Advertising should create spectacle, not story.

November 22nd, 2009 / 3:34 am Ken Baumann—

Story is inevitable.

November 22nd, 2009 / 4:51 am mark leidner—

have been thinking about this all day and beyond, to months ago, i think, when blake posted something either here or on his blog kind of daring one to look at something and *not* see a narrative.. and i agree

story is inevitable

but is powerful story inevitable? is memorable story inevitable? i think we defend a lot of non-traditional narrative because conventional narrative is often like a fill-in-the-blanks conceit.. simple.. familiarity of form.. masquerading as meaning.. so we push against that.. and find language that avoids “traditional” narrative and then call it narrative..! ..and rightly so..

but if everything is narrative, what makes one narrative more powerful than another? what is “power” in a narrative?

maybe power is too dirty a word..

i was having this conversation with my roommate tonight, whether a poem or story (or art) should be “memorable”.. ? i.e., should afterward, we be able to take its language away with is, in our minds, and then have it at the ready to deploy when we face life experience.. behavior.. choices.. living.. etc

or should art be about the moment.. the experience of the text.. should the moment of reading it be the moment we seek..

because a lot of poetry / fiction i read that does one, doesn’t do the other

to some extent i think writers choose between these two

have you ever read a book of poetry that, moment to moment, was exhilirating.. but then 30 minutes (or 5 seconds) after reading the last page, you can’t rememember a single line, image, or actual piece of languge from anywhere in the whole text? you don’t even remember specific moments–all you remember is the overall impression of the voice.. which you could describe if you had to, in general.. but essentially, what happened is, in the moment of reading the language is all there is, then the second you’re not reading anymore, the language disappears

then–on the other hand–there are stories you may not even enjoy or like all the way through.. that seem prosaic.. and the textual experience of.. reading/watching them is, for whatever reason, not electrifying.. or maybe.. seems unchallenging? but then afterward.. maybe years afterward, their images and scenes haunt you, etc

sometimes i think “traditional” narratives tend to fall into this latter category.. but.. i dont know if that’s true

of course (for me), the best things are those that fall into both categories–experience is visceral, and then later, when everything else in my life (romantic relationships, family, hanging out, getting drunk, watching movies, thinking about politics, writing, reading, etc) is battling for my attention and trying to occupy the precious real estate on the beach of my consciousness–those stories stay there, and fend them all off

i wish i could read something that would be true, and beautiful–then be immovable in my mind when life assaults it

November 22nd, 2009 / 5:37 am Christian—

Was that intentionally parodic?

November 22nd, 2009 / 6:23 am Ken Baumann—

have you read any joseph campbell (hero with a thousand faces, the power of myth, etc.)? hollywood basically discovered his story study and has attempted to utilize monomythical structure to create capital… more often than not it works… although i think that, like an individual’s success (primarily: financial), a story’s success, emotionally or capitalistically is 90% not in its own hands… although when you look at something like harry potter (read: star wars, the new testament), you want to lower that percentage to maybe 50, maybe lower…

power, although dirty, can be true… i think that for most humans (elitist, yes; true, yes) something like harry potter, with its story structure that essentially plugs in characters and situations into the monomyth (which may be like a long-span biological key to the subconscious and superego), is powerful… and for those who actively concern themselves with deeper study of art, the cliches and old tropes and flat language begin to fade and new texts must be found that resonate in a new way… do i think that a lot of the weirder, ‘raw’ texts so constantly referenced by the HTMLGiant crew, this community, contain monomythical structure? i do. poetry may be the strongest resistance against that powerful emotional key/lockpick… and maybe that’s why poetry has largely been marginalized by the higher $$$ bettors… it’s uncomfortable to be broken into.

finnegans wake for me is the former, while something like the stranger is the latter, or 2001 space odyssey, is the latter. i believe it’s harder, most of the time, to create something of the latter. but what is achieved in my favorite ‘traditional narratives’ is often a merge of the two categories: a sensuality, a union of structure and story, theme and content, what have you… but it’s nice to think that neither category should be explicitly strived for, or worried over… that both can serve as important landmarks, psychologically.

you haven’t read something that has struck and then stuck? i’ve read a few, i think.

November 22nd, 2009 / 6:24 am Ken Baumann—

why do you ask?

November 22nd, 2009 / 6:31 am mark leidner—

i tried to make it unintentional..?

i dont understand the question.. parodic of what?

i suppose everything anyone says is unintentional self-parody, for sure

as my father the film critic used to joke, “1000 people in a room, 1000 parodies of christ..”

i dont think he knew he was serious

November 22nd, 2009 / 6:38 am Ken Baumann—

should read: ‘it’s uncomfortable to be broken into; poetry as masked marauder and not door-delivered candygrams’

November 22nd, 2009 / 6:48 am mark leidner—

naw i’ve read a few too

just trying to figure out what / how i think about contemporary fiction..

which your comment answered.. or at least sent me in the right direction.. talkin bout the merge, and the still-monomythical resonance of certain ‘experimental’ storytelling

i think i was blending that idea about fiction.. with an idea about poetry that keeps coming up.. that of memorability of specific poems, or lines, etc.. versus that of memorability of a whole book, or an overall sensibility

those are two different thoughts though..

November 22nd, 2009 / 7:02 am Ken Baumann—

probably important to strive for a union, esp. in the age of abundance…

also a comforting & terrifying reminder: it’s all just therapy.

November 22nd, 2009 / 7:19 am michael james—

this conversation thread is the shit.

i wish i could comment beyond that, as in to contribute to the conversation, but right now I can’t. I want to digest on such topics as: hollywood’s/advertisings use of essential human connectives to make money, publishing use of the same thing, what causes something to be powerful & memorable and is it possible to push innovations in form/technique and still retain the ‘you’ and reach the masses…

I am unable to view whatever it is you posted, all I see is a blank square, due to blocking software on my server. Sorry. But this convo is dope.

November 22nd, 2009 / 9:06 am Slick Watson—

Says you. I say advertising should show the process of its own production. Whether that would be your definition of spectacle, I don’t know. It could be. But it all becomes spectacle in the end, so I guess that kind of answers your question a little. Commercials can’t help but be spectacle. That’s in its dna.

And Christian: don’t be a cunt. The only person that is intentionally parodic is you. So why don’t you tell us about it.

November 22nd, 2009 / 1:01 pm Matt Jasper—

The poetry as masked marauder note that was hit after everything else=innovative in placement and pitch. I’m suspicious of the candygrams–worried that they’ll crumble along with the fashions that produced them. Frames can extend formal staircases for understanding yet they can also become cluttered with easy preset meanings and a code that allows a reader to self congratulate for “getting it.” I am interested in things that attempt to have less of a frame and are therefore less bounded, less adulterated forms. Yet things without frames do need to be broken into, entered without some of the conventional maneuvers. Framelessness = freedom from being nailed to a wall yet peripatetic animism eludes recognition even as it reaches for greater interconnectedness. Some of the marauders have masks yet some are so unmasked that they can be unrecognizable. One can break in maybe by removing or wearing the mask or by recognizing something that previously needed a mask in order to be seen yet now does not (if one has broken in).

I’m going to read all of the above posts again and then try to apply it to three books I’m reading. For me, “a union” is unfolding in the dissociative states and simultaneously dead and alive/ in and outside-of-time events and characters of Evenson’s Fuge State. That book is hitting me on all levels while Wittgenstein’s Mistress is–to me–a bit more masked/framed even as the painting’s frames are burned for warmth. Also enjoying The Lost Lunar Baedeker by Mina Loy. She pulls mask after mask off in a way that can at times dazzle or tire until I fall into her arms wishing I’d impregnated her for her “Unnatural selection. . .” of “. . .sons and daughters/ As shall jibber at each other/ Uninterpretable cryptonyms/ Under the moon.”

November 22nd, 2009 / 10:36 pm Mark Schettler—

Jasper:
I keep having trouble with this same goal in my own writing. Seems like readers demand some framework, some reality to navigate.

Even if we’re just talking about visual themes in a Lynch film, viewers (myself included) cling to these as they fight to apply some understanding. And being against that, you’re against understanding. And then, it would seem, you lose your reader.

Andy Kaufmann is just about the only person I’ve ever seen effectively do nothing, play the audience’s expectations for “narrative,” and thereby deliver some third thing/idea/meaning, something smart that I’m having trouble articulating. [As here: http://tinyurl.com/aejnkk%5D

Does part of the enjoyment in the Mina Loy come from her rewarding you for being dazzled and exhausted, etc., when the framework that has left you so confounded is exposed, and you find see that not only were you “right” to feel that way but you were in the hands of a master all along and just didn’t know it?

Ahh… this stuff is hard. What do you think?