This is a continuation of the article Subtext Through Metaphors and Metonymies. If you haven't read the previous article, please read it first.
I learned a new and shiny word the other day "Lacuna", the word meaning a missing segment in a text or a silent part in music. Lacuna is a word that I think nicely describes what this article will get in to, how 1 + 1 can equal 3. The answer lies in the missing part...
Before getting in to the subject of subtext I would like to better explain something I mentioned in the last article, why we as storytellers want to communicate to our audience on an emotional level rather than on an intellectual if we really want to influence them with our message.
I believe that we as humans, although we like to see ourselves as hyper-intellectual demigods, only are animals and that our first response to a subject always is emotional. It is only in a situation where we feel comfortable enough to keep our cool that we are able to think logically and make a decision that goes against our first emotional reaction. I think this is why, when we see an "every day Joe" on TV, he often comes of as a bit stupid, although we all are equally intelligent just in different areas of knowledge. But most of us aren't comfortable enough in front of a camera to make logical decisions, so our decisions and choices are driven by our emotions and reactions, hence making an "every day Joe" may come of as being a bit slow.
Our reactions, or emotional choices, are based on our previous experiences, on how we've felt and reacted in similar situations previously. We as storytellers can let our audiences experience situations, choices and emotions vicariously through the characters in our stories and through this influence how they react and behave in similar situations. The script consultant John Truby has written:
"Good storytelling lets the audience relive events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices, and emotions that led the character to do what he did. Stories are really giving the audience a form of knowledge—emotional knowledge—or what used to be known as wisdom, but they do it in a playful, entertaining way."
Although the experiences the audience gets through the story will not be as strong as those they experience in real life, they can still influence and hopefully help people make better decisions. If we as storytellers have a message that we want our audience to really believe in and follow, we need to convey it to them emotionally, otherwise they will probably forget it in situations when they need to know it.
Back to the subject of subtext.
I wrote a bit about how signs like metaphors and metonymies communicate to us, when working separate from each other, in the previous article, but the meaning of signs can strengthen or change when working in synergy or in contrast with other signs.
It is important to think about how we choose to use signs to communicate a message. If we choose to use several sign that communicate the same message their added meaning tends to weaken and actually communicate on the same level or weaker than they would do individually. The math of using signs that communicate the same message is like: 1 + 1 = 0 or 1. I think this is because the audience starts noticing that you're trying to influence them and get on their defensive.
To make the signs communicate a stronger message there needs to be a gap, or a lacuna, between what the signs communicate individually and what they communicate together. One way to do this is to make she signs work in synergy, or in other words, using signs that each represent a part of the message they together need to communicate. Although this sounds like using metonymies it's not the same. You can use both signs that are metonymies and metaphors to work in synergy for a stronger message.
One example of how to use signs in synergy is to picture a image of a simple house with a tree outside. Alone, the house and the tree won't communicate that much, but together they can communicate a message about who lives in the house, and by only changing the tree that message can change. If the tree is an oak they communicate stability and maturity about the people of the house, if the tree is a birch their added message is of youth and vitality, if the tree is a pine the message is of loneliness and depression etc. What is important is to not stack signs with the same message on top of each other since they can create a speed bump in the path of the story.
The math of making signs work in synergy is like 1 + 1 = 2, but there are ways of making a bigger total. The answer lies in contrasting the signs and through this making the lacuna bigger and hence increasing audience participation, with other words making 1 + 1 = 3. The lacuna in a story is the audience, the part of a story we can not directly control, but the part that is the most important if we want our message to reach and make a difference.
There are a couple of ways of doing this. The one most used is by hinting of a certain outcome of a story or meaning of a sign but revealing a different end result. I believe the script consultant Robert McGee mentioned this in his book and said something similar of that it is in the gap between expected outcomes and the real outcome that the real story lies.
Another way to use contrast is by juxtaposing signs that seem to communicate different messages and through their differences communicate a message. In its simplest form this can be combining a smile (alone communicating happiness) with angry eyes (alone communicating anger) to together and communicating malevolence. In fact actors often try to act against the perceived emotion of the scrip, like smiling or laughing in a unhappy scene, because this creates a "deeper" character performance. As an animator I always try to remember that my characters should always communicate two messages at once, one that she wants to convey outward and one that she really is feeling (we seldom say what we truly feel). Again, in making this contrast we create a gap, a lacuna, that allows for audience participation and allows for that hidden 1 that makes 1 + 1 = 3.
The danger of contrasting signs is that they may be too far from each other to create a clear connection or, in the case of hinting of one outcome but creating a other outcome, the differences between the outcomes may be too large and the end outcome may seem illogical. These are things that make the audience start trying to understand what your trying to tell them, it takes their focus away from the story and its message and towards you as a storyteller. You don't want this, unless the only reason of making the film was to get attention to yourself. This is where a lot of "art-films" fail. A typical art-film is like a person screaming, jumping and waving their arms but being hard to understand, where as a well told narrative film is like a person who doesn't get noticed but still gets her point across clearly. The end result is that the art-film doesn't really move anybody with its message since the creator takes all the attention away from it. Good storytellers are humble.
So, although using signs in contrast generally creates a stronger message than using them in synergy or individually, at times it is better to use them in synergy or individually, just as metonymies at times are better than metaphors although metaphors communicate stronger. The reason for this is not just to make the story clearer but to create some variance in the intensity of the story.
As storytellers we need to think about our audiences, the recipients of our message. They have no responsibility to listen to us or try to understand us. It is our responsibility to make them want to listen, it is our responsibility to make them understand us, and our responsibility to move them with the experience of the story and its message. To do this we need to respect our audience and treat them as our equals and let them be a part of the story we tell.
Lacuna may mean something missing, an emptiness, but it is an emptiness that is probably the most important element for storytellers.
I hope you've found this article interesting!
Peter Hertzberg
I learned a new and shiny word the other day "Lacuna", the word meaning a missing segment in a text or a silent part in music. Lacuna is a word that I think nicely describes what this article will get in to, how 1 + 1 can equal 3. The answer lies in the missing part...
Before getting in to the subject of subtext I would like to better explain something I mentioned in the last article, why we as storytellers want to communicate to our audience on an emotional level rather than on an intellectual if we really want to influence them with our message.
I believe that we as humans, although we like to see ourselves as hyper-intellectual demigods, only are animals and that our first response to a subject always is emotional. It is only in a situation where we feel comfortable enough to keep our cool that we are able to think logically and make a decision that goes against our first emotional reaction. I think this is why, when we see an "every day Joe" on TV, he often comes of as a bit stupid, although we all are equally intelligent just in different areas of knowledge. But most of us aren't comfortable enough in front of a camera to make logical decisions, so our decisions and choices are driven by our emotions and reactions, hence making an "every day Joe" may come of as being a bit slow.
Our reactions, or emotional choices, are based on our previous experiences, on how we've felt and reacted in similar situations previously. We as storytellers can let our audiences experience situations, choices and emotions vicariously through the characters in our stories and through this influence how they react and behave in similar situations. The script consultant John Truby has written:
"Good storytelling lets the audience relive events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices, and emotions that led the character to do what he did. Stories are really giving the audience a form of knowledge—emotional knowledge—or what used to be known as wisdom, but they do it in a playful, entertaining way."
Although the experiences the audience gets through the story will not be as strong as those they experience in real life, they can still influence and hopefully help people make better decisions. If we as storytellers have a message that we want our audience to really believe in and follow, we need to convey it to them emotionally, otherwise they will probably forget it in situations when they need to know it.
Back to the subject of subtext.
I wrote a bit about how signs like metaphors and metonymies communicate to us, when working separate from each other, in the previous article, but the meaning of signs can strengthen or change when working in synergy or in contrast with other signs.
It is important to think about how we choose to use signs to communicate a message. If we choose to use several sign that communicate the same message their added meaning tends to weaken and actually communicate on the same level or weaker than they would do individually. The math of using signs that communicate the same message is like: 1 + 1 = 0 or 1. I think this is because the audience starts noticing that you're trying to influence them and get on their defensive.
To make the signs communicate a stronger message there needs to be a gap, or a lacuna, between what the signs communicate individually and what they communicate together. One way to do this is to make she signs work in synergy, or in other words, using signs that each represent a part of the message they together need to communicate. Although this sounds like using metonymies it's not the same. You can use both signs that are metonymies and metaphors to work in synergy for a stronger message.
One example of how to use signs in synergy is to picture a image of a simple house with a tree outside. Alone, the house and the tree won't communicate that much, but together they can communicate a message about who lives in the house, and by only changing the tree that message can change. If the tree is an oak they communicate stability and maturity about the people of the house, if the tree is a birch their added message is of youth and vitality, if the tree is a pine the message is of loneliness and depression etc. What is important is to not stack signs with the same message on top of each other since they can create a speed bump in the path of the story.
The math of making signs work in synergy is like 1 + 1 = 2, but there are ways of making a bigger total. The answer lies in contrasting the signs and through this making the lacuna bigger and hence increasing audience participation, with other words making 1 + 1 = 3. The lacuna in a story is the audience, the part of a story we can not directly control, but the part that is the most important if we want our message to reach and make a difference.
There are a couple of ways of doing this. The one most used is by hinting of a certain outcome of a story or meaning of a sign but revealing a different end result. I believe the script consultant Robert McGee mentioned this in his book and said something similar of that it is in the gap between expected outcomes and the real outcome that the real story lies.
Another way to use contrast is by juxtaposing signs that seem to communicate different messages and through their differences communicate a message. In its simplest form this can be combining a smile (alone communicating happiness) with angry eyes (alone communicating anger) to together and communicating malevolence. In fact actors often try to act against the perceived emotion of the scrip, like smiling or laughing in a unhappy scene, because this creates a "deeper" character performance. As an animator I always try to remember that my characters should always communicate two messages at once, one that she wants to convey outward and one that she really is feeling (we seldom say what we truly feel). Again, in making this contrast we create a gap, a lacuna, that allows for audience participation and allows for that hidden 1 that makes 1 + 1 = 3.
The danger of contrasting signs is that they may be too far from each other to create a clear connection or, in the case of hinting of one outcome but creating a other outcome, the differences between the outcomes may be too large and the end outcome may seem illogical. These are things that make the audience start trying to understand what your trying to tell them, it takes their focus away from the story and its message and towards you as a storyteller. You don't want this, unless the only reason of making the film was to get attention to yourself. This is where a lot of "art-films" fail. A typical art-film is like a person screaming, jumping and waving their arms but being hard to understand, where as a well told narrative film is like a person who doesn't get noticed but still gets her point across clearly. The end result is that the art-film doesn't really move anybody with its message since the creator takes all the attention away from it. Good storytellers are humble.
So, although using signs in contrast generally creates a stronger message than using them in synergy or individually, at times it is better to use them in synergy or individually, just as metonymies at times are better than metaphors although metaphors communicate stronger. The reason for this is not just to make the story clearer but to create some variance in the intensity of the story.
As storytellers we need to think about our audiences, the recipients of our message. They have no responsibility to listen to us or try to understand us. It is our responsibility to make them want to listen, it is our responsibility to make them understand us, and our responsibility to move them with the experience of the story and its message. To do this we need to respect our audience and treat them as our equals and let them be a part of the story we tell.
Lacuna may mean something missing, an emptiness, but it is an emptiness that is probably the most important element for storytellers.
I hope you've found this article interesting!
Peter Hertzberg
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