Hic sunt leones.
Exploring the limits of contemporary film and TV storytelling 5
Extreme Storytelling
Daniel IFTENE
Hic sunt leones. Exploring the limits
of contemporary film and TV storytelling
In the last two decades, various filmmakers have challenged their audiences and
the definition of “classic” narrative in cinema and television. With their new ways
of approaching audiovisual storytelling, films like Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction
(1994), Tom Tykwer’s Run, Lola, Run (2006), Cristopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) and
Inception (2010), Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel (2006), Michel Gondry’s Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2006), Gaspar Noé’s, Irreversible (2002), David Lynch’s
Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Dr. (2000) or Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac
(2013) stirred the interest of other writers, directors, viewers and researchers, equally
intrigued by the causes and the effects of these extreme narratives.
Some film theorists never saw these transformations as groundbreaking as
the authors claimed them to be, interpreting them as mere variations on classical
Hollywood storytelling (David Bordwell, 2006). Others read these approaches as a
way to organize the late modernist excess on subjective or schismatic temporality,
thus creating only more conservative modular narratives (Allan Cameron, 2008).
Meanwhile others praised the engagement of the audience in a complex adventure
of puzzle-solving, thus transforming film consumption into a game-like endeavor
(Warren Buckland, 2009).
Just as these three approaches have de-
fined the debate, and many of these films have
created their own special place in the contem-
Daniel IFTENE porary film canon, new production and distri-
Babeş-Bolyai University
bution opportunities have sparked the inter-
email: [email protected] est in other approaches on storytelling in cin-
ema and television, with an increased atten-
EKPHRASIS, 1/2016 tion to the mechanics of TV series narratives.
EXTREME STORYTELLING The amazing and undisputed success of con-
pp. 5-8 temporary television productions like Six Feet
6 Daniel IFTENE
Under (HBO, 2001-2005), The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007), Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008-
2013), True Detective (HBO, 2014-), Mad Men (AMC, 2007-2015), Lost (ABC, 2004-2010),
Downtown Abbey (ITV/PBS, 2010-2015), Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-) (to name just
a few) re-ignited the interest in serialized products and also transgressed the lim-
its of what we knew as television. Thus, television series and the mechanism of to-
day’s television production have become some of the main interests of media and
film scholars also due to the effects they have on mass-audiences and the immediate
response they elicit. Moreover, the traditional serialization process is seriously chal-
lenged by contemporary consumption practices like Netflix, Amazon and other such
platforms, with a subsequent rise in the narrative complexity of TV productions.
On the other hand, interactive movies, micro-movies, collective online productions
or database features are considered cutting-edge storytelling made possible by
today’s technical advancements. Seen as defining elements of “the third screen (…)
the screen after the TV and computer” (Crow, Longford, Sawchuk), micro-movies are
becoming cultural forms all over the world, having their own festivals and events,
like Nottingham International Microfilm Festival or Beijing International Micro Film
Festival. Closely related to game narrative strategies of participation governed by the
viewer-to-user dynamics, the interactive movies and database documentaries and
features are still a novelty that challenges both practitioners and theorists (see Göbel,
Malkewitz, Iurgel, 2006). The Source (Doug Aitken, 2012), I Love Your Work (Jonathan
Harris, 2013), Reinvention Stories (Julia Reichter, Steven Bognar, 2013), and ROME.
3 Dreams of Black (Chris Milk, 20011) scout the possibilities of interactive and
immersive online audiovisual experiences, exploring transmediality.
At the other end, technical developments also enabled audaciously choreographed
extreme one-take movies like Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002), Iñárritu’s
Birdman (2014) or Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria (2015), which that seem to overthrow
the fragmentation and instability that mark many of the post-modern narratives in
audiovisual formats.
Do all these stand as a narrative turn in contemporary cinema and TV series or are
they just individual experiments with storytelling? What are the major determinants
of these plays upon the narrative form? Are they social, political, technological,
industrial? How is the audience engaged by such stories? These are just some of the
questions that the contributors to this Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media try to
answer.
In the first section of this issue, Doru Pop looks at the way contemporary television
practices of production and consumption, and the mechanisms of televisuality have
radically changed following a habit loop of recycling and replaying. Looking at
various TV shows broadcasted in the past years, from Sex and the City to Californication
and Shameless, and from Desperate Housewives to Army Wives, the author states that the
repetitive nature and lack of originality of many of today’s television programs added
to the over-sexualization of television are parts of the contemporary promiscuous
Hic sunt leones. Exploring the limits of contemporary film and TV storytelling 7
culture, leading to what he defines as promiscuous narratives. More than that, the
frequent reuse and remix of the same formulas have enthroned televisual promiscuity.
Sticking to contemporary television, Sânziana Șerbănescu searches for the recycled
prefabs in Mad Men television series, as products of popular culture, and also the
creative and innovative strategies used throughout the series. The study focuses on
the defining characteristics of transmediality and proves that the mentioned television
program is both internally and externally governed by its laws while appealing to
myths and their memetic capabilities.
Still looking for particular mechanisms of contemporary TV series, the author of
this introduction chooses the phenomenon of cult television production and reception
by analyzing the en vogue FX production American Horror Story. The study follows the
politics of hyper-sexualization and pornification of contemporary society and culture
and the way in which they are inscribed in this particular series, and also the way
these transformations have become defining traits of some pieces of contemporary
cult television. For a complete overview, it also scrutinizes the residual abilities of
the re-mixed horror tropes and various types of sexual of monstrosity, by looking at
several communities created around the show on various social media platforms.
In the second section, Damon Blalack studies the provoking phenomenon of fan-
edits, with respect to what it means to film production, ownership and response. As
an effect of democratization of filmmaking in the digital era, fan-edits became new
means of adaptation of consecrated filmic texts and also of introducing important
features of film history to contemporary audiences. The author explores what can
be gained and lost through this unusual process of adaptation, as well as the tension
between the fan-edit culture and the still dominant auteur’s authority in cinema.
Fragmented narratives are the starting point of Alice Teodorescu’s view on the
work of famous Japanese director Satoshi Kon. Starting from the quoted approaches
on the modular and database narratives, the author states that all these operate in
Kon’s animated films in order to translate “doubles, public and private, real and
virtual, real and dream, identity and alter-ego”. These aspects become the setting of
the fantasyscape of Satoshi Kon and the narrative strategies that he uses ensure the
most appropriate context for the fantastic entertainment experience.
The third section looks for stances of extreme storytelling again in the Japanese
film production as Ana Dosen and Luiza-Maria Filimon address the works of Hitoshi
Matsumoto, respectively Seiji Mizushima.
At Dosen, Matsumoto brings the bizarre grounded in both the cultural and the
technological in the provoking structure of Symbol (2009). As noted by the author, the
unconventional structure of this particular Japanese film played, written and directed
by Matsumoto dwells in the traditional practices of narrating nansensu, as well as
those of the benshi. All these are conducted to the use of the director’s micro-narratives
and the film’s meta-narrative, as the film transforms, in the author’s opinion, in an
extremely contemporary work due to the appeal to fragmented experiences.
8 Daniel IFTENE
The narrative-politics relation is the main focus of Luiza-Maria Filimon’s study on
Mizushima’s Concrete Revolutio anime series. For the author, by opposing the frequent
variations of other animated films, the series has a “syncretic structure due to the
multitude of ideas and various subsets of socio-political implications as well as due
to its American influence”. Filimon considers the socio-political, military and ethical
implications of the series outlining the links to actual events from the past decades of
Japanese and international history that are re-addressed throughout the series.
In the final section, Călina Părău explores the tensions between “what cannot be
undone and what is there left to be undone” in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s films, looking
at the Russian filmmaker’s “wasteland” through the glass of the narratives of the Fall.
Furthermore, through works by Eliade and by Ricoeur, the author scrutinizes the
power of the inhuman eye of the machine that governs Zvyagintsev’s work, lending a
mythological quality to the Real.
Trauma and anamnesis sublimated by media are the main concern of Cătălina
Botez’s study on the portrait documentary that René Frölke dedicated to Norman
Manea. Starting from Le Beau Danger (2014), the author argues that transmediality
can be used to re-contextualize and augment Manea’s literary message, and that
autofiction mediated by film is a powerful tool of circulating individual memory.
Furthermore, the author approaches the strategies that the German director uses
for the transformation of “the written text into readable images” in this provoking
documentary that starts from Foucault’s aesthetic peril and follows multiple traumatic
experiences.
As it derives from all the above described works, exploring the extremities of
contemporary television and film narrative strategies is both an intriguing and
adventurous experience. There is still much to discover on the map in order to
understand how the “storytelling animal” (Gottschall, 2012) shapes and consume the
stories in these latter days.
References
1. BORDWELL, David. The Way Hollywood Tells it: Story and Style in Modern Movies. University
of California Press. 2006.
2. BUCKLAND, Warren (ed.). Puzzle Films. Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Wiley-
Blackwell. 2009
3. CAMERON, Allan. Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema. Palgrave MacMillan. 2008.
4. CROW, Barbara, Michael Longford, Kim Sawchuk (eds.). The Wireless Spectrum. The Politics,
Practices and Poetics of Mobile Media. University of Toronto Press. 2010.
5. GÖBEL, Stefan, Rainer Malkewitz, Ido Iurgel (eds.). Technologies for Interactive Digital
Storytelling and Entertainment. Berlin: Springer. 2006.
6. GOTTSCHALL, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal. How Stories Make Us Human. New York:
First Mariner Books. 2012.
