NARRATIVE FRAME SHIFTING

By

ISABEL KUGLER MCGAUGH

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Department of Cognitive Science

Cognitive Linguistics

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

May, 2021

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CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of

Isabel Kugler McGaugh

candidate for the degree of Master of Arts*

Committee Chair

Vera Tobin

Committee Member

Fey Parrill

Committee Member

Todd Oakley

Date of Defense

March 10th, 2021

*We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. 3

Contents

Introduction ...... 6

1. Core Concepts ...... 8

1.1 Frames ...... 8

1.2 Frame shifts ...... 10

1.3 Micro and Macro Viewpoints ...... 12

1.4 Narrative Surprise ...... 14

1.5 Micro and Macro Frame Shifts ...... 15

1.6 The Narrative ...... 18

1.7 Film as a Medium ...... 19

2. Micro Frame Shifts ...... 21

2.1 Film Micro Frame Shift ...... 21

2.2 Textual Micro Frame Shift ...... 28

3. Macro Frame Shifts ...... 30

3.1 Radio Play Macro Frame Shift ...... 31

3.2 Book Macro Frame Shift ...... 35

3.3 Film Macro Frame Shift ...... 37

4.Conclusion ...... 47

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List of Figures

1. Core Concepts

1.1 Macro frame shift framework visualization ...... 18

2. Micro Frame Shifts

2.1 Start of pursuit scene ...... 22

2.2 Shot associated with Frame trigger ...... 23

2.3 Shot associated with Frame shift trigger ...... 24

2.4 Shot of character’s response to frame shift ...... 24

3. Macro Frame Shifts

3.1 Start of Deep Thought conversation scene ...... 38

3.2 Shot of Zaphod asking about the ultimate question ...... 39

3.3 Shot of character’s response to Deep Thought ...... 40

3.4 Shot of planet super computer reveal ...... 40

3.5 Shot of character’s response to frame shift ...... 41

3.6 End of conversation with Deep Thought about the ultimate question . . 42

3.7 Specific macro frame shift visualization ...... 47

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Narrative Frame Shifting

Abstract

By

ISABEL KUGLER MCGAUGH

This paper discusses the use of the cognitive linguistics concepts of frames, frame shifting, and micro and macro viewpoint construction to analyze the narrative

"The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" as told in a radio play, a book and a movie. The goal of this paper is to show how frame shifting can occur at micro and macro levels of a narrative and demonstrate that the mechanics of macro frame shifts are the same as the mechanics of micro frame shifts, as are the effects that macro frame shifts induce in an audience. The surprise that is caused in one-line jokes is the same as the surprise that occurs at major narrative twists which implement macro frame shifts. In addition, macro frame shifts are fundamentally consistent between the same narrative presented through different mediums, because of how critical macro frame shifts are to the plot of the narrative.

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Introduction

There are many ways to analyze the structure of narratives, but cognitive linguistics provides several uniquely useful concepts to apply towards this effort. For example, frame shifts are what happens when the contents of a sentence are first presented in the context of one semantic frame and then a secondary frame is triggered, causing a reinterpretation of the content of the sentence in terms of the second frame (Coulson, 2001). Frame shift analysis is mostly performed on the level of individual sentences rather than with respect to the structure of larger narratives.

However, in tandem with another concept from cognitive linguistics, it becomes feasible to investigate frame shifting at a larger scale. Work on viewpoint analysis within narratives has indicated that viewpoints are constantly constructed on a sentence level throughout a story. Dancygier (2012) has shown that in addition to these small-scale viewpoints, larger viewpoint structures are commonly projected from sentence level structures to become the viewpoint structures that can characterize large sections of a text and even the entire narrative as a whole. Sentence level structures are denoted as micro level viewpoints, and larger textual level viewpoints are called macro level viewpoints (Dancygier, 2012).

Given that framing is a component of viewpoint construction, it is similarly possible to address frame shifting at both macro and micro levels of a text. This analysis shows the consistent nature of the effect of frame shifting even when applied to larger linguistic structures, with the surprise that is caused by one-line jokes being fundamentally the same type of surprise implemented in twist endings. Larger and more 7 scripted forms of communication like books and movies still rely on the same linguistic features seen at the level of single utterances that can occur in day-to-day speech, and these linguistic features contribute to the structure and form of longer works. In the sections below, I will begin by laying out the previous work that has been done on large- scale and small-scale frame shifting. I will first address frames as a whole, before moving into frame shifts and concluding with viewpoint construction in narratives. In all three cases, I will clearly define the concept at issue, address previous applications of these concepts, and provide explicit concrete examples of the concepts in action.

Next, using these concepts of frame shifts, micro-level constructions and macro- level constructions I intend to demonstrate that the narrative “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (Adams, 1978; Adams, 1979; Jennings, 2005) uses macro-level frame shifts at key points of the plot to force a reader to reinterpret large sections of the text at once, and so create surprise in the reader. In addition, I will be examining the narrative of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as adapted into three distinct mediums: a radio play (Adams, 1978), a book (Adams, 1979), and a movie (Jennings, 2005). By examining the macro frame shifts present in all three mediums I hope to demonstrate that the trigger and narrative implementation of macro frame shifts can remain remarkably consistent despite the variation in affordances lent by each medium. In all three mediums the delivery for a frame-shift trigger is primarily delivered through dialogue, and the frames utilized remain consistent across adaptations.

To demonstrate these claims, I will first need to address the added difficultly of examining film as a medium, and the way in which visual media interacts with viewpoint 8 construction. To address this, I will refer to an earlier work of cognitive linguistics comparing a movie adaption of a book to its book counterpart (Forceville, 2002), and define important film terms relevant to viewpoint construction, mostly in regard to shot types. Then, I will apply this cinematic approach to the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy” in its movie adaption and single out an example of a micro frame shift. This analysis will both demonstrate the contrastive differences of macro and micro frame shifts and provide a concrete example of frame analysis in the movie medium. I will also discuss an example of a micro frame shift in the book and discuss how micro frame shifts are utilized for humorous effect in this comedic narrative. Finally, to prove my main claim regarding the function of macro frame shifts, I will present a detailed analysis of one macro frame shift critical to the plot of the story (across all adaptations) and compare how this macro frame shift is triggered in each medium.

1. Core Concepts

1.1 Frames

Frames are a well-established mechanism for explaining the relationship between the meaning of words, and the experiences individuals have interacting in a range of social situations (Fillmore, 1976). The core idea behind framing is the concept of background, and how background knowledge shapes the meaning of words and creates categories. A frame arises from repeated exposure to similar situations and is a way of representing a stereotypical scenario representing the core features of many specific instances of a general situation. Frames are a useful mental way of structuring 9 information, as creating a frame provides generalized slots for a scenario that can be filled with the specifics of a singular situation. At the same time, a frame comes with certain presumed fillers for slots in the frame that are representations of the most typical fillers for the slot based on your personal experience. As such, frames provide a way of structing our past experiences into meaningful schematizations that both help us predict or presume certain information in a given scenario but are also flexible enough to be applicable to specific instances of a scenario and can help us focus attention to the relevant features of a situation.

An example of a frame would be the commercial transaction frame, which is a representation of the generalized scenario in which two or more people exchange goods or services. The frame immediately calls up certain slots, like the role of a buyer and seller, along with currency, and a good or service that is being exchanged for. The frame is broad enough to be adaptable to specific contexts, as seen in sentences like:

“My mom bought me a tea set from Amazon for Christmas.”

In this sentence, the mother of the speaker (me) is the buyer, the company Amazon is the seller, and the good being exchanged for money is a tea set. The frame is adaptable to specific circumstances in that slots can be filled with the specifics of a single circumstance, but frames are also adaptable in regard to the slots that are in play. The amount of money that the tea set cost was not included in the sentence but is a component of the transaction frame as a whole. The purpose of a purchase, in this case a Christmas gift, will not be present in every use of the transaction frame, but is a part of 10 the frame as a whole. In addition to the transaction frame, the sentence also evokes the kinship frame, through which you can understand the relationship of the speaker of the sentence and the buyer of the transaction frame, and that the speaker is the child of the buyer who is female.

As can be seen from this example, frames are an important tool for examining the meaning of a sentence and the information language users infer from it. Because frames have default fillers for slots, even slots that are not explicitly filled by a sentence can still be called up by a frame and help to contextualize a sentence and provide additional information not directly stated (Coulson, 2001). Going back to the sentence above, there was no direct mention of the process involved in buying the tea set, and the default fillers of the transaction frame might have you imagining someone paying for an item at a store check-out counter. But because it is specified that the seller was

Amazon, an interpreter of this sentence would need to employ their background knowledge of the company Amazon to properly contextualize the buying experience as happening online with no direct interaction with any other human.

1.2 Frame Shifts

Because frames have default fillers for the slots of the frame based on what most typically fills each slot, it is possible to intentionally mislead a reader by employing a frame and its default fillers, only to fill a slot with something atypical for the frame and force a reader to reinterpret the meaning of the utterance as a whole (Coulson, 2001). 11

One of the best examples of this phenomenon—dubbed “frame shifting”—can be seen in one-line jokes (Coulson, 2001). Take for example the joke:

“Bartender, get me something cold, hard and on the rocks, like my marriage!”

The very beginning of the sentence triggers the vocation frame and contextualizes the person that is being addressed by the speaker as a person who makes and serves alcoholic drinks. Within this context, the subject of the sentence would appear to be a type of alcoholic drink that the speaker is attempting to order, and so “cold, hard and on the rocks” is parsed with reference to alcoholic drinks. In the context of drinks, cold refers to the literal temperature of the drink, hard is denoting the alcohol content of the drink, and on the rocks means that the speaker wants the drink with ice.

However, with the introduction of the relationship frame as triggered by the mention of the speaker’s marriage, the three descriptors of the drink are recontextualized in terms of an interpersonal relationship between the speaker and their spouse. In this new frame, cold describes a lack of feelings between the people in the relationship, hard describes the effort needed to maintain the relationship, and on the rocks suggests that the relationship is currently not going well. As such, the inclusion of the relationship frame changes the meaning of the utterance as a whole and requires a listener to reconsider the default fillers provided by the first frame of the sentence.

This is described as a frame shift as the framing of the sentence changes, causing the meaning of the sentence to change. 12

Frame shifts are not only a description of a linguistic structure but have also been shown to create a change in our cognitive processing of language. Studies involving gaze tracking as well as event-related potentials (ERP) clearly indicate this fact.

In a study comparing the gaze of individuals reading one-liner jokes built out of frame shifts as compared with non-humorous sentences without a frame shift it was found that when a participant read a joke sentence, they did something unique with their gaze. When the participant arrived at the word that triggered the frame that enacted the frameshift the joke was based in, the person would move their eyes back to the left to reread the rest of the utterance (Coulson, Urbach & Kutas, 2006). In other words, when a frameshift occurred in an utterance, participants would reread the content that was being reframed by the frame shift.

In a similarly designed study using ERP, participants were asked to read sentences that where a mix of jokes based on frameshift, non-sequiturs that ended with a word that made no sense, or normal sentences (Coulson & Kutas, 2001). One of the findings of this study was that there was a distinction in ERPs between individuals who read frame shift jokes and understood the joke and those who read the joke but did not understand it. This result indicated that there is neural activity that occurs when a frameshift has been properly interpreted and the information of a sentence is reframed.

This type of research and gaze-tracking studies has firmly cemented the realty of frame shifts as a component of our cognitive processing of language.

1.3 Micro and Macro Viewpoints 13

While frame shifts have been studied mostly in reference to individual sentences, frame shifts can apply to larger structures as well, as is the case in longer narratives. As discussed by Dancygier in her book The Language of Stories: A Cognitive

Approach (2012), stories can be broken down into the viewpoints that are evoked.

Within this approach, it becomes apparent that in a full-length book, viewpoints that are established on the level of a single sentence can be propagated up to create viewpoint structures at larger levels of the text (Dancygier, 2012). This type of analysis addresses the construction of multiple narrative spaces even within a sentence and also addresses the way in which these narrative spaces are nested in larger narrative spaces that develop as the story progresses. This nesting of spaces allows for “microstructures” found at the level of individual sentences to contribute to “macrostructures” that span large sections of the story and explains the emergence of an overall viewpoint through which the story as a whole is told.

This type of analysis makes it possible to examine the relationship between literary choices made by an author at the level of individual sentences and contextualize these choices in reference to the text as a whole. This type of analysis can also be applied when considering the framing used in a story. Frames, like viewpoints, are triggered on the micro level of larger stories within single sentences, but as a story develops, micro-level frames contribute to macro-level frames that influence a reader’s parsing of the complete story. Because frames can develop at different levels of a narrative, frame shifts can also propagate from micro-level sentence frames to macro- level story frames, and cause a frame shift that requires a reader to recontextualize all 14 of the information they’ve been given so far, not just the information within the sentence that the frame shift is triggered in.

1.4 Narrative Surprise

Frame shifting is of particular interest in the case of larger narratives because of one of the common goals of such narratives. A critical component of a compelling story is the control of information given to a reader. Narratives often choose not to give away all the information up front, and instead give us the information necessary for us to follow the narrative while still requiring the reader to hypothesize, think and engage with the story. Of particular relevance to the current study, narratives often manipulate the viewpoint through which they tell a story so as to hold back critical information necessary to construct the full picture of the events taking place (Tobin, 2018). By doing so, stories are able to reveal critical information at important points of the story and create surprise in the reader. A well-crafted story can include enough clues for the reader to conceivably guess the correct interpretation of events while still not confirming any particular interpretation for a majority of the story. It is perhaps because narratives rely so much on the readers parsing abilities to make sense of the story that narratives are enjoyable to read. In any case, viewpoint manipulation and the ambiguity it can create are key for the elicitation of surprise from readers. This applies to frame shifting, as frames themselves have a good deal of ambiguity, especially with respect to the default fillers that they evoke. Because these defaults are inferred instead of stated, they are still able to be altered by a frame shift. When a frame shift occurs, the reader is 15 given new information that recontextualizes what they’ve already parsed, providing the opportunity to create surprise.

1.5 Micro and Macro Frame Shifts

As such, frame shifting is a linguistic tool that can be employed by narratives to create surprise by forcing a reinterpretation of the given information in a story, and so causing a shift in viewpoint. In addition, frame shifts can have an effect on larger narrative structures, even though the trigger for them occurs at the level of narrative microstructures. Frame shifts at the micro-level are a contained within a single utterance or conversational turn, and the framing used by the utterance is restricted to the utterance they are contained in. For example, if I say something like:

“They redecorated the bar with new drunks” this is a micro frame shift because both of the frames that make up this frame shift are contained in this utterance. In addition, this sentence is not contained within any larger sequence of utterances which utilize the same frames, and so the frame shift that occurs here cannot cause a macro-level frame shift.

Consider instead if this story was part of a larger narrative in which I was describing my experience at a bar. If I talk about how crummy and gross the bar is, make negative comments about the décor, and complain about how badly the bar needs an image change, then tell this Joke, the frame shift that occurs doesn’t only affect the content of the joke. By using the decoration frame repeatedly in a story leading up to this joke, I’ve developed a macro-level decorative frame. Then when I tell the joke after this story, the filler of “new drunks” is applied to these previous uses of the decorative 16 frame, and we learn that none of the previous decorative issues mentioned have actually been fixed, and suggests that in the context of the story, the person telling it may have stopped being a costumer of the bar due to the bars refusal to improve.

For a frame shift to operate at the macro level, the frame that is being acted upon by having a default filler replaced with an explicit filler from another frame must have two qualities. Firstly, the frame being modified needs to have been used more than once at the micro level and so inform the framing of a section of text larger than individual sentences, becoming a macro-level frame. Secondly, the explicit filler that is being triggered by the introduction of a new frame at the micro level needs to be relevant to other instances in which the frame being modified is used. A macro-level frame shift only occurs when several instances of a frame used at the micro level are all modified by the frame shift and hence modifies the macro-level frame that arises out of these micro-level frame instances. Hence the example above is a macro frame shift because the bars décor is a repeated topic of discussion and so frames the entire story being told, while the explicit filler of “drunks” being the only thing that was

“redecorated” informs what the other uses of the decorative frame means in the context of this imagined story. Namely, that this bar did not change any of the issues raised in the story, and instead opted to change clientele.

There are distinct types of Macro-level frames that can be built up through a narrative, like the meta-story framing of what type of narrative is being told, and what literary troupes might be implemented by the narrative. This type of framing is still a macro-level frame and could be acted on through frameshifts—such as if you thought a 17 story was in the horror genre only to find out it as actually a comedy—though this project focuses on macro frames that inform our interpretation of story events, not literary troupes.

Figure 1 is a visual representation of how macro frame shifts operate. It shows how frames that are triggered on the level of an individual sentence can be projected to frame larger sections of a text, and how macro-level frames can still interact with new frames that are introduced on a micro level, because macro-level frames are necessarily based on the same frames present at a micro level. When a new micro-level frame is introduced, it can cause a frame shift by explicitly filling a default frame slot of a previous frame, and if the explicit slot filler is relevant to multiple instances of micro frames composing a macro frame then the frame shift that occurs will be projected into the macro level. This is why figure 1 shows the newly introduced second frame retroactively filling the default slot of both a macro- and a micro-level frame.

Frame shifts are not limited only to text and can happen in narratives in a variety of mediums. How frame shifts are expressed is adapted depending on the medium they occur in and the affordances of that medium. But despite the medium-dependent differences in how frame shifts are enacted, the same story in different mediums will often rely on similar triggers. These triggers are often placed in similar positions in the story with respect to plot and are intended to trigger similar reinterpretations when used to reframe story events. 18

Figure 1.1 Visual representation of how frame shifts operate within a narrative

1.6 The Narrative

To address how medium interacts with frame shifting, I will analyze one fairly consistent narrative told through three distinct mediums. The narrative I address is “The

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by , and I address this narrative as portrayed in film, a full-length book, and a radio show. The radio play was the earliest version of the narrative and aired in 1978 on BBC radio 4 in the United Kingdom

(Gaiman, 1988). This radio play was comprised of six original episodes and was so popular that an additional five series of radio plays were made. Because of the radio play's success, the first four episodes of the original series were converted into a book in

1979. Six books in total were eventually written and correspond to the six radio play 19 series written. The movie was a significantly later undertaking than the radio play or book, coming out in 2005. The movie was directed by Garth Jennings, and while Douglas

Adams was asked to write the screen play for this movie, he died in May 2001 before he finished writing it, so Karey Kirkpatrick was brought in to complete the script (Timothy,

2005). In this narrative, your typical everyman finds himself on a galactic journey after the destruction of his home planet Earth by a race of aliens, the , who are supposedly making way for a hyperspace expressway. Arthur and his alien friend escape the destruction of Earth and meet up with Marvin, the depressed robot, . the Galactic President, and , the only other human who managed to escape the destruction of Earth. Together they go on a quest to find the mythical planet of Magrathea while being chased by the government, who are less than happy with Zaphod for stealing a new spaceship with a revolutionary probability engine that allows the ship to move anywhere in the galaxy near instantaneously. They learn the answer to life, the universe, and everything, and do research for the next version of the vastly popular book the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

Galaxy” along the way.

1.7 Film as a Medium

Despite the unique challenges that film poses as a medium for analysis, there is precedent for cognitive-linguistic analysis of movies and books that tell the same story.

Charles Forceville (2002) makes such a comparison in a paper addressing narrative devices used in the 1990 film “The Comfort of Strangers,” adapted from the 1981 novel of the same name, by Ian McEwan. In this paper, Forceville compares how various 20 camera movements and positions in the film take up the role filled by the narrator in the book. The paper explicitly links particular shot choices and scene sequences to their book counterparts through the viewpoints they construct, as well as the interpretation they invoke in the reader. An explicit example of this in the paper is in regard to point- of-view shots, and the repeated use of high angle extreme long shots followed by a more typical medium shot. Forceville suggests that this choice of shots is intended to be interpreted as one of the characters spying on other characters in the story, but that the extreme long shots are not technically point-of-view shots from the stalker, as they are taken from positions that are not consistent for where we see the stalker in the movie.

This set up communicates the uncomfortable and unsettling spying that is being done, while also mimicking the book in its ambiguity as to where the narrator ends, and the characters begin. The shots also communicate the key point communicated by the narrator in the book, which is that one character was stalking several of the other characters. Following Forceville’s example, in addition to considering the dialogue of the movie, I will deconstruct scenes containing frame shifts into the sequence of camera shots involved and consider the narrative effect these choices create from a cinematographic and viewpoint construction perspective.

When analyzing the use of frames within the medium of film, there is a great deal more to consider than when dealing with text, as film makes use of a host of resources to convey information. Dialogue, music, and every choice made by a producer about what will be on screen at any given moment has an impact on the narrative being portrayed throughout the film. Film studies is a field of its own for a reason. As such, my 21 primary focus when addressing film will mostly be limited to what is contained in dialogue, and what shots comprise each scene. This choice was made because the shots used in a film are one of the components of film that have a very explicit connection to viewpoint construction and framing. While music and elements of film like lighting and staging undoubtedly effect what frames are conjured by a film, it would be difficult to address the plethora of frames that could be called up from these variety of sources.

Camera choices, which in film is referred to as framing, have a much more direct impact on narrative framing, as they have an extremely direct impact on viewpoint construction. Where you chose to position a camera in film quite literally produces the viewpoint from which you are engaging the narrative being portrayed. In addition, scenes are composed of a limited number of connected shots, making it feasible to directly address all of the shots used to frame a particular scene. For these reasons, I will be analyzing the various film framing choices in my discussion of narrative framing.

2. Micro Frame shifts

2.1 Film Micro Frame Shift

For a concrete example of what my analysis of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

Galaxy” movie will look like, I turn to an instance of micro frame-shifting present in the film. The micro frame shift I will be looking at starts at minute mark 1:07:33 with an extreme long shot taken from ground level straight on. The shot includes grey, rectangle

Vogon (alien) buildings in a straight line into the distance and a red ship with our main 22 characters on it, that starts close up to the camera before jetting off into the distance.

The end of this shot can be seen in figure 2.a.

Figure 2.1 Movie minute mark 1:07:38, where the red ship flies into the distance.

The next shot is a high angle medium long shot that switches focus from the escaping red spaceship to the character of the vice president, running out of the building that our main characters have just escaped from. We return to an extreme long shot of the ship and watch as it comes at us from a distance, passes right in front of the camera, and flies off into the distance again. In addition, this shot includes the remains of a crushed alien creature falling off the ship. This detail helps transition to the shot after it, in which a closeup on the commander Vogon shows him being showered with the alien remains that fell off the ship, helping to tie the shots together, and clarify the spatial relationship of the characters. While in this shot, we get the dialogue “the president (who is escaping on the ship) tests my patient” from the Vogon commander. We then get a medium straight on shot of the Vogon commander with the continuing dialogue as seen in figure

2.b of “this time I will pursue him myself, ready my ship!”. 23

Figure 2.2 Seen at minute mark 1:07:56, the Vogon commander declares his intention to follow the escaping ship and orders his men to prepare.

To this, the vice president replies “fantastic, at last” in a second medium distance shot of her. At the end of this shot a steam whistle blows, and an extreme long shot very similar to the shots with at the beginning of the scene with the spaceship occurs. Then, as seen in figure 2.c, another medium shot of the Vogon commander occurs, while he responds to the whistle sound by saying “oh that’s our one-hour lunch, everybody”.

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Figure 2.3 The shot at minute mark 1:08:06, in which the Vogon commander replies to the steam whistle sound.

The final shot of this sequence is a medium shot of the vice commander looking around very confused as the Vogon commander walks out of frame while saying “I think I’ll have soup today”, which can be seen in figure 2.d.

Figure 2.4 Movie minute mark 1:08:12, where the Vogons walk out of frame to the right and the vice president looks around confused.

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This scene presents a micro frameshift regarding the pursuit of the president.

The scene preceding this one, which follows our heroes’ escape from the Vogon detention facility in concert with the spaceship’s immediate and fast exit in this scene, firmly cements the escape frame at the very start of this scene. The use of extreme long shots when filming the spaceship would seem to be intended to emphasize the speed of the ship, as in these extreme long shots the distance that is covered the spaceship in a short time frame is emphasized. Hence the shot framing helps to elaborate on the escape of our main characters, emphasizing the speed with which they are fleeing the

Vogon prison. Then, when we cut to the commander Vogon who delivers the dialogue

“this time I will pursue him myself, ready my ship!” this brings up the frame of pursuit, and the intent to recapture the escaping main characters. Given the urgency with which the main characters are shown to be fleeing, and the default presumptions that the frame of pursuing a criminal call up in tangent with the immediate command to ready a ship for the pursuit, the audience is left with a feeling of urgency.

Everything thus far in this scene has framed the pursuit of the main characters as being an urgent and critical matter. However, this framing is supplanted by the dialogue given after the whistle: “oh that’s our one-hour lunch, everybody”. In contrast to the statement directly before it, there is absolutely no urgency invoked in this utterance.

Instead, the frame of lunch, especially in the context of a race of aliens that over the course of the movie has been repeatedly characterized as overly bureaucratic, overrides the urgency of the previous statements. The Vogon commander even explicitly 26 comments on what he’s planning to have for lunch as he and the other Vogons in the shot shuffle out of the shot, leaving a very confused vice president.

In this example, the first half of the scene sets up the frame of pursuing a criminal, and our background knowledge about this frame, along with how the scene is shot, set us up to presume that the Vogon commander will be immediately pursuing the fleeing main characters. However, once the frame of a lunch break is introduced, it acts on the previous frame of pursuit, and forces the audience—as well as the vice president in the scene—to change the default slot filled by urgency in the criminal pursuit. In this instance, the confusion portrayed by the vice commander may be included to emphasize the humor that is caused by this unexpected frameshift from an urgent pursuit to an unhurried one.

In regard to the distinction between macro and micro frame shifts, this example qualifies as a micro frame shift. This is because the frame of a lunch break and the lack of urgency it entails does not extend beyond this scene. It might be presumed that this lack of urgency is the reason that the main characters are not immediately caught and are able to further the plot, but the scenes following this one does not continue to evoke the break frame, nor does the fact that the Vogons took a break effect anything outside of the immediate escape of the heroes. The frame shift that occurs, moving from an urgent pursuit to a lunch break, is entirely contained in this one scene and does not grow to characterize any other scenes in the movie. As such the frame shift that occurs is contained to the micro level of the narrative. For this instance of a frame shift to have been extended from the micro level into the macro level of the story, one of the 27 frames involved in this shift would have needed to be a frame that was invoked in multiple scenes and was relevant to our interpretation of a larger portion of the story.

Because neither frame rises up to characterize the following scenes, this example is a micro frame shift not a macro frame shift.

However, it is interesting to note that format of this joke as a whole is a repeated element of this story at large and contributes to the macro-level framing of the narrative as a whole. This narrative is fundamentally a comedy, and the repeat use of micro frame-shift jokes helps to create the macro frame of comedy that classifies the type of story we’re reading and informs what types of literary troupes we might expect to see.

More specifically, this story makes many jokes based in bureaucracy taken to an extreme, as is happening in this example, and this can be seen as early as the beginning of the narrative with the earth being completely destroyed under the command of the galactic government for such a trivial reason of making a space highway. The framing of government in this story as a whole is built from individual utterances like this one that utilize frames contained within the government frame, and the repeated use of micro- frame shift jokes that are hinged upon frames within the government frame give rise to particular expectations in the reader moving forward and inform the audiences overall conception of what type of narrative they are engaging with.

This micro level frame shift very closely resembles the structure of a one-liner joke, which as indicated earlier in this paper, is actually the original circumstance in which frame shifts were first described. This example, and indeed many of the frameshifts in this narrative operate as one-liner jokes. This joke in particular makes use 28 of the difference in character viewpoints to structure the delivery of this one-liner joke.

The Vogon commander sets up the joke by having the expected response of wanting to pursue the escaping criminals, and the vice president is also shown wanting to go after the criminal. Then the Vogon uses the lunch break frame, and suddenly he is operating and the break frame, while the vice president is still operating with the pursuit fame and is confused by the sudden change. The disconnect between the viewpoint of the Vogon commander and the Vice president helps to highlight the frame shift that has occurred and emphasize the humor in the Vogon commander doing something so absurd as taking a lunch break before pursuing criminals. This frame shift is also indicative of the overall style of this narrative, which regularly implements surrealism for humorous effect. This can be seen almost immediately in the narrative with the parallelism at the beginning of the narrative between Arthur’s house being destroyed, and planet Earth being destroyed. The destruction of Arthur’s house is used to preface the way the Earth will be destroyed, where a legislative body designated the house (or Earth) as being necessary for destruction to make way for new infrastructure. On the level of the house, this is not something that extraordinary, as that type of situation really does occur. But when the same concept is applied to the entire planet, it makes this mundane concept surreal. The narrative often employs this technique, especially making use of bureaucracy to motivate surreal situations.

2.2 Textual Micro Frame Shift

The use of micro frame shifting noted above is not unique to the film medium.

The book and radio play also make use of micro frame shifts, often for humorous effect. 29

Let’s look at an example of this from the book. Very early on in the narrative, shortly after the destruction of Earth, we switch focus from Arthur and Ford to Trillian and

Zaphod. They are at a press conference unveiling a new ship which has in it “The Heart of Gold”. The Heart of Gold is a device that makes use of improbability to allow the ship it was installed in to move anywhere in the galaxy near instantaneously. This is apparently a brand-new device, and hence the Galactic president Zaphod is responsible for showing it off to the media. After the spaceship is revealed the following occurs on page 32:

“That is really amazing,” he said. “That really is truly amazing. That is so amazingly amazing that I think I’d like to steal it.” A marvelous presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The crowd laughed appreciatively, the newsmen gleefully punched buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President Grinned.

Zaphod then proceeds to take out a paralysis bomb and actually steals the ship along with Trillian. The micro frame shift that occurs here happens because of the juxtaposition of the stealing and presidential frame. Stealing is obviously illegal, and the frame of stealing brings to mind some assumptions about who might be performing such an act. The frame of Presidency also comes with its own assumptions, one of which being that a person holding such a position is supposed to follow the law. The frame that is triggered by the characterization of “presidential” is at odds with the frame of stealing, and when the two frames are combined in this way, we get a micro frameshift, in which Zaphod’s declaration of intent to steal the ship is characterized as being presidential. By doing this, we are forced to reconsider our assumptions about the role of president, and typical behavior for that role. The president frame provides an explicit filler for the role slot of the stealing frame that changes how we interpret Zaphod’s 30 statement. And as was the case in the micro frame shift example in the movie, this micro frame shift operates similarly to a one-liner joke, again making use of the difference in viewpoint between characters.

In the text, the reporters laugh at Zaphod’s comment because of the discontent between the stealing frame and the presidential frame. The micro frameshift is delivered by Zaphod through the framing of the position he occupies as contrasted with his statement, and so produces a humorous effect. The viewpoint of the newsman is shared by the reader to allow us to participate in this humorous moment, and this moment would not have worked as a joke if the reports had realized Zaphod’s true intent and the fact that he legitimately intended to steal the ship. Furthermore, this again plays into the stylistic humor of this narrative wherein bureaucratic frames are used to set certain expectations, only for those expectations to be broken by an absurd situation. In essence, the book regularly employs micro frameshifts, often using bureaucratic frames, to create humorous and surreal situations.

3. Macro Frame Shifts

Having addressed micro frame shifts, I will now move to discussing macro-level frameshifts, and their role in creating surprise twists in the narrative. One of the biggest twists of this narrative is the revelation that the planet Earth is in fact a supercomputer, designed to determine the “Ultimate Question” to life, the universe and everything. This is a core component of the plot and is foreshadowed in all three mediums leading up to the reveal. Because of the integral nature of this reveal, as well as the mechanics of 31 macro-level frameshifting, the macro-level frameshift that causes this reveal is remarkable similar across mediums. To illustrate this point, as well as examine how macro-level frameshifts are used in this narrative, I will discuss the frame shift that occurs at this point in the story across the three mediums.

3.1 Radio Play Macro Frameshift

Starting with the radio play, which was the original format for this narrative, the

Earth is revealed to be a supercomputer in episode 4, at minute mark 10:13. The narrator explains that a race of pan dimensional beings wanted to know the answer to

“life, the universe, and everything” and so built a supercomputer. (one of the Magrathean creators of Earth) insists that this is relevant to Earth and plays a recording (signaled by mechanic chimes and what sounds like a tape rewinding) of ancient aliens asking their newly built supercomputer to give them the answer to life, the universe, and everything. There is a bit of foreshadowing here in which the computer—named Deep Thought—refers to itself as the second greatest computer in creation and states that it will design its predecessor supercomputer. There is a run in with philosophers who are not too keen on the supercomputer answering the ultimate question and putting them out of a job, but the supercomputer solves the problem by selling them the idea that they can make money by arguing about what answer the computer will arrive at and tells everyone that it will take seven and a half million years for it to come up with the Ultimate Answer.

Then there is another mechanic chime, indicating the end of the recording, and

Arthur cuts in, asking how this is related to the Earth, to which Slartibartfast replies that 32 all will become clear, before he plays a second recording of the day that the Deep

Thought computer finally comes up with the Ultimate Answer. The chime plays to indicate that the recording has started, and we hear the following: there is music and cheering, and an announcer, who rehashes the importance of the day in question for the roaring audience. After the announcer addresses the crowd, the sound of the crowd fades, as if in the distance and we hear two voices whispering to each other. One says,

“Deep Thought prepares to speak” and we hear throat clearing with reverb, used to indicate that the computer is speaking. Deep Thought greets the two men “Good evening”. One of the men starts “good evening deep thought do you have…” before

Deep Thought cuts in “An answer for you? Yes, I have.” The computer and men then have the following exchange:

“There really is one?” “There really is one.” “To everything? To the great question of life, the universe, and everything?” “Yes.” “Are you ready to give it to us?” “I am.” “Now?” “Now. Though I don’t think you’re going to like it.” “Doesn’t matter we must know it.” “Now?” “Yes now.” “Alright…” “Well?” “You’re really not going to like it.” “Tell us!” “Alright. The answer to everything, life, the universe and everything is…” “Yes?” “Is….” “Yes?!?” “42.” “…we are going to get lynched, you know that?” “It was a tough assignment.” 33

“42?!?!?” “I think the problem was that the question was too broadly based. You never actually stated what the question was.” “It was the ultimate question, the question of life, the universe, and everything!” “Exactly, now you know the Answer to the Ultimate Question is 42. All you need to do now is find out what the ultimate question is.” “Can you please tell us the question? Can you do it?” “...No. But I’ll tell you who can.” “Who can? Tell us!” “I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me, a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer. A computer of such infinite and subtly complexity that organic life itself will form part of its operational matrix. And it shall be called, the Earth”.

The two men comment on the name being underwhelming and are generally grumbling about the whole interaction, before another robotic chime signals the end of the recording, and Arthur is left to reckon with the reality that he was a component of a biological computer, one that was destroyed just before arriving at the Ultimate

Question.

This sequence produces a macro-level frameshift because of the role that the planet Earth has played in the story thus far, and the implications the frame shift has for the story at large going forward. When the story starts at a real location on the planet, the story is immediately invoking an Earth frame, which allows us to make a great many presumptions about the setting within which the story takes place. As a science fiction narrative, this story could just as well have started on an alien planet, which would carry with it fewer presumed default fillers for the frame. For example, you wouldn’t necessarily presume that the planet was colonized by humans. But instead, by starting the story on Earth, the story invoked the Earth frame, potentially populating the reader’s mental models with lots of specific Earth-related material. Shortly thereafter, 34 the narrative presents the destruction of Earth, and uses this to kickstart the main action of the plot. While the destruction of Earth does have important consequences for the story in the sense that it starts the plot and forces the main characters to begin their galaxy hitchhiking, the destruction of Earth does not yet have any other lasting ramifications for the story going forward. After the destruction of Earth at the beginning, the frame of Earth persists somewhat in the way in which Arthur and Trillian interact with many of the other characters, the fact that they are “ape descendants” being repeatedly mentioned by other characters and qualifying some of the interactions

Trillain and Arthur have with other characters. As such, the frame of Earth is introduced immediately at the beginning of the story, is occasionally invoked in relation to interpersonal relationships between characters, and most critically returns in the scene where the macro-level frame shift occurs.

Before the reveal that Earth is in fact a supercomputer, there is a related reveal that occurs immediately preceding the supercomputer reveal. This earlier reveal is that

Magratheans are capable of making customized plants, and that Earth is one such planet. This preceding reveal does two things. Firstly, it reintroduces the Earth frame and uses that frame to anchor much of what happens on Magrathea. But in addition, it gives the Earth the quality of being made, or intentionally designed. Once it has been established that Earth was intentionally designed, a natural question to follow from this revelation would be why was the Earth created? As such it sets up and, in a sense, permits the frame shift that happens next. 35

The discussion with Deep Thought introduces the frame of computers, and this frame is carried through the entire conversation with him. As such, at the end of the recording after he has described his supercomputer and goes to name it, the name

Earth is used to trigger the Earth frame. The Earth has to be recontextualized in terms of a computer which means several things. For one, that the destruction of Earth was not only a tragedy for humans, but also messed up a much bigger ongoing galactic quest to discover the Ultimate Question. Furthermore, this recontextualization of Earth forces us to reconsider two of our characters who are descendant from Earth to actually be a component of a larger code. This means that their lucky escape from the destruction of

Earth is hugely important for the quest for the Ultimate Question, and that either individual could be the key to what the main characters are searching for. This in turn changes the development of the story moving forward, with the plot being propelled by the attempt to extract the ultimate question from these two characters going forward.

This is a macro-level frameshift because the Earth frame is a pervading frame from the beginning of the narrative up through to the frame shift, and because the result of the frame shift has a crucial impact on the plot.

3.2 Book Macro Frame Shift

Now turning to the novel, the reveal regarding the Earth’s nature as a supercomputer starts at page 119. The setup of the frame shift in the book is consistent with the setup of the same frameshift in the radio play, with the main difference being that the book needs to include adjectives for describing tonality, does more work to explicitly establish the setting, and relies on character names to differentiate the 36 speakers. The frameshift trigger still occurs in dialogue, however, and the dialogue of this scene in the book matches nearly word for word with the radio play. The line of dialogue that instigates the frame shift in this medium is again spoken by Deep Thought, and is written as such:

“I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me”, intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. “A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate—and yet I will design it for you. A computer that can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called…the Earth.”

The same snarky commentary about the name of Earth is made by one of the two men speaking with Deep Thought (in the book explicitly named Phouchg), and there is an illustrative description of the recording glitching and coming to an end. And

Slartibartfast ends this chapter of the book by declaring “end of tape”.

Because the setup of the frame shift that occurs in the book is remarkably similar to the frame shift present in the radio play, most of what I have said in regard to the radio play is directly applicable to this frame shift as well. Even the word that triggers the frame shift, and the general use of framing leading up to this frame shift is essentially unchanged from the radio play when considering the book. The distinctions between the radio play and book are mostly found in the differences in conveying environmental details. The radio play is relatively scarce in setting information, but can also directly convey things like speaker intonation, while the book can be a great deal more descriptive regarding the setting but requires adjectives to modulate how the feelings of the characters is expressed in dialogue. But since the dialogue is the foremost 37 trigger for the frame shift in both instances, there is not much of a practical difference in the frameshift that occurs at this location between the book and radio play.

3.3 Film Macro Frame Shift

Lastly, switching focus to the movie’s presentation of this section of the story, note the difference in the macro-level frame-shift setup, though the role the frame shift plays in the movie is largely unchanged. This version of the narrative deviates the most in comparison to the book and radio play, with entire scenes being dropped, and additional characters, scenes and story lines being added. The scene in which the Earth is revealed to be a supercomputer starts at minute mark 1:23:07. We have just cut away from Slartibartfast showing Arthur the interdimensional space on Magrathea that they use to create planets, and are now following Trillian, Ford and Zaphod after they went through the portal to get to Deep Thought. There is already a fairly major deviation from the other mediums here because in the radio play and book, none of our characters have a direct interaction with Deep Thought at all. We start this scene with a long shot, figure 3.a, that shows our characters arriving at the top of the stairs leading to Deep

Thought. 38

Figure 3.1 At minute mark 1:23:07, showing our characters arriving at Deep Thought

Then we get a long shot with the huge computer Deep Thought in frame. We get another long shot this time of the three main characters at the base of Deep Thought, and Zaphod begins “Oh Deep Thought, we have travelled long and far” with a medium shot of Zaphod occurring when he gets to “and far”. Then another long shot occurs, with both the main characters and part of Deep Thought in frame to highlight the difference in size, while Zaphod asks “Have you calculated the Ultimate Question of life, the universe and everything?”. Figure 3.b shows this shot.

39

Figure 3.2 Shot at minute mark 1:23:39, in which Zaphod is inquiring about the ultimate question.

While still in this shot, Deep Thought answers “No”. We get a closeup on Deep

Thought’s eye as Zaphod asks “What?” and Deep Thought replies that “I’ve been watching TV”. Then we get a medium shot of all three main characters reacting to this news, with the TV that Deep Thought is watching in frame. While in this shot, Deep

Thought explains that “I designed another computer to do that”. Zaphod asks “Oh right,

I forgot, is it here?” while another medium shot of the same content occurs but from a side view. Then we get a medium closeup on Zaphod, as seen in figure 3.c, while Deep

Thought delivers the frame-shifting line “No it’s not here. It’s another world”.

40

Figure 3.3 Shows minute mark 1:23:55 where Zaphod is learning about the supercomputer which has the ultimate question

Zaphod replies, “It’s on another world,” before we change shots to a long shot of Deep

Thought’s face. In this shot, which can be seen in figure 3.d, Deep Thought clarifies “It is another world, stupid”.

Figure 3.4 Minute mark 1:24:00, where Deep Thought reveals that the supercomputer with the ultimate question is an entire planet.

41

Deep Thought continues, “or at least it was until the Vogons destroyed it”. We switch to a medium closeup on Trillain, seen in figure 3.e, as Deep Thought continues, “to make way for a hyperspace expressway”.

Figure 3.5 Seen at minute mark 1:24:25, Trillian is coming to the realization that Deep Thought is referring to Earth.

We switch to a medium closeup on Zaphod as he responds, “well…OK”. Then we zoom out to a long shot of all three characters and Zaphod asks, “You sure you don’t have the question?” and we get a medium shot of all three characters as he continues “or a way to, you know, access it or something? Cause I think I’ve done a lot to get here”. Deep

Thought interrupts “oh, shush, shush!” and the shot switches to a long shot of her face as she says “The show’s back on”. Then there’s a closeup, shown in figure 3.f, on Zaphod as he hiccups and says “Well I don’t wanna bother you so I’m gonna…Good stuff”.

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Figure 3.6 Minute mark 1:24:28 shows the end of the conversation about the ultimate question with Deep

Thought.

We get a medium shot of all three characters as Zaphod walks away from Deep Thought and says “Great. I’m gonna go find something else for my entire life to be about”. Then a medium long shot happens, in which Ford stops Zaphod and reminds him “Zaphod,

Zaphod, there’s the…the gun.” Zaphod asks “Gun?” and Ford reminds him, “That

Humma sent you for”. The scene continues for a few more lines and Deep Thought opens a door at her base leading to said gun. Humma is a character that is unique to the movie, as is the subplot regarding Zaphod’s conflict with him, so the gun portion of this scene is entirely unique to the movie and isn’t consequential to the frame shift that has occurred.

The macro-level frame shift that occurs in this scene is premised on the same two frames involved in the frame shifts that occur in the movie and radio play, as discussed in sections 3.2 and 3.3. This means that the effect produced by this frame shift 43 in this movie retains a similar purpose as the frame shifts that are deployed in the other two mediums. However, because parts of the plot in the movie adaptation were cut, rearranged or added, how the frame shift is delivered, and some of the projection of the

Earth frame to the macro level, plays out differently. For one, the scene has an immediate departure from the other two mediums when our main characters directly visit Deep Thought. At this point in the book and radio play, Trillian, Ford and Zaphod are getting caught by the robots that are part of Magrathea’s security question, while

Arthur is talking to Slartibartfast and discovering the Earth's purpose as a supercomputer. While the reveal that the Earth is a computer is still delivered by Deep

Thought in this adaptation, the delivery is a good deal less explicit. Earth is not explicitly named, and instead you as the viewer are made to make this connection by referencing

Earth’s destruction at the beginning of the movie and are shown Trillian’s response to the news to show her putting two and two together. As such, in this version of the narrative, the frame of computer is established by Deep Thought when she says she designed another computer to find the Ultimate Question, but the Earth frame is only called up indirectly through our knowledge of the fate of the Earth when Deep Thought states, “or at least it was until the Vogons destroyed it to make way for a hyperspace expressway”.

Perhaps part of the reason that this surprise reveal is less explicit in this adaptation of the narrative is because the computer frame had already been introduced much earlier in the story. A recording very similar to what Arthur sees when the frame shift occurs in the other mediums is played by Zaphod right after he rescues Arthur and 44

Ford after the Earth has been destroyed, but this version of the narrative has the recording cut out before Deep Thought can name this new supercomputer its going to design “Earth”. This video is used as the motivation for Zaphod finding the planet of

Magrathea, and so the computer frame is not only established much earlier in this medium but is also used to propel the plot. As such, by the time we get to the scene where Deep Thought implicitly tells us that Earth was a supercomputer, we’ve already been primed with the computer frame and it is less cognitively taxing to put two and two together than if the scene we just discussed in the movie was the first point at which the computer frame was employed and the Earth frame was only triggered referentially. By using the computer frame much more heavily leading up to the reveal in this medium, the movie is able to deliver the reveal less explicitly without making the cognitive load on the viewer too great, and avoids becoming confusing.

Similar to the movie’s micro-level frame shift discussed earlier in this paper, the difference in viewpoints of the characters present during this reveal help establish the frame shift that has occurred. You might miss that Deep Thought is referencing Earth, and so the shot of Trillian, who has the same viewpoint as the audience in regard to

Earth, helps to clarify that a frame shift has occurred, and that Deep Thought is in fact speaking about Earth. In this medium Deep Thought can be less direct in triggering the frame shift because the movie can provide the visual reaction of Trillian and we can gather from Trillian’s reaction that she has realized something that the audience also needs to recognize. 45

Despite the changes in the delivery of the frame shift, the core mechanics of this shift are consistent with the other two mediums. The frame of Earth is still a frame that is triggered almost immediately upon the start of the movie when we are first introduced to Arthur, and the frame of Earth is consistently present throughout the movie. For instance, when Trillian is caught by the Vogons and accused of kidnapping

President Zaphod, there is a scene in which Trillian is being interrogated by a Vogon and reveals that Earth is her home planet. The Vogon comments that Earth has been destroyed and asks her for a secondary home planet that he can put in the records.

Trillian doesn’t believe the Earth has been destroyed so the Vogon shows her the form that permitted the destruction of Earth, signed by Zaphod himself, who appears to have thought that he was signing an autograph. The Earth frame is critically important to understanding Trillian’s position in this scene and is important to understanding the implication that someone tricked Zaphod and that there may be currently unknown actors in the destruction of Earth.

Hence when we arrive at the scene with Deep Thought, the Earth frame has already been implemented in several previous scenes and is relevant to comprehending the story as a whole thus far. As such, the Earth frame is operating as a macro frame by the time the scene with Deep Thought occurs. The movie does make use of the visual presentation of this frame, and also reintroduces this frame through scenes that are unique to the movie, but similarly to the book and radio play, the Earth frame has been established as a macro frame by the time we arrive at the supercomputer reveal. The computer frame is much more explicitly stated in this scene, with Deep Thought directly 46 stating that they designed another computer, which was a world. But even outside of the explicit dialogue, the second shot of this scene shows the towering Deep Thought in all its robotic looking glory, immediately calling up the computer frame at the very beginning of this scene. But returning to the dialogue, Deep Thought explicitly implements the computer frame at the micro level, and that in concert with the indirect reference to the Earth frame, along with the fact that the Earth frame has been previously projected to the macro level allows the macro level frame shift of the Earth being a supercomputer to occur.

So, despite the differences in setup, the macro frame shift that occurs in the film has the same story implications as it does in the other two mediums. This is why figure

3.7 is able to depict the general mechanics of the macro frame shift we have discussed for all three mediums, even though the specifics in how the computer and Earth frame was enacted differs depending on medium. The core elements of what is being presumed by the Earth frame, and what is being explicitly filled by the introduction of the computer frame in context of the Earth frame remains consistent regardless of medium. As such figure 3.7 represents the frame shift we have discussed in section 3 overall. 47

Figure 3.7 A visual representation of the mechanics of the specific macro frameshift discussed in section

3, with the explicit fillers of the computer frame supplanting some of the default fillers of the Earth frame.

4. Conclusion

The above examination of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” told through radio play, book, and movie, indicates that macro frame shifts are indeed used to create surprise twists in this narrative, and that these macro frame shifts are consistent between mediums in both the frames involved and how they’re triggered. The mechanics of the macro frame shift under discussion remained consistent between mediums, though each medium modulated the delivery of the frame shift by means of the affordances provided by that medium. The movie medium in particular has been 48 shown to have the greatest flexibility in its delivery of a frame-shift likely because frames can be implemented through several channels, like shot choices, dialogue, music and visual content in the film medium.

We have seen the distinction between micro frame shifts and macro shifts, as well as addressed how frames are built from the micro level to the macro level. Looking at micro and macro shifts has also indicated the role of character viewpoint in frame- shifts, particularly in the movie medium, in which a character’s viewpoint can intentionally align with the audience’s viewpoint as a method of indicating when a frame shift has occurred. In addition, we discussed the implementation of micro frames in this narrative, and how they play into the stylistic humor of this narrative, being similar in format to one-liner jokes. Overall, this paper shows the productive use of the concepts of frame shifts and viewpoint construction in narratives to describe the implementation of these linguistic features for the creation of narrative surprise, as well as for humor. What this study indicates in the larger picture of research is that even dense and linguistically complicated structures like long narratives are still fundamentally based on individual utterances, and the linguistic phenomenon that occur at the level of individual utterances can be used to structure entire narratives.

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