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July 1995, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
"Mark C. Pizzato 690-6907" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 7 Jul 1995 10:03:51 -0600
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Re: Non-diegetic narrator/chorus
 
I agree with Don Larsson that the diegetic world of film or theater is
constructed by the viewer--as well as by the performers, directors, and
and different technological devices.  But I don't think a clear cut distinction
can be made between "mimetic" and "diegetic" in film, the way Aristotle tries to
do with ancient Greek theater, as imitation vs. story-telling.  Doesn't film
tell its story primarily through mimetic images?  Even the most "narrative" film
relies on theatrical performance to create its diegesis, no?
 
Still, the narrator/chorus comparisons Don makes, between certain films and
plays, are very interesting.  Another good example would be EQUUS: onstage the
chorus plays a crucial (Nietzschean) role, acoustically and visually, in evoking
the passions of the scene.   How is this done in the film version?  By the
sound-track, odd camera angles, tinted scenes...?
 
Such devices "tell" the story  emotionally--even though the psychiatrist Dysart
narrates much of it verbally (sometimes as VO in the film).  Is Burton's Dysart
non-diegetic when he tells the story to the audience directly (or in VO),
becoming a narrator-chorus in those moments, instead of just a character in the
mimesis?  As in the OUR TOWN example Don Larsson gave, the stage Dysart
functions as both narrator and character.  This, in fact, shows his dilemma: to
join in the passionate Equus chorus or analyze at a psychiatric distance.
 
Perhaps this illustrates two ways, or different directions in which, such
non-diegetic, non-mimetic devices and figures shape the audience's
reconstruction of the diegetic scene, onstage/onscreen: 1) emotionally or 2)
conceptually.  At certain moments, Burton's Dysart does both, but his function
is more to explain--like the narrator figure which developed out of the Greek
chorus in theater.
 
Theater itself developed out of a narrative chorus, according to Aristotle.  But
as Nietzsche stressed, that dithyrambic chorus was also Dionysian, i.e. a
passionate lens shaping the audience perception of the scene onstage.  Might we
make a similar distinction between Apollonian/Brechtian (more conceptually
narrative or interjective) and Dionysian/Artaudian (more passionately choral or
disruptive) devices and figures in film, which are "extra-diegetic," yet shape
the diegesis?
 
I hope other interested voice will join this conversation, too.
 
Mark Pizzato
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