"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.