the timboucher experience

Okay, I think I figured out why using narratology and some of the overly intellectual models to describe culture bothers me so much. Check out this text, but don’t worry if you can’t follow it. It’s just an example to show their use of language.

Ultimately, such a grammar might consist of the following four interrelated parts: a syntactic component whereby a finite number of rules generate the macro- and microstructures of all stories, and only stories; a semantic component interpreting these structures, characterizing both the global macrostructural and the local microstructural narrative content; a “discoursive” component whereby a finite number of rules operate on the interpreted structures and account for narrative discourse (order of presentation, speed, narratorial mediation, etc.); and a pragmatic component specifying the basic cognitive and communicative factors affecting the production, processing, and narrativity of the output of the first three parts.

They are totally trying to reduce it to a formula. But not a simple, easy to understand formula. They are like computer programmers in how they write and think. They may be able to analyze and solve certain problems, but the only people they can effectively communicate with are other programmers.

With computer programming though, this isn’t such a big problem. It’s a technical field, and it makes sense to talk about it in this sort of style. But these guys are talking about culture which is much more complicated and fluid and beautiful than programming. It goes back to what I wrote in my Myth, Ritual & Belief article about one of the traps of abstracting a set of specific meanings from a story will freeze out other possible relationships and meanings inherent in it. Nevermind if you are attempting to automatically extort meaning out of something according to a preconceived formula.

In the end, I realize these guys are probably after the same things I’m after. I just find their methods and language to be “whack,” but it is inspiring - if only in a negative way.

While I’m on the subject, here is a good resource I’ve found online so far about the study of narratology. It simple and clear cut, although it doesn’t cover everything.

• You know what else sucks?
• The Actant Model
• In the morning
• Theatre, Surveillance & Narratology
• Your band sucks so hard I’m gonna kill myself