The subtitle of this paper was “why don’t you work rem, watergate, and orange triangles into it, man?”, a comment uttered by the professor when I presented my prospectus for my final paper. Is the media in which a text is delivered a part of the text itself? Will reading the same words in a different media alter your concept of the text as a whole? More importantly, how does our changing media affect the forms of our actual narratives? The paper is very light on theory, but I think that it makes a few valid points in addition to being a pretty fun read even if critical theory normally puts you sleep.
I’m writing this paper while sitting on the third floor of a thoroughly modern housing facility. To begin typing this paper, I opened Microsoft Word 97 into the 32 megabytes of RAM on my custom-built Pentium 166MMX computer. This computer is connected to a network of other computers here at the University of Florida affectionately known as DHNet (some sort of abbreviation for Department of Housing Network). The server for this network is itself connected to a vast system of computers known to the world as the Internet. While I work on this paper, the e-mail program on my computer (yet another Microsoft application) scans my e-mail server for new e-mail automatically every minute. The temperature in my room is regulated by a central air-conditioning system to ensure my optimum comfort. My cordless telephone is sitting here at my computer table within my reach in case someone decides to call me. My roommate is sitting at his computer right next to me, looking for add-ons to a video game we enjoy playing. We are also listening to “Roxanne” by the Police through the speakers on his computer. When that song is over, the computer will randomly select another song from his hard drive for our listening pleasure.
From the opening paragraph of this paper, you may have made some false assumptions about the purpose of this critical essay, but—hey, man—that’s to be expected. It’s all episodic and uncertain, man. You know what I’m saying? This paper isn’t out to praise the joys of modern society. I’m not going to write about how much better we Americans live now than we did just fifty years ago. I’m also not going to rail against the evil of our techno-consumer society. This will not be another “Microsoft-will-bring-about-the-end-of-the-world” essay. I only want to say that American/European society is much different now than it was only a few short decades ago and that that change is reflected in our narratives.
Why, just last Monday, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s version of John the Baptist, said in a demonstration of Windows 98 that computers were “a tool that magnifies our creativity and allows us to communicate with each other in a new way.”(1) Technology affects how we say what we say and to whom we say it. On a broader level, the rapid paradigm shifts of this technological revolution have altered the way we think and therefore also the way we write.
If I had to put my finger on one of major paradigm shifts that started this great technology/narrative revolution, I would probably point at the end of Newtonian Physics. It might be a bit simplistic to put it that way. Newtonian physics didn’t just disappear overnight; it was a gradual process. We can’t really assume that all traces of Newtonian thought have been wiped from our thoughts either. We lived with Newton much longer than we’ve lived with Heisenberg so there are bound to be profound Newtonian influences on our theory and in our daily lives. Those complications notwithstanding, I believe it’s safe to say that the sciences of calculated uncertainty brought about by this paradigm shift have altered our narrative space.
Perhaps we should consider what I’m talking about when I refer to “Newtonian physics” since that is such a broad and non-specific term. Within the theories of Isaac Newton, I see a central guiding principle: If we can know all of the variables in a given equation, we can solve it and predict the future behavior of that system. This was a very productive and persistent system of scientific thought. It was the guiding scientific model for over two hundred years. Within this century, however, that model has shifted to a concept of uncertainty.
Most influential in this reversal was the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of particle physics, which bears the name of its creator, Werner Heisenberg. According to this theory, we cannot determine accurately both the speed and position of a given atomic particle at one specific point in time. The more accurately we judge the one attribute, the less accurately we can judge the other. In other words, if we really wanted to determine precisely how fast an electron was moving, we would have no idea where it actually was. Likewise, if we wanted to determine exactly where that electron was, we would have no idea how fast it was moving. With the acceptance of this model, structured models of the atom were disregarded. Modern particle physics is a set of probabilities; models predict where an electron might be rather than where it is. Definitely was replaced by probably.
This gave way to all manner of uncertainty in the sciences. The age-old quest to predict the weather was acknowledged as impossible for any period of time greater than a few days. The attempts to explain science as a huge, structured model ended in something called Chaos Theory, which states that small-scale events—a butterfly in Tokyo flapping its wings, for example—eventually affect the large-scale events—perhaps a thunderstorm in Tehran. In this logic, there are simply too many variables in every equation to solve for.
Once again, I would like to make it clear that this is a gross simplification. I am speaking here of trends. On the whole, science has become more uncertain, but there are still Newtonian ideas at play in all branches of science. It is the overall trend, I believe, that has influenced our thoughts on writing. This air of uncertainty has infected our narratives. We have begun to doubt concepts within our writing that were once considered something just sort of sacred.
Take our concept of plot as an example. In general, we expect our plots to progress linearly. We want to begin with a beginning and end with an end. This concept is being challenged, though. In Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice follows a different character in each section. Instead of progressing in a straight temporal line, the plot resets for each character. We determine what one character was doing, and then we find out what the next character was doing during the same time period. It isn’t until near the end of the novel that all of the threads come together.
You could also think about the changes in our fundamental theories of drama—most notably the “fourth wall” that forbade audience interaction with the players onstage. Bertolt Brecht turned those assumptions on their head. He had his players engage the audience directly or put an actor in the audience to spurn interaction. Fundamental ideas in our literary theory were cast into doubt and challenged. Certainty was made uncertain.
However, if I tried to explain the whole of narrative in terms of uncertainty, I would be failing as a critic. This is only an isolated example of how technology and paradigm shifts in scientific theory have altered our narrative forms. Perhaps it would be helpful to examine another example of technology altering narrative to more fully illustrate what I’m writing about.
I think the television would be an interesting case study. Television is, after all, a completely new form that has come about in this century. It borrowed elements from drama but altered them to suit the new medium. We don’t have full plays in several acts on television (at least not every day). Television programs are usually presented in thirty-minute segments. These thirty-minute programs are, by their nature, episodic. Accordingly, we don’t see the character development and fleshing out of the plot line in a television program that we see in the conventional cultural fantasy of drama. This, of course, seems to be a painfully obvious statement. It probably is.
Of course, the episodic nature of television wasn’t completely unheralded. I don’t want to give that impression either. Comic strips existed before the proliferation of televisions. The concept of stories published as serials also existed. The real difference between these forms and television, though, is that television almost always provides a resolution in thirty minutes. Pre-television comic strips and serials were usually part of a larger narrative; they could be combined to produce a single plot structure. This unification is often absent in most television programs—most notably the sitcom(2). This episodicity present in television programming has spilled over into other aspects of our culture—including our writing. The attempt to render episodicity in narrative often leads to a certain disjointed nature(3).
Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Calvacade might be considered an appropriate example of a disjointed and episodic narrative. The book is divided into sections. On one hand, we have a narrative involving a young girl growing up in Algeria (presumably autobiographical material from Djebar herself). On the other hand, we have a historical narrative about the French conquest of Algeria. We alternate between the two almost as if we were channel surfing with a remote control.
“I really want to read about the conquest of Algeria.” Click!
“Wait a minute! There’s also a narrative about Assia Djebar’s struggles as a woman in Algeria that I kind of want to read.” Click!
“On second thought I’d rather read a war story.” Click!
“A personal confessional style narrative would really appeal to me now…” Click!
And so on. This point is actually tied to the whole business of uncertainty as well. Such a narrative is only possible if our traditional concepts of narrative are called into question. Traditionally, we assume that a work belongs in one single genre with only one type of narrative—unless it is an anthology. The uncertainty of our time demands that we question this traditional assumption. Fantasia grows out of that questioning.
If television as a form is generally episodic and—growing out of that—our contemporary narratives tend to speak to that episodicity as a certain disjointedness, what does this say about the desires of our culture as a whole? Television is, after all, very popular in our culture. Advertisers dole out lots of cash to television networks because they know that people are watching the shows. The programs are set up the way they are because people seem to like them that way. The networks are supplying the demand of the culture. Roland Barthes put it this way: “The work is normally the object of consumption…”(4) In other words, these programs are being produced so that people will watch them and the commercials interwoven with them. More viewers yield greater advertising revenue.
This seems to imply that we as a culture desire a more episodic/disjointed narrative. Why? Traditional narratives with linear plot lines and consistent tone seem to be easier to read. Perhaps we prefer the episodic style because we identify so strongly with television as a form. Maybe television has so affected the way we think that the form has permeated our other narrative constructions. Then again, it’s also possible that we don’t actually prefer the episodicity but that’s all we’re getting because that’s what the producers of narrative think we want. Either way, technology both points to and represents our formal desires (either as a type or an anti-type).
Narrative is in a constant state of flux. As new forms and media arise, narrative changes. New works create new forms which are influenced by the new media. Even old narratives take on new meaning as they are transferred to the new media. This is because a work cannot be separated from the way it is presented. I’m actually basing this notion primarily on the work of Jerome J. McGann in “The Text, the Poem, and the Problem of Historical Method.” According to McGann, the term “text” actually refers to a combination of the actual grammatical structures and the physical method by which the text is presented. In simpler terms, a poem published on a WorldWide Web page is different from the same poem published in a hardcover book with a custom book jacket. Once again, we see how technology alters our narratives. It provides new media for the dissemination of literary works, which changes the overall text.
I guess the point of this exercise is that culture influences the works produced in a society. The relationship of technology to narrative is an aspect of that larger premise. This text could only have been produced by me writing in front of this computer with the air-conditioner running, listening to random music on my roommate’s computer in this particular room. This text, like all texts, is dependent both on the conditions of the individual—me—and the state of society as a whole. As conditions change, so does the narrative.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” Modern Literary Theory, 3rd edition. Edited by Phillip Rice and Patricia Waugh. New York: Arnold, 1992. 191-197
McGann, Jerome. “The Text, the Poem, and the Problem of Historical Method.” Modern Literary Theory, 3rd edition. Edited by Phillip Rice and Patricia Waugh. New York: Arnold, 1992. 251-256
Footnotes
- The speech was delivered at the Windows World convention in Chicago on April 20, 1998. An exact transcript of this speech is available on the Internet. Isn’t technology grand?
- Of course, even as I’m writing this, I can think of examples that complicate the idea of television as a purely episodic form. There’s the entire phenomenon of “to be continued.” There are also television serials like Soap Operas, which never seem to reach a resolution. I think that these complications are healthy. It adds to the air of uncertainty which I discussed above.
- Consider, for example, the footnote that you are currently reading. It is removed from the text above it. The very nature of a footnote is disjointed. It’s kind of like when Zack Morris stops time and addresses the camera (and therefore the audience as well) in “Saved by the Bell.”
- Roland Barthes, “From Work to Text,” Modern Literary Theory, 3rd edition, edited by Phillip Rice and Patricia Waugh, New York, Arnold, 1992, p. 196.