Sabine Schenk Running and Clicking Narrating Futures
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Sabine Schenk Running and Clicking Narrating Futures Edited by Christoph Bode Volume 3 Sabine Schenk Running and Clicking Future Narratives in Film The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement no. 229135. ISBN 978-3-11-027215-4 e ISBN 978-3-11-027243-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de . © 2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: PTP-Berlin Protago-TEX-Production GmbH, Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Acknowledgments [Mr. Englethorpe said:] “But to me, there is no higher honor one can give to a text than to return to it and re-examine its contents, to ask of it, ‘Does this still hold true?’ A book that is read, then forgotten – that is a mark of failure to me. But to read and reread… that is faith in the process of evolution” “Well, why dont you write one? Why don’t you collect all of your works together and write a book” Emma asked, almost exasperated. “Perhaps” Mr. Englethorpe said thoughtfully. “I am not sure which of my works to select for this book. Or perhaps I am just scared no one will read it… let alone reread it and deem it worthy of revision. How do we know which texts will shape the future understanding of the world and which texts will fall into obscurity? Oh no! This is a risk I couldn’t take” (Larsen 190–91) Writing is risky business. Writing a dissertation can be intimidating and over- whelming at times. There are many colleagues and friends to whom I owe my thanks for their advice and support. First of all I would like to thank my doctoral supervisor Prof. Dr. Christoph Bode for making me part of the NAFU team. I could not have wished for a better dissertation adviser. I also must thank him explicitly for letting me be part of his chair at the Department of Anglistik and Amerika Institut at the Ludwig- Maximilians-University in Munich. The last three years were the most enjoyable working experience of my life. My thanks equally go to the NAFU research team PD Dr. Sebastian Domsch, Dr. Felicitas Meifert-Menhard and Kathleen Singles. Thank you all for the many conversations, comments and recommendations throughout the writing of this dissertation. I could not have wished for better colleagues to work with. I also would like to thank my research assistants, Sandra Steinke and Isabel Schneider, for their shared enthusiasm of all things NAFU. My special thanks go to Isabel for her continuous support. My thanks go equally to NAFU research assistant Heidrun Patzak for her patience and profes- sional assistance. Furthermore, I must express my gratitude to my colleagues at LMU. A very special ‘thank you’ is due to Yoshimi von Felbert, for helping me especially in the first stages of my work at LMU. I would have never managed without you. Thank you for being so generous with your advice and a great friend. I would also like to thank my other colleagues, Katharina Pink-Schniewind, Sabrina Kessler and Dr. Stefanie Fricke, for being the best work mates anyone could hope for. Finally, I owe my thanks to Prof. Dr. Katharina Rennhak for making all this possible. VI Acknowledgments Last but not least, my thanks go out to my family and friends. I could not have done this without you. First of all, I must thank my parents for their constant support. Thank you for believing in me. Additionally, I would like to thank Scott Ewen for his patience and emotional support. My thanks and best wishes go out to all of you. Contents Acknowledgments | V Preface | 1 1 Concepts and Methodology | 3 1.1 The Future in ‘Future Narratives’ | 3 1.1.1 ‘No Future’ – Past Narratives | 7 1.1.2 Mapping the Future | 13 1.2 From ‘Running’ to ‘Clicking’ | 41 2 ‘Running’ – FNs on Film | 51 2.1 “Cinema is memory, it’s always part” – or is it? | 51 2.2 ‘Film Futures’ and Mind-Games in Movies | 55 2.3 ‘Running’ | 67 2.3.1 Chance and Contingency in Tykwer’s Lola Rennt | 68 2.3.2 Kieślowski’s Blind Chance – or ‘Take It Easy, Lola!’ | 88 2.3.3 Artificiality and Complexity in Resnais’ Smoking / No Smoking | 101 2.3.4 Parallel Streaming: Howitt’s Sliding Doors | 111 2.3.5 The Big Crunch: Van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody | 117 2.3.6 Game Over? – Jones’ Source Code | 127 2.4 ‘Running’: The Recipient as Viewer | 134 3 ‘Running’ and ‘Clicking’ | 139 3.1 Beyond the Film Reel | 139 3.1.1 DVD: Recipient as ‘Viewser’ | 145 3.1.2 Television and Transmedia | 152 3.1.2.1 FNs in TV Serials | 152 3.1.2.2 ‘Reality TV’ | 160 3.1.2.3 Is the Future LOST, Dina Foxx? | 167 3.2 Hybrid FNs Between ‘Running’ and ‘Clicking’ | 179 4 ‘Clicking’ – FNs in New Media | 183 4.1 ‘Movie Game’ vs ‘Interactive Film’ | 183 4.1.1 Heavy Rain as Movie Game | 189 4.1.2 FNs and the Database: Korsakow Films and ‘Hypernarrative Interactive Cinema’ | 194 4.2 ‘Clicking’: FNs and the User | 203 VIII Contents 5 Conclusion: FNs in Film and Their Future | 205 Works Cited | 211 Preface Life is a series of collisions with the future. – José Ortega y Gasset (qtd. in Atkinson 242) Academics in the field of film studies have traditionally approached their subject from many different angles. Their main concerns are critical writings on cinema, its aesthetics and specifics of storytelling, and the reciprocity between ideology and reception (Rieser and Zapp xxi). Although critical writings on film have examined various objects of study, their attitudes towards interdisciplin- ary attempts have been quite restrained. ¹ This is due to the implicit agreement on what is meant by the term ‘film’. ² Storytelling in ‘screen media’ (cf. Stewart 1) is mostly analyzed regardless of its medial form(s). ³ On the other hand, sto- rytelling in ‘new media’⁴ is analyzed mainly with its focus on the digital and interactive nature of these narratives. New and old media are generally ana- lyzed separately in different academic disciplines and the digital divide is fore- grounded. During the development of this thesis, I have frequently asked myself whether the concept of ‘future narratives in film’ can be introduced as a new field for narratological research by limiting my corpus to the traditional subject of film studies. Early on I have realized that all kinds of storytelling in screen media have to be discussed in this study to sufficiently explain what Christoph Bode has coined ‘Future Narratives’.⁵ Therefore this study is neither restricted to readers who are particularly interested in film studies nor in narratology, but for everyone who is interested in understanding structures that allow for “ways of narrating 1 Interdisciplinarity is to be understood in a wider context that reaches outside of the area of the humanities and empirical social studies. 2 Of course, there are many discussions on the difference in usage between the terms ‘film’, ‘movie’ or ‘motion pictures’. Garrett Stewart, for example, problematizes the terms film and movie especially in its interconnections with the “encroachment of the digital”. He therefore talks about “screen narratives” instead of filmic narratives (cf. Stewart 1). 3 Transmedial approaches deal primarily with the medial characteristics of narratives and their impact on the provided narrative itself. However, transmedia storytelling is still regarded as a peripheral matter in film studies, although David Bordwell and Henry Jenkins provide a good source of the interconnection of these two fields of research in their online blogs and discus- sions. Bordwell also contributed to the compilation Narrative Across Media (cf. Bordwell, “Neo- Structuralist Narratology and the Functions of Filmic Storytelling” 203–19). 4 “What is new media? […] The translation of all existing media into numerical data accessible through computers.” (Manovich 19–20). 5 What is understood by ‘future narratives’ will be discussed in the next chapter. 2 Preface the future as still variable, multiple, and undecided” (Bode, Future Narratives. Theory, Poetics, and Media-Historical Moment Part 1). Welcome to the world of ‘future narratives in film’! 1 Concepts and Methodology 1.1 The Future in ‘Future Narratives’ Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go. Dr Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (qtd. in Iyengar 111) But the question is: how do you decide where to go? How do you manoeuvre yourself into the unknown open of time and space? In other words, how and by which means can the future be made attainable? How can it be structured, mediated and simulated ? Or, is it actually possible to (narratively) do so? Iden- tifying narratives that are able to convey such a fantastic concept as the future, describing their structures, en passant inventing a poetics to actually do so and drawing relevant conclusions for the field of narratology – this is the task of the Narrating Futures project (short: NAFU).⁶ Before focusing on the particular research area of this subproject, it is necessary to clarify a few terms, which serve as preliminary orientations for the further development of the Future Narratives (short: FN) concept.