Texts

IS HOPE STILL ALIVE

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The text deliberates on the motion of narratives between SF literature and digital games and their connectivity, from the appearance of the first digital games to modern network games intended for large number of players. The narratives which move from SF texts to games and vice versa, which place games into narratives, reflect not only real social relations under which they have occurred, but also offer (possible) solutions for the problems of the modern world, primarily those caused by neoliberal politics. In them, the modern concept of a self-sufficient individual as a generator of change is abandoned, insisting on the idea that success may be attained only in cooperation and coordination of a large number of interested actors, displacing the battlefield from the plane of the physical to the plan of the digital.

INTERTEXTUALITY AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN MACINTOSH ADVERTISING 1984

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This paper presents the intertextual structure of an advertisement narrative, which, with the appearance of the Macintosh, is considered as a cultural phenomenon and an aesthetic determinant of the twentieth century that still defines modern culture. The Apple advertisement for the Macintosh “1984”, directed by Ridley Scott and prompted by the rigid discourse of the PC market of the time, refers to the Orwell’s fiction classic of the same title. In addition to verbal intertextuality, the advertisement also includes visual references that will be considered in this paper. The narrative technique of this one-minute video clip activates the paradigms of spatial coherence and subversions that are associated with utopian and dystopian constructs, thus successfully managing the space and the moment when the Macintosh emerged on the market. A system of uniqueness that is fully oriented to the production of customized consumers in order to gain profit implies creation of a commercial space in which social relationship between the individual and the perceived is established through use and consumption of electronic products and services. This new form of comfort reveals itself as a form of commodity fetishism, which, as a reference to Marx, would be another level of verbal intertextuality. From a collection of technological parts and raw materials, the Macintosh has changed into a “fantastic form” where physical properties express social behaviour. In this way, the commodity expresses something other than the mere sum of its raw materials or labour required for its production. With this innovative marketing approach, through the idea of liberation, information discourse is transformed. The world of numerous and diverse information is opposed to totalitarian regimes – consumer experiences and the power of information will be the force that rules the world. By presenting such an innovative marketing strategy with an emphasis on narrative practices, a new paradigm of commodification was established through the concept of individuality and rebellion against a totalitarian regime.

NARRATION AS A GLOBAL TREND OF JOURNALISTIC DOCUMENTARY FORMS

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The paper critically reviews the role of journalistic documentary forms in contemporary journalism, mainly of global print media, with the intention of achieving top interpretation by using in-depth research and documentary mediation. The focus of the research is on the analysis of narrative in documentary reportage, not only as representative of new documentaristics, but also as a leader of global trends in storytelling, which already rules the media industry. A case study of National Geographic on a representative sample allows an insight into composition and mechanisms of intentionality in the analyzed documentary reportages, from which we can derive explanations for their ways of influence on the mind and emotions of the recipient, with ubiquitous psychagogical features. An immeasurable impact which those features have on the multimillion audiences/readers is also considered here.

NARATION AND FILM MUSIC

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In analyses of music and film interaction, the interpretative approach to film music has usually been given through the picture and music/sound relation. It has been considered predominantly through the prism of mimetic theories that take the act of visualization for their model. Such a simplification is mirrored in the classic distinction of source music and background music. We can note that the term source music refers solely to its representing function, not the narrative one. A turn in defining film music also in relation to narration and not only and specifically in relation to picture, was the merit of Claudia Gorbman, an American theorist. In her study Unheard melodies she re-systematizes the interpretative practice introducing the theory of narration into it. By using one of the key terms in film theory, diegesis, she constructed the terms diegetic and non-diegetic music, which refer to the sound/music scene: the first one would, approximately be equivalent to source music, and the second one to background score. Diegetic music is seen through the dialectic structure made of two planes, the narrative (film story) and narration (the process through which the narrative is conveyed to the viewer/listener), and whose constituents are music and picture, i.e. their fluctuating relation. Non-diegetic music is the one whose source is beyond the frame both explicitly and implicitly, but it has a meaningful relation to the film story. This text considers the ways in which music, diegetic or non-diegetic, participates in narration, i.e. performs not only the representative function but the narrative one as well, within a complex structure of a film system, based on examples from national and world cinematography.

THE CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA AND ITS MODIFICATIONS AFTER 1960

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It is widely considered that the Classical Hollywood Cinema as an array of production practices, narrative and stylistic features was formed as early as by 1917, and that it remained relatively stable until the 1960s. What happened after this? The opinions of various film historians and theoreticians are not unanimous. Some talk about ´postclassical´ cinema, while the others claim that the fragmentation of everyday life has found its way to cinema as well, and that the Classical film has desintegrated under the dominance of the spectacle. In this paper we will give account of the basic characteristics of the Classical Hollywood film and explain how it functions while providing several examples, mainly based on the research of David Bordwell. We will see what was crucial for the popularity of this form not only in the US but also throughout the world. Also, we will discuss developments concerning the Classical Hollywood film during the last few decades and present different theoretical approaches, which appeared in this period and attempt to offer our comment of these.