Script Symbology Sequence, Duality & Correspondence in Screenplays & Drama
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Script Symbology Sequence, Duality & Correspondence in Screenplays & Drama John Fraim John Fraim 189 Keswick Drive New Albany, OH 43054 760-844-2595 [email protected] www.midnightoilstudios.org www.symbolism.org www.desertscreenwritersgroup.com www.greathousestories.com © 2017 – John Fraim FRAIM / SS 1 “Eternal truth needs a human language that varies with the spirit of the times. The primordial images undergo ceaseless transformation and yet remain ever the same, but only in a new form can they be understood anew. Always they require a new interpretation if, as each formulation becomes obsolete, they are not to lose their spellbinding power.” Carl Jung The Psychology of Transference The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. T.S. Eliot The Rock “The essential problem is to know what is revealed to us not by any particular version of a symbol, but by the whole of symbolism.” Mercea Eliade The Rites and Symbols of Initiation “Francis Bacon never tired of contrasting hot and cool prose. Writing in ‘methods’ or complete packages, he contrasted with writing in aphorisms, or single observations such as ‘Revenge is a kind of wild justice. The passive consumer wants packages, but those, he suggested, who are concerned in pursuing knowledge and in seeking causes will resort to aphorisms, just because they are incomplete and require participation in depth.” Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media FRAIM / SS 2 To Eric McLuhan Relentless provocateur over the years FRAIM / SS 3 Contents Preface 8 Introduction 10 I. Symbols 1.Search for Story 12 2.Contentual Symbols 17 ARAS Classification Screenplay Content Characters Action Events Objects 3.Contextual Symbols 21 Place Space Time Phenomena Elements II. Sequence 4.Screenplay Sequence 28 Three-Step Four-Step Five-Step Seven-Step Eight-Step Fifteen-Step Seventeen-Step Twenty-Two Step Twenty-Three Step FRAIM / SS 4 5.Natural & Cultural Sequence 48 Yearly Religion Christianity Astrology Senses Culture Media Image & Word American Story Genres Dialectical 6.Sequence in Symbol Systems 64 Colors Numbers Drama Modes Hollywood Genres Elements Alchemy Life of Christ Place Shape 7.Pyschological Sequence 80 Sigmund Freud Psychosexual Sequence Erick Erickson The Life Cycle Completed Carl Jung Symbols of Transformation Stanislov Grof/Lloyd deMause Beyond the Brain/Psychohistory 8.Myth & Psychic Sequence 89 Origins and History of Consciousness III. Duality 9.Duality Symbols 97 Beginning Sequence Ending Sequence 10.Direction of Duality 102 FRAIM / SS 5 Unconsciousness to Consciousness Unity to Fragmentation Youth to Old Age Birth to Life to Death Wholeness to Separation Feminine Archetype to Masculine Archetype Globalism to Nationalism Democrats to Republicans 11.American Dual Symbols 106 The intersection of Equality & Freedom Cycles of American History – The Fourth Turning 12.World Dual Symbols 107 First half of 20th Century - Equality Second half of the 20th Century - Freedom First decades of the 21st Century – Equality (globalism) Second decade of 21st Century – Freedom (nationalism) IV. Correspondence 13.Correspondence (Commonality) 109 Hollywood & Outside Sequences History & Psychology 14. Symbolism of the Cross 121 Duality - Horizontal bar One Symbol to Opposite Symbol Past to Future Birth to Death Feminine to Masculine Equality to Freedom Union to Separation Correspondence - Vertical bar Similarity/Alignment Present Moment Equality Wholeness Feminine V. Structure FRAIM / SS 6 15.A Symbolic Structure for Stories 124 Cross in story structure Alignment Symbols Content (Above) Context (Below) Opposition Symbols Beginning of story End of story 16.Symbol Challenges & Problems 130 Misalignment Non-Duality 17.The Godfather: Vertical to Horizontal 134 18.Harry Potter: Series & Sequence 137 19.Ulysses: True Correspondence 143 Linati & Gilbert Schemas Correspondence to story structure VI. Script Symbology 20.The Cinematography of Symbolism 150 Visual Components Contrast & Affinity Space Lines Shapes Color Movement Continuum of Movement Rhythm Visual Structure 21.Application & Model 157 General Process Screenplay Scenes Model 22.The Search Continues 163 FRAIM / SS 7 Study of Comparative Sequences Is there a golden number for sequence? Common sequence elements across nature, life and culture? Relation of this sequence to Hollywood sequence? 23.Safe-Crackers in the Land of Clichés 166 Appendix A. ARAS 169 B. Screenplay Theories 178 C. Symbolism of Place 180 D. Expanded Chart 184 E. USC 8-Step Sequence 185 F. Blake Snyder 15-Step Sequence 188 G. Seven Principles of Hermetics 190 H. Morphology of Folktales 195 References 198 About John Fraim 212 Comments on Works 213 FRAIM / SS 8 Preface Like a lot of people, I hate long opening acts to some work of art or literature. You know what I mean. These are the long openings of films that make audiences jump through the “hoops” of “flashbacks” or “backstory” before the film gets down to the business of telling a story. Or, the author who makes readers read Prefaces and Introductions to their books. Who do they think they are? Why not get to the point and stop warming up? You’re either on stage or off stage and the audience is not all that interested with a discussion of your offstage comments or explanations. A work should not require all this outside comment on a work. But sometimes these outside comments seem necessary - and even appropriate - before sending one’s work on its way into the world. Especially when these up-front comments touch on things not covered in the work itself yet important to its creation. Here I’m thinking of the necessary and appropriate Preface Joseph Conrad wrote to his 1920 novel The Rescue. It is one of my favorite passages of Conrad as well as one of his more symbolic. In it, he talks about a type of “reunion” he experienced when he completed The Rescue, twenty years after he started and then abandoned it for other projects like The Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and Lord Jim. The “reunion” Conrad talks about is with his early work on the novel around 1900. This work is personified as crew members on a ship Conrad once captained. As Conrad notes in his Preface to The Rescue: “The years passed and the pages grew in number, and the long reveries of which they were the outcome stretched wide between me and the deserted ‘Rescue’ like the smooth hazy spaces of a dreamy sea. Yet I never actually lost sight of that dark speck in the misty distance. It had grown very small but it asserted itself with the appeal of old associations. It seemed to me that it would be a base thing for me to slip out of the world leaving it out there all alone, waiting for its fate — that would never come? … Sentiment, pure sentiment as you see, prompted me in the last instance to face the pains and hazards of that return. As I moved slowly towards the abandoned body of the tale it loomed up big amongst the glittering shallows of the coast, lonely but not forbidding. There was nothing about it of a grim derelict. It had an air of expectant life. One after another I made out the familiar faces watching my approach with faint smiles of amused recognition. They had known well enough that I was bound to come back to them. But their eyes met mine seriously as was only to be expected since I, myself, felt very serious as I stood amongst them again after years of absence. At once, without wasting words, we went to work together on our renewed life; and every moment I felt more strongly that They Who had Waited bore no grudge to the man who however widely he may have wandered at times had played truant only once in his life.” FRAIM / SS 9 These words of Conrad written, almost a hundred years ago, express similar feelings I have to returning to a past idea started in a book almost twenty-five years ago and abandoned for other projects over the years. Like Conrad, I never lost sight of this idea which seemed at times only a “dark speck in the misty distance.” And when I approached the idea again, the old thoughts and questions and speculations and theories became reanimated and seemed to know all the time I would be returning to them someday. When this old symbol of an idea was stirred-up again, it moved towards me of its own volition and infiltrated this work with the subtleness and power of an encompassing, surrounding media or environment. Like Conrad, I worked with the old ideas and explored where they wanted to take me for “our renewed life.” In this process, I feel like a medieval alchemist, not creating something new but freeing something old. Perhaps an old symbol dressed in the clothing of the day. A symbol that lingers somewhere between the oppositions and dualities we discuss in this book. That doesn’t add something but rather subtracts something. A symbol that unites the paradoxes of opposites. Carl Jung expressed this feeling well in Psychology and Alchemy. “When the alchemist speaks of Mercurius,” Jung observed, “on the face of it he means quicksilver (mercury), but inwardly he means the world-creating spirit concealed or imprisoned in matter.” This spirit does not divide into fragments but unites into wholeness. As Jung says, this spirit “is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison and yet healing draught - a symbol uniting all the opposites.” Uniting them in what one might call a state of chaotic, interdependence. FRAIM / SS 10 Introduction The popular view of symbols sees them contained in dreams or museums. Yet they inhabit far more than these realms.