I most definitely cannot compete with the Lacanian discourse about smooth vs
striated texts, but I'd just like to buttress John Bleasdale's point that
next to nobody wants to create their own movies *while they're watching
one.*
I mean, hasn't literature been down this path already? Do you know anybody
who has read or taught or even thought about Julio Cortazar's _Hopscotch_
since 1960-whatever? Furthermore, I don't think that wanting to watch or
read or engage with a "strong" text that knows where it's going (or seems
to) is a marker of weakness or laziness. That's nonsense. First of all, all
books or movies morph with each reading, in my humble opinion. The reader or
viewer is *always* creating the meaning or closing the circuit or (supply
your own metaphor or rhetorical convenience here).
People always get seduced by new technologies in predictable ways, and start
believing that some fundamental question of philosophy or aesthetics has now
changed. I remember having fights with tech-crazed guys in the early '90s
who actually believed that playing some computer game designed by Silicon
Valley morons was a more "interactive" or "creative" experience than trying
to muddle through _A la recherche._ Was the game, on the other hand,
superior in some ways to a bad book or movie. Probably. Maybe. I don't know.
It would depend on the book or movie and it would depend on me.
If the question is whether great works in DV or any other medium will make
unprecedented demands on the viewer/participant, then I'd wholeheartedly
agree. But that doesn't mean the Faulkners and Kurosawas of digital media
will expect us to hunch over the keyboard and peck out our own endings. As
someone else pointed, we'd soon have romantic happy endings to _Casablanca_,
_Chinatown_, _The Great Gatsby_, _Hamlet_ and God knows what else. Adam and
Eve would be back in the Garden, having glued the apple back to the tree and
made peace with the Deity. The goal of narrative, which may well be the
oldest art form, is to take the reader/listener/viewer on a journey. The
journey can be crap or amazing, the destination familiar or utterly alien.
But the journey itself is an *act,* and there's nothing inherently passive
or weak about venturing out on it.
In fact there's a strong/weak, active/passive, top/bottom S/M dichotomy here
that needs deconstructing but that's another story. Sorry to go on so long,
and me having hardly ever posted before. But I feel strongly about this one.
Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com
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