CHAPTER 5

Open & Closed Visual Cinematic Narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) s and Their Effect On The Audience

Introduction

The production, reception, and use of narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) s is one of the hallmarks of human life. Indeed narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) has been called a metacode and a human universal, with story-making now as widely bruited as metaphor as a basic mode of humanistic sense-making. As representations of events removed from the immediate here-and-now, narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) s are a vital human resource in making sense of the world - and even in the making (construal) (Todorov 32) of that world itself. Indeed, some now suggest that it is the narrativizing faculty (with its other-orientedness or intersubjectivity and attention to goals and intentions), rather than simply a language faculty, that most sharply differentiates humans from other animals. Narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) s reflect one of the key design features of the language faculty - displacement - although narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) is itself a faculty that can be realized in other media than the verbal. Narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) s are also astonishingly various and heterogeneous in forms and functions, with rich possibilities for embedding of stories within stories.

In this article the focus is on contributions to the understanding of core elements of narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) that have come from narratologists and narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) poeticians, who chiefly consider fiction and film narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) s; other analyses and models of narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) - e.g., those rooted in sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, ethnomethodology, and elsewhere - are addressed in a range of separate entries. One important development not addressed here because it is treated fully in a separate article concerns the putative genderedness of narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) s, narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) production, and reading (see Narratology, Feminist). (Simpson 32)

Core Elements: Story and Discourse

It may not be possible to offer here a wholly satisfactory definition of narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) , because the theories to be discussed have in fact objects of enquiry that differ from each other in significant respects. Nevertheless a minimal characterization may be proposed: a perceived sequence of nonrandomly connected events, i.e., of described states or conditions which undergo change (into some different states or conditions).

By 'nonrandom connection' is meant some connectedness that is taken to be motivated and significant. This principle is formulated in terms of “transformation” (Rimmon-Kenan 45) .

The simple relation of successive facts does not constitute a narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) : these facts must be organized, which is to say, ultimately, that they must have elements in common. But if all the elements are in common, there is no longer a narrative (Leni Riefenstahl and Stanley Kubrick) , for there is no longer anything to recount. Now, transformation represents precisely a synthesis of differences and resemblance; it links ...