Kharin
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Umberto Eco on the Net
« on: 2002-04-25 07:14:12 » |
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Develops on themes touched on in Foucault's Pendulum, if I remember correctly.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/computingandthenet/story/0,6000,687373,00.html
Diminutive, but perfectly formed
Umberto Eco explains why short forms of modern communication can be simply irresistible
Saturday April 20, 2002
The Guardian
In 1930 Andre Jolles published a book entitled Einfache Formen [The Simple Forms], which analysed certain literary types, for the most part typical of popular culture. They were characterised by their brevity, but more so by the simplicity of their structure. They were - and always have been - governed by certain rules that their authors (sometimes entire communities rather than individuals) followed faithfully.
There were, for example, riddles and witticisms, but also myths, tales and legends. Much of the narrative theory of a structuralist tradition is based on (or started from) the simple forms; consider how Vladimir Aioakovlevich Propp came up with the principal narrative function in Russian fables, or how Claude Lévi-Strauss analysed myths. In sum, the simple forms remain a fascinating topic, and we can include in this category limericks, Japanese haikus, aphorisms, maxims, memorable sayings, even popular songs, and so on.
Now we have a book, edited by Isabella Pezzini, called Trailer, spot, clip, siti, banner: Le forme brevi della comunicazione audiovisiva [Trailers, Ads, Clips, Websites, Banners: The Short Forms of Audiovisual Communication]. From the title, it's clear what the book is about, although instead of using the wording "simple forms", she has chosen the phrase "short forms". I figure she did that to emphasise the difference between the traditional simple forms and the particular nature of the audiovisual items with which she is concerned. On the other hand, we see that she wants to make the case that just because a form is short (which is a measure of duration in time) does not necessarily mean that it is simple (which is a measure of semantic and aesthetic complexity).
In fact, we know full well that there are some commercials which are quite subtle, capable of poking fun at themselves as well as previous ads. There was a recent one in Italy, featuring a young man who's seen walking down the stairs in his home, saying, "Good evening!" He's still thinking about the beautiful woman he won over the night before, but now - a victim himself of the ad of which he is the protagonist - he finds himself face-to-face with a much less attractive woman. The viewing public is so taken by this type of ad that we have come to use the phrase "metatextual" - it doesn't involve pure and simple communication, but rather requires thought about the short form and about its story.
However, I don't intend in this short space to provide a complete discussion of this book. Instead, I'll just recommend the sections examining trailers (written by Nicola Dusi), TV ads (by Allesandro Mechiorri), political messages (by Paolo Guarino), internet banners and portals (by Piero Polidoro; certainly banners, among the short forms, are the shortest of all), and websites (by Daniele Barbieri). These are short forms which are all around us, and are not always simple. But, without a doubt, they are no longer governed by literary laws passed down from generation to generation (as is the case, say, with love poems), and are usually very inventive.
The traditional simple forms dominated popular culture and they were often reworked, so to speak, by the literati, just as proverbs (popular wisdom) were transformed into aphorisms (witty remarks of the learned) by Oscar Wilde, Karl Kraus and Stanislaw Jerzy Lec. So the simple forms coexisted with the complex forms: the myth along with its reinterpretation on the part of Aeschylus or Sophocles; the tale along with the great novel. And it's not necessarily the case that the general public, having access to the simple forms, wouldn't be exposed to the "complex" forms - it wasn't just the intellectuals who read the classic works; the craftsmen during Dante Alighieri's time sang The Divine Comedy, for example.
Today, as always, there is a segment of the public (a scant portion of the planet's six billion inhabitants) that has access to the complex forms such as the modern (James Joyce, for example) or postmodern novel. Pretty much no one, with the exception of some university professors, is any longer interested in the simple forms of the tradition; a vast majority of readers get along with just short forms.
Brevity can produce addiction, and that is why publishing houses - at one time, places set aside for complex forms - while not completely refusing to print works by those such as Marcel Proust, set about capturing public interest by way of very short forms (books of aphorisms, striking jokes, and sayings that don't always make sense). In other words, repeated exposure through audiovisual media to the short forms can result in an addiction to their brevity and speed - and can remove the pleasure and gusto of engaging in the complex forms, which require time and mingling with the text and its cultural background.
And here's the risk we run: having lost touch with the complex forms, one might not even realise it when a TV commercial for detergent might be short but not all that simple.
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