Question for today
In her article “Designing a Database Cinema,” Marsha Kinder, speaking of Luis Bunuel’s films The Milky Way and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, writes, “One can follow any of the [many] narrative strands [in the films] that, although ingeniously interwoven, purposely never cohere – a networking [of narrative strand] enabling the viewer to observe the narrative engine in action.”
In thinking of this interweaving of ‘narrative strands,’ I thought of the proliferation of mash-up culture, which grew in popularity in the mid-2000s when software for amalgamating and remixing both audio and video became readily available. In particular, I thought of Girl Talk, a mash up music artist whose compositions were coupled with remixed videos of the songs they sampled. The idea of remixing interests me because it takes a work that has a narrative strand (or, at a the very least, a structured beginning-middle-end), and flips it, distorts it, chops it up and restructures it, defeating the purpose of the original’s narrative and creating a new narrative.
My question is, when a work is purposely non-narrative, or appears as anarrative (a new word?), how often do you, as the viewer, attempt to create a narrative of your own? How often are we actually afforded the opportunity to do this? And does our ability to connect causal elements in visual media mean that a strict, structured narrative is not necessarily required when fashioning a ‘mental narrative’?
Some Girl Talk examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JBAxkZun3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKqkcHvJN9k