The Shocking State of Present Narrative Styling

The Godfather, often considered one of history’s greatest movies, with a complex but elegant plot it serves as a true showing of impressive story structure.  In contrast Saturday Night Live may well be among the causes of the destruction of quality narratives.  NBC’s Saturday Night Live has, to its credit, been a springboard for comedic careers since its inception in 1975, but perhaps its most impressive legacy is the popularization of sketch based comedy through the medium of television.  The idea of sketch based comedy is the antithesis of narrative story arcs, with most sketches being brief jabs at aspects of society.  It is this lack of continuity in story and narrative that that Rushkoff posits, has caused “television to lose its ability to tell stories over time” (Rushkoff 22).  Among the more popular of sketch comedy series in the modern era are South Park, Family guy, and Key and Peele, all of which have done some degree of harm to the narrative traditions of movies like the Godfather.

              Both Family Guy and South Park represent a half hour (commercials included) of content, with a story.  But the important thing to note is that the episodes are largely contained, with each one having a relatively limited story arc. The typical episode will contain a heavily condensed and simplified version of the hero’s journey, but will run very quickly through the individual parts and at points somewhat or entirely disregarding the journey to interject a cultural reference of negligible importance to what plot may exist.  Though it is still important to note, as it will be contrasted to later, the fact that there is a continuity in the way characters are portrayed, as they maintain the same physical and character traits.  This sort of construction, with a haphazard creation of background to the story creates what Rushkoff refers to as “something more like putting together a puzzle by making connections and recognizing patterns” than an actual narrative system (34).

              Though even this sort of partial narrative is more than exists in a true sketch comedy like Key and Peele.  This Comedy Central show saw a massive degree of success both critically and commercially.  The show however was still entirely sketch based.  Sketches could be five minutes long, or just over a minute.  In a sketch with only one minute of story there was almost no room to create any sort of arc. The steps of a hero’s journey are almost entirely eliminated, and substituted by the minimum aspects required for people to understand or laugh at jokes.  Background, and setting have to be judged by the audience member in the fractions of seconds before the dialogue starts off.  In the next few seconds the audience must quickly evaluate the characters who begin to talk, who the characters may be satirizing, and what relationship they may have to each other.  And so on with every few seconds the audience having to switch mental focus.  That in and of itself yields weight to the fixation on presentism, as all parts are rapid fire, giving little time for the audience’s minds to access the broader implications of the sketch.  But the other aspect of sketch shows that further reinforces presentism is the episode structure.  There is not one sketch per episode.  There is not a consistent set of characters.  There is often not a single aspect shared between one sketch and the next.  This type of episode structure is in sharp contrast to the way in which South Park, or Family Guy would function.  With this sort of self contained sketches rather than just self contained episodes, the problems posed by Family Guy and South Park like shows are only magnified by the condensed time format.

              To conclude, the ability to convey narratives and stories is under assault.  With ever more condensed and presentist shows taking more of the public’s attention it seems that stories and shows with defined beginnings middles and ends are becoming less and less important.  With that it seems clear that our culture has become all the more susceptible to Present Shock.

Rushkoff, Douglass. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Penguin, 2013. Print.

An Ernest Appraisal of Style

            In a Movable Feast Hemingway presents an important insight into his style of writing, and how those elements of style can engross the reader in a story.  The most striking elements of Hemingway's style were the subtle uses of second person, and the vivid imagery.  The latter of the two is prevalent whenever Hemingway writes about someone or something.  Every initial interaction he has with an artist or author within the novel begins approximately the same way.  The first step in Hemingway's description is of the individuals is the physical features, which Hemingway describes in great detail, integrating similes, and other devices to enable the reader to see the situations and people just as he remembered them.  The descriptions then generally move to focus on the character of a person.  This element of Hemingway's description paints as in depth of a picture of the person as his description of their physical features, but rounds out a holistic view of the individual by including Hemingway's memory of how the person acted.  Together the descriptions leave little to the minds of the reader which reveals how this element of Hemingway's style allows for the people he portrays to be seen nearly uniformly in the minds of all the readers.

            Perhaps a greater element of Hemingway's style is the use of second person.  The novel is largely written in the first person, as to be expected since it is effectively a memoir.  However, portions of the book subtly integrate second person.  Hemingway explains gambling’s impact on his financial situation by stating,

“But we had made plenty of money, big money for us, and now we had spring and money too. I thought that was all we needed. A day like that one, if you split the winnings one quarter for each to spend, left a half for racing capital. I kept the racing capital secret and apart from all other capital” (Hemingway 59).

It is easy to miss the use of “you” in the excerpt, but its impact as an element of style is present whether you recognize its presence or not.  That impact being a subtle shift in the mindset of the reader, making him or her feel more like a part of the story, rather than just an outsider looking in.

            In conclusion the reasoning behind reading this book was to see a stellar example of the ways in which writing style can impact the way a reader perceives the characters within a novel, and how style can help draw a reader into a story.

Works cited

Hemingway, Ernest.  A Moveable Feast. New York: Scribner, 2009. Print.