Topic 10
The Narrative - Storytelling in Theatre and Performance
Codes of character Fabricating characters is the day-to- day work of writers, directors, producers, production designers, and other craftspersons. Indeed, it’s the principal work of the entire television medium—creating signs of character that signify the character to us. Character signs, as explained by Richard Dyer, are all those aspects of a character that communicate their nature and personality to us. We viewers interpret or read these signs according to a variety of factors: 1. our understanding of the world, of television, of genre; 2. the context (i.e., program) in which the character appears; 3. the viewing situation itself. (Did we have a large meal just before turning on the television? Is the room too brightly lit? How large is the television? And so on.)
Codes of character All these variables can influence how we perceive a character. They make character construction an imprecise science. Still, we can better understand how characters are constructed if we identify the types of signs that signify character and investigate the code of character construction. This code is comprised of certain “rules” that govern what meanings a character signifies to us and how those meanings are created. Character Design • Viewer Foreknowledge • Names • Appearance • Objective Correlative Dialogue • Gesture • Lighting / Cinematography
Codes of character Producers and consumers alike understand, for example, that a female character who wears eyeglasses is supposed to be more “intellectual” than other female characters. If another smokes, she will likely be evil or immoral. These conventions of costuming and props are part of a code that is so taken for granted as to become nearly invisible. It is the analyst’s task, then, to make it visible again. In so doing, it is important to remember that this so-called code is both historical and cultural.
Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon, 30 Rock
Codes of character That is, it changes over time and is not fixed; and it differs from one culture to another and is not universal. For example, in television programs produced in the 2010s in the United States, cigarette smoking signifies “evil” to viewers; but in films produced in the 1930s in France there was no such association. Indeed, the changing cultural associations with smoking are something that Mad Men’s producer, Matthew Weiner, has had to address in interviews—defending the frequent smoking in the program as essential to establishing its time period. If Mad Men had been produced in 1960, cigarette smoking would have been culturally invisible. Although the historical and cultural nature of the code is true of all aspects of character construction, it is most obvious in the case of costuming.
John Hamm and John Slattery, Mad Men, 2007-2015
Naturalism in acting There are many schools of thought regarding the production of a naturalistic performance. Limiting our scope to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we will consider two types of naturalistic performance: repertory and Method. It must be noted at the outset, however, that these two strategies do not exist in pure form. Any performance is an impure mixture of approaches.
Repertory Performance In repertory theater, a set group of actors performs a series of different plays during a season. One week the group might do Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and the next week Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As a result, the actors are constantly assuming new roles. To facilitate this ongoing change of roles, a repertory-style performance sees acting as a process of selecting particular gestures and spoken dialects and constructing a performance from them, although it does not rely upon a code of gestures set out in an acting manual (as in the Delsarte method, in specific, and pantomime, in general). The work of the actor is to study human movement and speech and to borrow gestures and dialects from life in the construction of characters. Repertory actors are dispassionate in this assemblage of actions and accents. They don’t become emotional while acting, but they signify emotion through these movements and gestures. Quick note Repertory acting is stylised and is generally performative.
Harlequin from the Commedia del Arte
Method Performance The style of performance most generally known in the U.S. is called simply “the Method.� Method acting differs sharply from the repertory style. Rather than stressing the selection and assembling of gestures and dialects, Method acting encourages the actor to become the character, to fuse their personality with the role, to relive the character. Method teachers argue that once the actor becomes the role, then the gestures and dialects necessary for the performance will organically grow out of that union of actor and character. Repertory performers are accused of mechanical acting by Method believers, because non-Method performance relies on a machine-like fitting together of techniques. Quick note Method acting is immersive and organic.
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker, 2019
The Anti-Naturalists Naturalism can thus be seen to dominate how most people—critics and everyday viewers alike—think about acting. But it would be wrong to assume that we always demand naturalism from television performers. Sometimes it’s quite clear that the actors are “faking” it, that they are separating themselves from the roles they play and pointing to the mechanics of their performances. It’s as if they were winking at the viewer and implying, “You and I both know that I’m not really this character. I’m only performing this role.” When actors distance themselves from their roles, they reject the basic tenet of the Method. They don’t become the characters, they just present them to us. Quick note Anti-naturalist acting can be epic and is often detached.
Bertold Brecht, 1954
Modes of representation The defining characteristic of nonfiction television is its apparent relationship to the historical world. Unfortunately, there is not much agreement among television theorists regarding this fundamental relationship. Modifying slightly their approach, we may distinguish nonfiction television’s four principal modes of representation—the ways that it depicts historical reality and addresses itself to the viewer about that version of reality: 1. expository (or rhetorical) 2. participatory (formerly “interactive”) 3. observational 4. reflexive.
Expository mode The essential component of an expository television text is that it presents an argument about the historical world. It assertively or even aggressively selects and organizes the “facts� of that world and presents them to the viewer in a direct address. There is little doubt that commercials are based on rhetoric, argument, and persuasion; but what of other nonfiction television such as network news? Nichols contends that television news also falls within the expository mode. His point is that reporters and anchorpersons make sense of a chaotic historical world that is overloaded with meaning. They select facts from that world and organize them into a coherent presentation. This has become increasingly important during the so-called information age The Today Show
Participatory mode A participatory text represents the interaction of the historical world with the realm of the video/filmmaker. This interaction occurs in one of two ways: The social actor is brought into a television studio (for example, talk shows, game shows); or a representative of television goes out into the historical world to provoke a response from social actor. The participatory mode differs significantly from the expository mode in terms of how it addresses the viewer. Like narrative television, the address of participatory texts is not aimed at the viewer. The social actors within the text speak with the television producers and not directly to us. When an investigative reporter confronts a corrupt politician and the politician argues with the reporter, the two are addressing each other, not us. We may identify with the reporter (or with the politician, depending upon our sympathies) and thus feel that the politician’s responses are indirectly aimed at us. But the politician is not speaking directly to us. They indirectly address us through our emissary, the TV reporter. When social actors enter the realm of television, they are representatives of “our� world, of historical reality, but it would be naive to suppose that social actors are not affected by their contact with television.
The Price is Right
Observational mode Expository and participatory modes dominate non-narrative television, but there are occasions when a television producer’s presence becomes nearly invisible and their manipulation of the historical world is relatively minimal. In observational mode the producer observes rather than argues about (exposition) or engages with social actors (participation). Of course, this is always something of a sham. The moment a camera is pointed at a social actor and selects one view, and consequently neglects another, manipulation and argument begin. And just by being in the same room with social actors, videographers will begin to interact with them, influencing behavior—even if they don’t speak with each other. Still, there are nonfiction programs that invite us to suspend our distrust of television’s “devious” ways. For their impact these programs depend upon our belief in the television producer’s nonintervention.
David Attenborough, Life
Reflexive mode Certain non-narrative programs invite the viewer to examine the techniques of television production and the conventions of non-narrative programs themselves. These texts could be said to reflect back on their own devices. Hence, they may be called reflexive programs. Reflexive texts differ from other modes of nonnarrative television in their relationship to the historical world and its representation. A reflexive text does not just depict that world— making an argument about it or interacting with it or observing it—as most non-narrative TV does. Rather, it draws our attention to the process of depiction itself, shifting the focus away from historical reality proper to the relationship between that reality and television.
American Horror Story; Roanoke, 2016
Reflexive mode Reflexivity is less menacing to the foundations of commercials and non-narrative comedy programs, where it is often found in the skits parodying TV on Saturday Night Live (1975–) and Key and Peele (2012–15). And The Daily Show (1996–) reflects back on the conventions and devices of news shows for most of its humor. In typical reflexive fashion, it is both a news show and a parody of one. Its hosts report actual news events (although sometimes the events are totally fabricated), but they also ridicule the process of news reporting itself. For example, in The Daily Show’s coverage of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, reporter Stephen Colbert recorded a fake live report from the convention floor. Host Jon Stewart called him on the deception and Colbert then admitted his fakery, walking into a freeze frame of his fake report. Consequently, viewers saw a “real” Colbert standing in front of a “fake” Colbert—practically a literal reflection of himself. The two Colberts illustrate how easily comedy programs can reflect back on the conventions of television—in this case, on how live reports are presented.
Saturday Night Live
Topic 10
Workshop
Guess the mode (1 hour) We’ll be watching a range of short programs and we will be discussing what mode they fall under. We’ll also be studying the modes of the actors within these programs and breaking down the character codes.
Study guide (1 hour) We’re going to spend some time working through the study guide responses, directly related to your final assessment. This is a good opportunity to make some progression with the assignment.