Often high school courses in Media Studies have a section on “Film Narratives” or “Narratology” and within these there is often a section on how the narrative “structures time”. Conceptually, just exactly how a narrative decides how to ‘pass the time’, can be difficult for students to understand and teachers to impart…

“Structuring of Time” in the VCE MEDIA Study Design is defined as “the structuring of time, including order, duration and frequency of events, contraction and expansion of time, linear and non-linear time frames”.

This seems to me to ask students to pick-up on where, why, and to what effect, a narrative’s “plot” or “discourse” (if you are a French Sturucturlist) or “sjuzhet” (if you are a Russian Formalist) manipulates its “story” or “fabula” (Фоpмалистах!!) … where the latter refers to the actual chronology of events in the narrative and the former refers to the manipulation of that story in the presentation of the narrative.

Put another way, story (fabula) is a chronological sequence of events, whereas plot (Sjuzhet) can unfold in non-chronological order.

The events can be artistically arranged by means of such devices as repetition, parallelism, gradation, and retardation. 

Students, in discussing the ordering of events. might like to pick up on where a text uses Analepsis and Prolepsis – “what is commonly referred to in film as “flashback” and “flashforward.” In other words, these are ways in which a narrative’s discourse re-order’s a given story: by “flashing back” to an earlier point in the story (analepsis) or “flashing forward” to a moment later in the chronological sequence of events (prolepsis). The classic example of prolepsis is prophecy, as when Oedipus is told that he will sleep with his mother and kill his father. As we learn later in Sophocles’ play, he does both despite his efforts to evade his fate. A good example of both analepsis and prolepsis is the first scene of La Jetée. As we learn a few minutes later, what we are seeing in that scene is a flashback to the past, since the present of the film’s diegesis is a time directly following World War III. However, as we learn at the very end of the film, that scene also doubles as a prolepsis, since the dying man the boy is seeing is, in fact, himself. In other words, he is proleptically seeing his own death. We thus have an analepsis and prolepsis in the very same scene.

 “The concept of “in media res” is also useful – the term for the epic’s convention of beginning “in the middle of things,” rather than at the very start of the story. In the Odyssey, for example, we first learn about Odysseus’ journey when he is held captive on Calypso’s island, even though, as we find out in Books IX through XII, the greater part of Odysseus’ journey actually precedes that moment in the narrative. Of course, films and written tales often begin in the thick of things and fill in the background later; in other words, narrative regularly reworks discursively the simple chronology of its story.”

“Real Time” is another important idea that can help students appreciate “structuring of time” – ie. “In film, when a sequence is presented exactly as it occurs, without any edits or jumps in time. The recent television series, 24, attempted to present the viewer with real time for each of its 24 episodes, with the action in each episode lasting exactly one hour. The exact time of the story action is therefore equal to the time it takes to view that action. The show made up for tediousness by jumping between actions occurring at the same time. In general, film or video rarely attempts to present you with real time since the most interesting aspects of a narrative tend to reside in the discursive re-organization of the chronological story.”

So …. “real time” is one way of “structuring time”, and so is “contracting or compressing time using fades or dissolves”.

What is of particular interest to the Media study design is that students notice the “way” each narrative chooses to present the passing of time, and explain why, and to what effect.

I’ve taken the above concepts from the websites below – a great start for thinking more about the study of “narrative”….

 

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/narratology/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narratology 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Formalists 

 

   Jamie