In my media aesthetics and analysis class, we just got a reading about narrative structure, with the classic 3-act structure of a story having a beginning, middle, and end. Then, I saw an analysis of the 3-act structure as it is used today in video games (I put the video in the link).
But, I've recently been a bit frustrated by this concept. Media has changed so much since the oral stories of ancient times, and yet, the 3-act structure still exists in storytelling, though the order is sometimes rearranged. Why? Is the concept of everything having a start and end embedded in the human psyche, or can we get past it? Can anyone name a film, TV show, game, whatever that DOESN'T use the 3-Act structure? I can't, and I'm not even sure how to make a story without omitting the elements of start/end or adding anything else. Does anyone else find it scary that we as humans are restricted to understanding the world around us by how things start and end and we ultimately cannot comprehend the universe being infinite in time as well as space? I know, it’s weird to think this, but really…can anyone think of a story of any medium that didn’t use the 3-act structure somehow? I’d like to know.
BTW, I’m Face, a TVR major.
1 comment:
Very interesting thoughts. Isn't the arc of the story a reflection of our own life-cycle? I think that is why we resist some other structures. I guess they feel confusing, unfinished somehow. You will like to know that all Aztec literature (or iconographure, storeis told in scrolls and also narrated to the SOB conquistadores when they came to learn about what they were going to destroy! has no beggining or end. You just catch it at some point and leave it at another. Many puppet shows in India, Greece and other places are continuous narratives that are the equivalent of people we meet by chance and leave for some reason. In modern times and specifically in cinema I can think of various examples, including THX 1138, the first Spielberg film based on his own student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB which basically starts somewhere in the future where you drop in as spectator without any idea of where, what and with no clue as to the language which is of course some future argot.
Jorge Luis Borges is perhaps the master of the circular stories with no beginning and no end. and my absolute favorite writer.
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