In Interart Poetics. Acts of the congress “Interart Studies: New
Perspectives”, Lund, May 1995. Lagerroth, Ulla-Britta, Lund, Hans,
& Hedling, Erik, (eds.). Rodophi, Amsterdam & Atlanta 1997; 243-252.
Lessing, it has often been argued, was the first to conceive of the distinction
between painting and literature semiotically, i.e. in terms of visual and verbal
signs, respectively. In Lessings view, paintings (which he takes to include
sculpture) use signs the expressions of which are shapes and colours in space;
and which have an iconic (motivated) relation to their contents; whereas literature
uses sounds in time and has an arbitrary relation to the content.
It is true, as Todorov (1977) has observed, that Lessing tends to confuse questions
of fact with normative issues: he stipulates that art must be iconic, or motivated.
Therefore, pictures can only signify objects in space and literature only objects
in time that is, in narratological terms, expression time should be iconic for
content time.
This description will obviously not apply to non-artistic pictures, nor to later
art (which by definition overrides norms created by earlier art), and in fact
in some ways is not respected by mediaeval pictures either. Lessing may have
been thinking also of some semiotic vehicles being better adapted to certain
purposes. No matter what Lessing might have thought, however, the important
question is really to understand how narrativity relates, on the one had, to
verbal discourse, and on the other to visual semiosis.
Lets start with a paradox: Neil Postman (1983) and other critics of television assert that, because of the central part played by television in our culture, pictures and narrativity now dominate over verbal discursivity. Although, contrary to MacLuhan, they take a critical view of this phenomenon, they reaffirm the latters conviction that television is related to oral culture, which is also, traditionally, a culture of face-to-face interaction, in which narrative has a strong integrative function.
While Lessing associates narrativity with verbal signs, Postman sees it as implied by visual signs. In fact, we may really distinguish three positions: 1) narrativity is taken to be purely formal and capable of being manifested in any semiotic system (the position of structuralist narratology and of the followers of Piaget in genetic psychology, e.g. Leondar 1977); 2) narrativity is predominantly verbal (Lessing and, more recently, Genette); 3) narrativity is connected to pictorality (Postman).
It will be remembered that, to Lessing, theatre, contrary to pictures, is a form of visual semiosis which is also capable of conveying narrativity, and his latter-day follower, Bayer, has extended this description, for excellent reasons, to film. Television, however, is different. There is very little narrativity, at least in visual form, in the news. Soap operas, sit coms, and so on, mostly show people talking, and music television only uses narrativity in subordinate passages, inverting the parts of descriptions and narrative found in classical Hollywood cinema. Although the expression plane here seems ideally suited to convey narrative structures, no narrativity is thus apparent on the content level.
The opposite case is illustrated by some instances of single, static pictures, as, most notably in recent art, the Untitled Film Stills created by Cindy Sherman. We will argue that they are, in fact, highly saturated from a narrative point of view. But first we will have to face the paradoxical nature of such an affirmation.
In accordance with the summary of classical structuralist narratology due to Prince (1982), we will claim that narrative supposes at least two events with a temporal link on the content side. Thus far, then, no particular requirement seems to be imposed on the expression side.
Let us now consider some familiar cases of temporal links, and the categories of pictorial texts resulting from them: first, there is what we will call the temporal series, i.e. the continuous sequence of moving pictures, as in a film, and, sometimes, on television. In this case, there are temporal links on the side of both expression and content, but these are not necessarily parallel (in flash-backs, and in most other kinds of montage).
Next, there is what we may call the temporal set, which consists in a number of static pictures united by a more or less common theme, as in comic strips, graphic novels and photo novels. Here, temporal links are partly mimicked by traditional reading order, and partly projected by the reader.
The only case normally discussed in art history is that which we will call the multi-phase picture, which is a single, static picture, containing persons and events which are known to represent various phases taken from the same event series, or action scheme. Thus, the temporal link is projected onto the picture, solely from our knowledge of the story, from the title, or from recognition of logical of physical impossibility (as in the case of things you cannot do at the same time), etc.
Here we recognize the simultaneous method described by Carl Robert and Kurt Weitzmann: the picture shows several happenings at the same time, i.e. when Polyphemus is invited by Ulysses to drink wine, at the same time as the latter and his men are occupied with blinding him. The so-called monoscenic method would seem to be Lessings frozen moment (our implied temporality), and the cyclic method may be a case of temporal sets.
Of this kind are also two of the types distinguished be Frans Wickhoff: the completing representation (simultaneous) and the continuous one (consisting in a continuous scenery behind several scenes), to which is added the distinguishing (= monoscenic) representation. Sven Rosén separates two kinds of simultaneous succession: content succession which is like completing representation, and formal succession, in which case different persons are involved in the several phases of what is known to be the same action sequence.
It should be noted that, according to the definition of narrative, the temporal link must be on the content side, and such a link may subsist without temporality on the expression side, which means that the simultaneous method and the continuous representation may be narratives. In these cases, however, it is difficult to establish the discreteness, necessary to separate at least two events inside the picture frame. Weitzmanns simultaneous method and monoscenic method (the frozen moment) are only distinguished by the recognition of a verbal narrative to which the pictures refer, or by the logical or physical impossibility of the co-occurrence of several actions.
Then there is the case of pictures with implied specific temporality: a single, static picture, which lacks multi-phasicality, but is recognizable as picturing an event taken from a well-known or prototypical sequence of actions. The picture, in particular, may then show what Lessing has called the pregnant moment of an action (just before the climax). In modern semiotical terms, there would be a temporal link due to the indexical relationship between the depicted scene and a particular action scheme.
From this case should be distinguished what we will call a picture with implied generic temporality: i.e. a single, static picture, lacking multi-phasicality, but recognizable as a possible intermediary scene of whole classes of (usually trivial) action schemes. Here, there is a temporal link resulting from an indexical relationship between the depicted scene and whole classes of common-sense action schemes. Finally, there may of course be the case of a totally static picture: a single, static picture, for which every indication making it referable to a wider action scheme is conspicuously lacking.
It is easy to find objections to the classical narratological consensus formulated by, among others, Prince and Adam. The example given by the latter, The child cried. Its mother picked it up may well be a story, but it is not a particularly good story. In fact, others models of narrativity (like the idea, common to Lévi-Strauss and Greimas, that some values are inverted from the beginning to the end; or Todorovs conception, adopted in genetic psychology, of an equilibrium which is disturbed and then re-established; or Bremonds model of a continuous process going from amelioration to deterioration and back again) may be too specific, but at least they posit something more than a mere temporal link.
Indeed, a minimal implication of all these models is that a typical story tells something unexpected, something having a dramatic character, which constitutes a rupture of the structures of expectancy at some level. In this sense, narrativity corresponds to a particular fulfilment of the dialectics of time consciousness, the play of protentions and retentions, also expressed in the rhetoric of the norm and its transgression.
Even is his early work, Prince (1982) observed that narrative events did not imply each other logically, that more improbable connections were more narrative, as were more crucial changes (from life to death), and the passage from one opposite to another, particularly in the form of conflicts (all of which rephrases the French structuralist models mentioned above).
More recently, Coste (1989), Ryan (1991), and Prince (1994) himself have opposed narrativehood, understood as the mere presence of a narrative link, to, narrativity which accounts for our sense of a good story. It seems to us that one series of criteria for narrativity tends to make pictures, in particular single ones, even less plausible vehicles of narration, while a second list would rather pinpoint the possibilities of visual narrativity.
Among the factors determining higher degrees of narrativity, the following fit badly, or not at all, with pictures, in particular single ones: logically unpredictable antecedents or consequences (Prince, Coste); deep causality (first and last events linked in significant ways; Coste); elements of conflict between different subjects (Prince); specificity instead of generality (the opposite of sequences fitting any or indefinitely many sets of circumstances; Coste); and singularity instead of banality (avoidance of repetitiveness; Coste).
On the contrary, the following are often, and some always, realised by pictures: transactiveness (actions as opposed to happenings; Coste); transitiveness (events involving agent and patient; Coste); external events rather than internal ones (actions changing the world rather than thoughts; Ryan and Prince) with verbal acts found somewhere in-between (our observation); presence of disnarrated elements, i.e. virtuality (what could have happened but did not alternative courses of action; Prince and Coste).
Here, we would like to dwell on the case of disnarrated elements, because we think that they are, contrary to Princes claim, characteristic of most pictures.
The disnarrated elements are reminiscent of Bremonds triad, according to which every action is first virtual, then takes place or not, and if it takes place succeeds or not. The latter, in turn, may remind us of Husserls model of time consciousness, in which each moment is surrounded by protentions of the future, and retentions of the past, or the logic of actions, were many alternative courses of action branch out from particular moments in time.
Clearly, almost any picture will contain references to earlier and future moments of one or several action sequences. This is most clearly demonstrated by the analysis of comic strips: as we have shown elsewhere (Sonesson 1988; 1992), the humorous effect is often produced by protentions, in one picture frame, of actions which are then not fulfilled in future frames, often forcing, by means of late retentions, a revision of our understanding of what has gone before: e.g. the case of the little man who appears to be picking up a prostitute who, in the ends, turns out to have hired a girl to iron his trousers. What was earlier anticipated, and was meant to be so, is then part of the disnarrated elements.
The presence of a narrative potential in each single frame is shown by the negation of this very potential in later frames. Such a potential must therefore also exist in single pictures, as in the Kindy publicity, analysed elsewhere (Sonesson 1989; 1992), which is modelled on a still and a poster for The Seven Year Itch, a well-known Marilyn Monroe-film. We see that the air streaming out of the air valve has caused Marilyns skirt and the trousers of the man, respectively, to blow up (retention), and we may wonder if they will be lifted further or be restrained by the hand (protention). This is not high drama, but it does have some measure of narrativity, due to the sexual transgression, of varying degrees, which is implies.
Although they are not only untitled but also unspecific, Cindy Shermans Film Stills have their narrative potential, too. Consider, as one among many examples, Film Still #39: the young woman living under poor social conditions who looks angrily, sexually provocatively, or perhaps both on somebody outside the frame. Clearly, nothing as specific may be said about this picture as about the real still from the Marilyn film, and yet the general nature of what has happened before and what may happen afterwards is fairly clear. The same thing applies to most of the other Untitled Film Stills, and to many other single pictures as well.
The generic character of these stories is reinforced by the very stereotypical parts in which Cindy tends to appear: not only the action sequence, but the persons are abstractions rather than concrete instances. The lack of concretisation of the actants/actors into persons may be something making these stories less narrative stories are not supposed to be generic (even the folk tale in not about a generic person being chased, a generic house wife, etc.). But since it opens up the amount of possible courses of action preceding and following this particular moment in time, i.e. the number of disnarrated elements, abstraction is also a factor contributing to the narrativity of the single picture.
Wellbery (1984) has reformulated Lessings analysis in terms taken over from Hjelmslev, unfortunately abusing this terminology (cf. Sonesson 1988). Thus, the terms content and expression are correctly used, but instead of material, substance and form we should talk about resources, units, and constraints. Resources is what is at hand. Units are the principles of individuation, which in time is actions, in space, bodies. The constraints, finally, are rules, principles, and regularities of the respective sign systems (cf. Fig. 1.).
Fig. 1. Constraints on the arts according to Lessing,
as reviewed by Wellbery, analysed in Sonesson 1988
The content resources seem to be equivalent to what Benveniste (1969) has
called the domain of validity of a sign system, and the expression
resources are his mode of operation. Verbal language apparently can
talk about everything, (it is pass-key language, as Hjelmslev said), while pictures
must make do with everything visible, or everything having visible homologues.
The expression resources are Lessings articulate tones, now called phonemes,
etc., again opposed to anything visible (static and bi-dimensional in prototypical
pictures).
Since time is not well rendered in pictures, visual art should ideally pick
out one single moment, and, in a parallel fashion, literature, which it not
very conversant with space, should be content to describe a unique attribute.
Then, according to Lessing, an extension to the whole will take place in the
imagination, spatially in language and temporally in pictures, that is, in the
domain which the system cannot render!
If we are to believe in Lessing (and, in fact, many others who have written
about pictures since then, including Goodman), visual art is not only able to
describe the whole of space, but it cannot avoid it: it can only show fully
determinate entities. This is certainly not true: as we have shown (in Sonesson
1989; 1994), notably against Goodman, the density of pictures is only relative,
and all kinds of abstraction are found in them. This applies to the expression
plane, in the case of more or less schematic pictures: but is also applies to
the content plane of some pictures the expression plane of which is fully dense.
Thus, for all practical purposes, Shermans photographs are not about Cindy in
one or other disguise, but about abstract roles in generic situations.
Deriving his inspiration from Peirces semiotics, Bayer (1975; 1984) formulates Lessings problem differently: it concerns the relation between the scheme of distribution for the expressions and the scheme of extensions for the referents. Bodies are carriers of actions, i.e. they are presupposed by them. Actions are continuous, but can only be rendered iconically as discrete states. The distribution scheme of pictures does not allow for succession, only for actions rendered indirectly by means of bodies and collective actions where several persons act together (cf. Fig.2.).
Fig. 2. Lessings system, as seen by Bayer, analysed in Sonesson 1988.
What is strange, in Lessing as well as Bayer, is the idea that collective
actions are different from individual ones: the former are made up of individual
ones and therefore the latter most also be possible to render. A more fundamental
objection, however, is that pictures actually render certain continua, spatial
ones, better than language in fact, this is the other side of what was called
fully determinate objects.
However, since spatial objects are (potential) carriers of actions, all spatial
details serve to suggest potential stories, in particular if they are sufficiently
familiar to fit with many action schemes. Thus, it seems to us that, everything
else being equal, a picture containing more spatial details will evoke more
virtual courses of action.
Bayer observes that when there is no convenient link an index is required. Such
links actually serve to pick out spatial attributes for temporal continuity:
in this sense the Marilyn picture seems to be fully determinate temporally,
which is precisely not the case with Shermans works.
The difficulty posed by narrativity in pictures, as Bayer reads Lessing, is
that the picture is unable to abstract: Homer may show the gods drinking and
discussing at the same time, but that is too much information to put in a picture.
Actually, it is not the amount of information which is crucial (the picture
may easily carry more) but the possibility to organise it: verbal language is
able to convey relative importance, newness, theme, etc., and the picture may
possess corresponding mechanism which we do not know of (cf. Sonesson 1995).
But the space of representation in the picture is, at the same time, the representation
of the space of ordinary human perception, which impedes an organisation by
other systems (this was changed by Cubism, Matisse, some forms of collages and
synthetic pictures, and it is more radically modified by visual systems of information,
logotypes, Blissymbolics, traffic signs, etc.).
Cindy Shermans Film Stills are not narrative in any simple sense: there is hardly any climax anywhere, no inversion of values, change of balance, or lack which is done way with, and no obvious improvement or deterioration. Yet it is difficult to avoid the impression that these pictures are imbued with narrativity.
They refer (indexically) to any number of possible continuations and past states, but all alternatives are undetermined. In spite of the singularity of the pictures themselves, what they convey to us are scheme of interpretation which are more or less empty, generic or stereotypical, taken either from everyday life or from our consciousness, itself dense with stories (from film and television as Sherman suggests, or from advertisements, the mythology of our time).
The truth of televisual narrativity is similar: this continuous stream of pictures, which never stop to let us discover their full spatial determinacy, contains ever new retentions and protentions, fragmentary stories, which are potential but never developed, as in soap operas, advertisements, the combination of the latter two, now so popular in the USA, and in music television. The effect is rendered more acute by the practice of zapping from one channel to the other, which is only possible because of our capacity for indexically recognising very abstract action schemes.
Instead of the great narratives so maligned today, our world is really full of numerous micro-narrativities, which are often generic, with anonymous or generic actors, without clear narrator, and with narrative potentials opening up in infinite directions.
References
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