions. On the other side more critics simply long for a “good story”. Sometimes this can be an issue with me. Since when do movies need an in-depth story when it’s strong in its other departments?

We could blame history. Theorist Tom Gunning wrote that since 1906 cinema has increasingly been more focused on story over visual spectacle. It was in 1906 that the number of narrative-oriented films surpassed that of visually-focused film. These visual films had been able to stand on their own merely through display of images moving independently on a screen. At the time this spectacle was enough to keep audiences paying. And I bet most critics love that old stuff. So why not Speed Racer? Why is it that audience would pay for a purely visual spectacle then, but not now?

For that matter let’s use examples that I’m more familiar with. Last summer Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End hit the screens. While praised for its visuals the film widely flopped with critics due to a series of tedious and confusing plot twists. This makes me wonder when it was that pirate movies picked up the expectation to rival Shakespeare’s Macbeth? Instead of dwelling on where the film lacks, why not emphasize the film’s strengths. This scene in particular struck me as one of the most inventive and unique sequences I had ever seen in a summer blockbuster. It may not have made sense necessarily but it was executed very well. In fact the movie’s cinematography grabbed my attention for most of the film. Aside from the cinematography, the music was also noteworthy. In fact, there are plenty of elements that make up a film and yet story is most widely favoured by audiences.

But I suppose one could argue that as a summer blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean 3 should have a balance between story and visual as to not isolate audience. This privileging of narrative has plagued technical cinema for decades. Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) dealt with similar criticisms. Vertov felt that by seeing the world through the eye of a camera lens, the masses could achieve a higher understanding of the world they live in resulting in political revolution. Vertov avoided narrative and fiction in his films as they were bourgeois notions. Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera was meant to mobilize the masses through the stylized representation of Russian workers. Instead, some critics felt that the “flashing of images was exhausting”.

Perhaps it can be argued that films dependent on visual spectacle should be short and sweet. After all, Pirates clocks in at 168 minutes and Man With a Movie Camera (which depends strictly on visuals) clocks in at 80 minutes. With no rest in sight it is understandable how one may have trouble sitting through these films without narrative tension driving them forward.But I’m not letting narrative off that easily.

I’m sure everyone has at least one friend who can not sit through a film without pointing out every plot hole that he or she may find. You may be watching a generally solid film with your disbelief relatively suspended by the plot, yet your friend refuses to submit. It is my own personal theory that these people refuse to allow the suspension of their disbelief in an insecure attempt to appear better or smarter than the logic of the film. Not that I condemn the heckling of a movie. I’m talking about extreme cases here.

What these people fail to grasp is that the film itself relies on such discrepancies and trickery to exist. This not only applies to narrative but also to other formal elements. First off, a film’s narrative can never be completely coherent. As a construction at the hands of a writer, a film’s narrative will always be fundamentally flawed. The audience has an advantage of viewing the events of a film’s narrative at a distance, making it easier to criticize the events and actions of the film. With this in mind, I think it is important to quickly identify what a film is going for and not resist the suspension of disbelief. After all, the visual presentation of a film also relies on audiences to submit to illusion. One easily forgets that the motion that is perceived as cinema relies on the viewer’s eyes to fail in distinguishing all 24 frames that a film presents each second. Do people feel the need to point that out every time they see a movie?

I think that people are conditioned to pay more attention to the story of a film. Not only have we been presented with narrative cinema our entire lives, but the history of narrative surpasses that of cinema by millennia. It isn’t a surprise that film has stepped up to the plate as a vehicle for story and narrative. We see the same thing happening to video games. Games that once relied entirely on game play now adopt narrative structures. For example, this is evident in the Super Smash Bros. which, with every installment, incorporates more and more storytelling elements.

We can’t forget about the purely visual aspect of cinema which originally defined the medium. There is an importance in occasionally distancing story and visual in an attempt to appreciate the spectacle. There is validity in Vertov’s desire to avoid narrative. Our culture’s emphasis on “good story” (which can be considered bourgeois…if you want) eclipses the important social functions of cinema. We more often look at films in hopes of having a good time, when often the function of cinema is the opposite.

Aside from that though, can’t we all agree that it can be fun to just go to a theater, turn our brains off, smile at the pretty lights and maybe forget about those undesirable plot twists.