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.