Non-linear Narratives in the Hollywood Cinema - Article Example

Non-linear Narratives in the Hollywood Cinema Institution Name Date Non-linear narrative structures in Hollywood cinema Non-linear narrative in the artistic production has been an increasing feature in the 21st century in works such as film, fiction, drama, music, and digital forms among others. A non-linear narrative is where the events in the story are revealed in a manner that the information that the audiences receive is carefully controlled. The revelations of the scenes are controlled by the screenwriter who manipulates the audiences by choosing what and when to reveal the most important aspects of the story. One of the challenges of non-linear narrative is in the ability to put together disjointed images and secondary visuals. However the main feature is that one story can be explained following several paths which all lead to the end (Hally, 2011). In the era of Classical narratives in Hollywood cinema, filmmakers were only using flashback as the primary non-linear narrative technique. Some of the people who dominantly used flashback include Akira Kurosawa in his Rashomo film where he explored an incident of murder and rape relying on the perspectives and flashback of the witnesses. Each group of witnesses ended up having a different interpretation of the story. Flashbacks are however not effective tools for use in telling a story on the film but they can be used to achieve cohesive and chronological series of events in the films (Robert, 2002). The non-linear narrative structure challenges the conventional rules of constructing the plot of the story and breaks the notion that the scenes in a film must advance in a chronological order from the start until it reaches the climax. The nonlinear structure deconstructs a character, a situation or a complicated event and creates a new arrangement of time for the purpose of the theme. This rearrangement makes storytelling to be more compelling that it could have been if the scenes progressed in a chronological order. In this unconventional structure, the viewers are able to understand the film by connecting the cause and effect between the scenes (Cowgill, 2003). Therefore in the nonlinear films, the relationship that is usually created between the different time sections crates a specific meaning when all the sections are taken all together. For example in I forgot to remember to forget by James Nick, one cannot state the beginning, the middle and the end. However the various paths taken by the story all lead to an ultimate end (James, 2004). The tremendous development in non-linear narratives that has taken place in the 21st century has been fuelled by the non-linear editing and computer programs. Cinematic story telling which is computer based help in the production of the non-linear narrative structures. The sounds, the cuts and the disjointed elements in the non-linear narrative structures offer the viewers with several opportunities to comprehend the story according to his/her own thinking. It makes the viewer aware that apart from how the story is being presented, there are other possible versions of the same story. Changes in technology are one of the factors driving the changes in film production and the general media consumption in Hollywood. Media consumers prefer the interactive productions even in the televisions. Computer applications have however contributed to the interaction productions in the televisions. The shooting, manipulative and driving nature of the electronic games has highly contributed to the production of interactive television and generally in the non-linear narratives. Various games are being produced with stronger components of the story and use this content to draw the participants into deeper involvement with the characters in the story. Just like the non-linear narratives, there are several paths to the ending in the computer games where you either win or lose (Brooks, 2003). Story telling through novels or films applies the same technology where the story teller acts as the guide and has the role of bringing the audience into a participatory state. Technology has made it possible for non-linear narrative not to portray a static picture of the story but one which can take endless paths (Kroeber, 1992). Film producers are giving much attention to technological factors such as the computer systems, graphics, and design applications among others. This has however contributed to the recent trends of non-linear productions which employ interactive technology which is the choice of consumers (Bolin, 2007). Globalization has also played a part in the proliferation of non-linear narrative structures. Sometimes at the end of the 20th century, non-linear narrative structures were not the favorite for most artists. However during the start of the 21st century, it gained some attention with films such as Pulp Fiction and Magnolia pushing it to the mainstream. As time progressed in the 21st century, the world had agreed that non-linear narratives are the way in the complex global world with most artists in Hollywood having abandoned the classical narrative structures. With the haphazard human interactions activities in the increasing world cities seemed best dealt with in the non-linear pattern. In other words, the disorderliness that came with globalization also changed the manner in which films could appear so that they can fit with the global trends (Hoad, 2012). Basically, this is the form of artistic production that has been taking place in Hollywood in the 21st century with most of the films ceasing to be character-centered. An example is the film Inception produced by Christopher Nolan. In this movie, the producer keeps the audiences active in the entire narrative. He used exposition where he wanted to keep the audiences engaged to the drama. According to Bordwell & Thompson (2010), the implication of this is to make the audiences get involved in the plot of the story through new information from the characters and becoming attached to them as they work through the plot. This may seem to dissatisfy most viewers but it forces them to understand how the plot is unfolding. There are various categories of non-linear narratives which have been defined by Allan Cameron. These are anachronic, forking-path, episodic and split-screen narratives (Cameron, 2008). The anachronic narratives are characterized by flashbacks and flash-forwards and are the most common form of narrative in the modern times cinema. Flashbacks have however been in used even in the early 1940s but the modern films have modified their use by making them dominate the majority part of the film. Fork-path narratives are characterized by showing different outcomes which arise from small changes in a single or several events. The modularity of these narratives occurs at the level of the story instead of at the level of the plot and represents mutually exclusive realities. Episodic narratives are defined as structures that critically weaken or disable the causal connections of classical narratives (Cameron, 2008, p 10). They are divided into abstract series which use non-narrative structure that determines the organization of the elements in the film and narrative anthology which are multi stranded narratives which are disconnected but sharing the same diegetic space. Split screen narratives divide the screen into several frames adjacent concurrent events within the same visual area (Lewis, 2010). Allan Cameron’s categories of non-linear narratives have however been used in various media in the 21st century. One of the contemporary films that have used anachronic narrative structures is the Eternal Sunshine which has modified classical flashback structures by abandoning the initial temporality of the narrative and maintaining flashback for the major part of the film. Eternal Sunshine has shown that absence of temporal distance and also the symbolic and temporal framework shadows the boundaries between the present and the past and also risks compulsion of repetition at both the individual and collective memory process (Jess-Cook, 2007). An example of the forking path structure has been used in The Blind Chance which has three episodes which concerns a young medical student Witek Dlugosz who faces various obstacles in the politically volatile period of the late 1970s. The film revolves around the scenes where Witek misses his train; his current lover who was waiting at the station loses interest and convinces Witek to pursue a career in medicine. Finally he succumbs to the wishes of his dead father by dedicating his life to his wife, his child and to his work in medicine (Diffrient, 2006). The forking path structure in this film has been described by David Bordwell as a cynical structure which he states that it privileges the final future where the three ended up in an aircraft explosion. Bordwell argues that the divergent paths taken in these scenes conform to a strict line of cause and effect without branching the initial fork. He also points out the “primacy effect” where the first episode shaping what the spectator expects in the episode that follows and the “recency effect” in the last episode which alters the spectators understanding of what had happened before. The Blind Chance is an example of a forking-path category of non-linear narratives with well marked and linear scenes, unified with each other and ordered sequentially to produce the final path (Branigan, 2002). Split-screen narrative has been used in the music video by Michael Jackson in his song Billie Jean where several freeze frames are portrayed in a split screen. This technique has also been used by video and film director Michel Gondry. Cibo Matto (1996) has also used the technique where one side of the screen portrays a video being played in the normal way while the other side of the screen shows the same video being played backwards. In film production, it has been used in Timecode (2000) which is directed by Mike Figgis. This film consists of four screens each depicting a particular character in the narrative (Ingrassia, 2009). Non-linear narrative strictures have therefore tried to incorporate various aspects of the modern technology and are therefore attracting a number of media consumers. With further changes in technology, it is expected that production of non-linear narratives will become easier and will be adopted by more filmmakers. This form of art is also become the dominant feature in Hollywood’s film industry as more artists are considering producing their pieces in form of non-linear structures. Technology has also changed the preferences of the viewers with most of them wanting interactive productions as they experience in the televisions and the computer games (Bordwell, 2002). References Bolin, G. (2007). Media technologies, Transmedia Storytelling and Commodification. Sweden: echnocult.se. Bordwell, D. & Thompson, K. (2010). Inception; or Dream a Little Dream with Me, Observations on Film Art. Retrieved on 30th October 2012 from http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=9770 Cameron, A. (2008). Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema. Palgrave MacMillan, New York. James, N. (2004). I Forgot to Remember to Forget. Sight and Sound. 14, 5, 14-18. Bordwell, D. (2002). "Film futures," SubStance, Vol. 31, no. 1: 88-104. Branigan, E. (2002). Nearly True: Forking plots, Forking interpretations: A response to Favid Bordwell’s “Film Features”. SubStance 31.1:105-114. Brooks, K. (2003). Navigating Context for Non-linear Narrativ. Lisbon: Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias Cowgill, L. (2003). Non-linear narratives: the ultimate in time travel. Retrieved on 30th October 2012 from http://www.plotsinc.com/sitenew/column_art_02.html Diffrient, D. (2006). Alternate futures, contradictory pasts: Forking paths and cubist narratives in contemporary film. Retrieved on 30th October 2012 from http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/20/alternate-futures.html Hally, J. (2011). Linear storytelling and non-linear narrative. Retrieved on 30th October 2012 from http://suite101.com/article/linear-storytelling-and-non-linear-narrative-a327242 Hoad, P. (2012). Whatever happened to non-linear films? Retrieved on 31st October 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/mar/21/non-linear-film-narrative-contraband Ingrassia, P. (2009).The split-screen aesthetic: connecting meaning between fragmented frames. A thesis submitted in Montana State University. Jess-Cook, C. (2007). Narrative and Mediatized Memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Scope. 8, University of Nottingham, (online journal).Retrieved from http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/index.php Kroeber, K. (1992). Retelling/Rereading - The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Lewis, L. (2010). Further research into the use of split screens in the media industry. Retrieved on 31st October 2012 from http://lauralewisa2media.blogspot.com/2010/09/further- research-into-use-of-split.html Robert, E. (2002). "Persistent ambiguity and moral responsibility in Rashomon," in Kevin L. Stoehr, ed., Film and knowledge: essays on the integration of images and ideas. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. Read More

Film producers are giving much attention to technological factors such as the computer systems, graphics, and design applications among others. This has however contributed to the recent trends of non-linear productions which employ interactive technology which is the choice of consumers (Bolin, 2007). Globalization has also played a part in the proliferation of non-linear narrative structures. Sometimes at the end of the 20th century, non-linear narrative structures were not the favorite for most artists.

However during the start of the 21st century, it gained some attention with films such as Pulp Fiction and Magnolia pushing it to the mainstream. As time progressed in the 21st century, the world had agreed that non-linear narratives are the way in the complex global world with most artists in Hollywood having abandoned the classical narrative structures. With the haphazard human interactions activities in the increasing world cities seemed best dealt with in the non-linear pattern. In other words, the disorderliness that came with globalization also changed the manner in which films could appear so that they can fit with the global trends (Hoad, 2012).

Basically, this is the form of artistic production that has been taking place in Hollywood in the 21st century with most of the films ceasing to be character-centered. An example is the film Inception produced by Christopher Nolan. In this movie, the producer keeps the audiences active in the entire narrative. He used exposition where he wanted to keep the audiences engaged to the drama. According to Bordwell & Thompson (2010), the implication of this is to make the audiences get involved in the plot of the story through new information from the characters and becoming attached to them as they work through the plot.

This may seem to dissatisfy most viewers but it forces them to understand how the plot is unfolding. There are various categories of non-linear narratives which have been defined by Allan Cameron. These are anachronic, forking-path, episodic and split-screen narratives (Cameron, 2008). The anachronic narratives are characterized by flashbacks and flash-forwards and are the most common form of narrative in the modern times cinema. Flashbacks have however been in used even in the early 1940s but the modern films have modified their use by making them dominate the majority part of the film.

Fork-path narratives are characterized by showing different outcomes which arise from small changes in a single or several events. The modularity of these narratives occurs at the level of the story instead of at the level of the plot and represents mutually exclusive realities. Episodic narratives are defined as structures that critically weaken or disable the causal connections of classical narratives (Cameron, 2008, p 10). They are divided into abstract series which use non-narrative structure that determines the organization of the elements in the film and narrative anthology which are multi stranded narratives which are disconnected but sharing the same diegetic space.

Split screen narratives divide the screen into several frames adjacent concurrent events within the same visual area (Lewis, 2010). Allan Cameron’s categories of non-linear narratives have however been used in various media in the 21st century. One of the contemporary films that have used anachronic narrative structures is the Eternal Sunshine which has modified classical flashback structures by abandoning the initial temporality of the narrative and maintaining flashback for the major part of the film.

Eternal Sunshine has shown that absence of temporal distance and also the symbolic and temporal framework shadows the boundaries between the present and the past and also risks compulsion of repetition at both the individual and collective memory process (Jess-Cook, 2007). An example of the forking path structure has been used in The Blind Chance which has three episodes which concerns a young medical student Witek Dlugosz who faces various obstacles in the politically volatile period of the late 1970s.

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