Week 7: Narrative

1)      Why is narrative important when shaping a visual image to the audience?

“Narratives are important in more ways than we might imagine.” (Berger, 2007. p.52)

Everyone is telling stories every day. It is a part of a daily routine; when you meet your parents, siblings or your friends, you would definitely start telling stories with each other. Stories are told from generation to generation, even before technologies are invented. Telling stories could be done from verbal to non-verbal way of communicating. As an example of a verbal way of telling stories is a verbal conversation on the phone with a friend or face-to-face conversations. However a non-verbal narrative is such as the newspapers, it tells stories to the audiences about what happens around the world. According to Lamarque (1994), “narrative” in general terms is story telling. In telling stories, the narrative involves sequence of events, actors, time and also location. Narrative exists in every media texts.

The structure of the narrative usually follows the Aristotle’s structure which consists of the beginning of the story, the middle and the end of the story. However, the structure can be the other way around (Lamarque, 1994). For example, the middle starts first, then the end and continued with the beginning of the story.

In figure 1, it shows the structure of the narrative which starts with the beginning of the story, middle and the end of the story. The narrative in figure 1 was clearly pointed out in order to make the audiences understand the story. Thus, it is important that the narrative of the story is interesting and also understandable by the audiences. By adding words to the visual ad, it will be more powerful; the message sent to the audience can be understood well.

Another example is when a person is reading a novel or a story book. From my experience, during reading the novel, we will experience the fact that the characters in the novel will appear the way we wanted them to look like. For example, it is said in the novel that the man is tall, handsome with fair skin and looks smart. The reader of the novel can imagine the man and will continue reading the novel if they are interested, or even if they are not interested with the narrative in the novel, the reader will make their own imageries of the man as they desire. A story consists of semiotics, where the audiences can make an assumption or premises of the story (Chatman, 2004).

Moreover, in movies, the audiences are watching the story as if they are in the movies as well, as if they are the characters in the story. According to Lewis P. Hinchman & Sandra K. Hinchman, (1997, p.10), “Narrative opens to us to “the realm of the ‘as if’”.  That is why the effect of the movie will affect the audiences, such as crying and laughing. Therefore, narratives are important in shaping the visual image of the audiences. A well narrated story will make the audiences interested to watch or read the story.

In conclusion, narrative is an essential part of a story. Without a good narrative, the story will not reach the audiences’ attentions. The importance of narrative is to make sure that the audiences’ are interested in reading, listening and also watching the story and eventually the audience will remember the story. According to Berger (2007, p.51), “And we make sense of texts by seeing every action and every character in terms of the binary oppositions that exist in all texts – oppositions whose meaning we all know.”

References

            Berger, A. A., (2007), Media and Society: A critical perspective, p. 51-52, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., USA.

Chatman, S., (2004), Story and Discourse. Retrieved November, 16, 2012, from http://www.icosilune.com/2009/01/seymour-chatman-story-and-discourse/

Hinchman, L. P., & Hinchman, S. K., (1997), Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences, p.51-52, SUNY Press, USA.

Lamarque, P. (1994). Narrative and Invention: The Limits of Fictionality. New York and London: Routledge.