Conversation On Narrative Versus Image

--The Winner Is...
The Golden Compass: $25,783,232

Prince Caspian: $56,573,000


garbage. remember the tora says: NO IMAGES these movies get lost in image making and forget to tell a story, deeply. so far there are so few movies, novels even that match the depths of tora story telling.


i just saw the narnia movie. another boring orgy of digital battle scenes. where the hell is the story telling today? rap music? do have to listen throgh that clatter to get stories?

Miyazaki, i suppose. you seen his movies?


--the key: ask yourself this.... why are we so addicted to image in this society, when story not only sufficed 3000 years ago but was an immensely powerful vehicle?

part of our modern disenchantment with old scripture...and part of our misunderstanding of it...is rooted in our addiction to image...also a concern of the Tora, yes.

your always erudite thoughts would be appreciated....


this is VERY complex. and you've studied some psychology, so you know there is complexity here.

i'm trying to think first of all which acts more like a drug... for sure the flashing colorful images on the flat screen is one of the most powerful drugs we've created yet! and even back 1000s of years ago, idols with big eyes were also used to induce trance and hear the voices...

no, inducing THAT kind of trance is different than the oblivion of watching tv..

nevertheless, hearing is very powerful, drum beats can induce trance, we can close our eyes to images but not to voices...

so what's the diff between zoning out in front of a flat screen full of images and under headphones of music? i don't have enough data, i think my experience is too ideosyncritic.


one interesting point is a lecture i once heard by jonathan miller. he discussed that language is LIGHTYEARS more complex than visuals. the novel is ALWAYS more complex than the movie.

the movie is linear, the images have to obey certain laws of geometry.... language can and does EASILY transcend these logical structures. you can run rings around logic and geometry with langugage.

in fact this is essentially what mathematics is! with linguistic structures (mathematics) we can transcend the simple euclidean geometry of our everyday experience and invent some reall sick stuff...

the resonating networks that you can create with language transcend our everyday experience of time and space much greater than visuals can.



--NOW YOU'RE ON TO SOMETHING!

run with it!

Why is story so different, given how powerful visuals can be...what is the basis of story's power? it resonates to something within the listener...what?!


as biology, we aren't static pictures we ARE narratives. parent zygote infant adolescent adult parent...

off to the side, death..

narrative is the reality. it is a fault of our visual consciousness that stills the narrative of experience into false OBJECTS.

vision creates things wrapped in surfaces where there is primarily EXPERIENCE: no object/subject!

of course this is the CORE of judaism. don't kill the divine experience of life by instantiating it in a visual idol.

this idolatry making is the essence of the evil of pornography. i've got a page out of playboy with the shell of a naked woman standing there and behind her is a STATUE which has more PRESENCE in it than she has. frightening! turning women into empty shells with holes to fuck.


then there is participation. when watching a movie, we can't do much on our part with the images. we can't sketch as we watch, i think it's hard to imagine our own images while watching.

but if you merely listen to someone tell a story, then you have to ADD to it. you have to make your own images and connections and...


now tora is primarily written. so what does that mean? what if it were a picture book? could we sit around the table and perform drash on it? hmm... SOME would be able to.. but most of us don't have graphic skills, but we CAN ALL tell stories..



--bingo...one more part of the puzzle...
images provide ready-made paradigms, they supply a framework.

stories stimulate us to be partners in the creative process of the telling...we become an appendage of the teller, do we not?


appendage of the teller? part of the vine §



finally: many animals can play with pictures! look at fish and butterflies! they communicate with visuals.

one of the DEFINING features of Homo sapiens is that he tells long winding narratives. i think this and addiction ARE his defining features.



but NO! honeybees do narrative too:
honeybee cultural memory and narrative

fun!