HUMA 2740

Lecture 16

Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures David

Bordwell

- Three aspects of narrative can be kept distinct

- A narrative can be studied as representation – how it refers to or
signifies a world or body of ideas
o Semantics of narrative - exemplified in most studies of
characterization or realism
- A narrative can also be studied as a structure – the way its
components combine to create a distinctive whole
o E.g. Vladimir Propp's morphology of the magical fairy tale
- A narrative can also be studied as an act – a dynamic process of
presenting a story to a perceiver
- Would embrace considerations of source, function, and effect; the
temporal progress of information or action; and concepts like the
"narrator”
- Study of narration, the "pragmatics" of narrative phenomena
Issues of representation (especially denotative representation) and
structure (especially dramaturgical structure) in order to highlight how
classical Hollywood narration constitutes a particular configuration
of normalized options for representing the story and
manipulating composition and style are introduced in this essay

The Straight Corridor

- Classical Hollywood film presents psychologically defined individuals

who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or to attain specific goals
 - Characters enter into conflict with others or with external
circumstances
- Story ends with a decisive victory or defeat, a resolution of the
problem and a clear achievement or nonachievement of the goals
- Principal causal agency is the character – a distinctive individual
endowed with an evident, consistent batch of traits, qualities, and
behaviors

Activities of the VOA designed to appeal to the elites of the various

targeted countries

- Idea is to appeal to the countries’ decision makers in hopes that they

will be convinced to support American objectives
- CIA also helped to fund to a number of broadcasting networks since
early days of Cold War
- These include Radio Free Europe (started 1951) and Radio Liberty
(1953) which were tasked with broadcasting news and info into the
Eastern Bloc (the communist countries of Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union)
- These networks also broadcast to the Middle East and Central Asia
- CIA no longer funds these institutions
- Now done directly by the US Congress and administered through the
BBG as is the VOA
- Radio Free Asia performs similar activities directed at China, North
Korea, Tibet, Burma, and Vietnam
- Radio Free Asia founded in 1996 to broadcast to China
- Other examples of US govt supported broadcasting abroad include
institutions like Radio Marti and later TV Marti, which were designed
to beam propaganda to the island of Cuba in hope of undermining
popular support for the Castro govt
- As American military built up its global network of bases, it provided
radio and TV services to its personnel abroad in form of the Armed
Forces Radio Service (changed to Armed Forces Radio and
Television Service in 1954)
- Voice of America continues to operate today and now supplements
its radio broadcasting activities with a well-supported Internet
presence