Carmen Gregori-Signes. 2010. Magnifying the ordinary: a multimodal perspective on the analysis of TV series. Talk Presented at the XXVIII International AESLA Conference.
http://aesla2010.tucongreso.es/aesla2010/files/programa150310.pdf
[email protected], Universitat de València
Dpt. Filologia Inglesa y Alemana
@ Carmen Gregori Signes
Tension between• Spy life
• Life as a member of the Nerd Herd at the
Humour………..
ExcitingEqually
exciting?
Spylife
Lifeat
intention is “to reveal to what extent readers rely on inferentialresources when attempting to transform the verbal-visualinformation …… into cognitively relevant interpretations”
Yus’ (2008:223)
& soundtrack/ audio
PURPOSE
How it may be possible for the audience to reach an identificationbetween life at the Buy More (an electronics store) and Spy life, thus
magnifying the workplace.
Multimodal approach (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001) toanalyse the internal elements in the series .
Drawing upon the principles of:
Genre analysis
Discourse analysisPragmatics/ relevance theory Media studies
Framework for the analysis
Television text in its dual interpretation: internally or externally (social impact)
Framework for the analysis
Following Yus’s (2008) proposal for the analysis of graphicnovels
and Altman’s (1989) concept of genre and intergenericinfluences (syntactic and semantic elements in film genres)
I propose a framework for multimodal analysis that may help usunderstand how the introduction of generic conventions fromother genres may used both:
a) to build central coherence in the series;
b) to build humour
Language Module + Perceptual Module (Fodor 1983) + Audio/sound Module
________________________________
a) syntactic (Altman 1989) generic conventions from other genres: visual and
verbal-non-verbal language/ soundtrack. E.g. generic structure, plot,
transition themes, vocabulary, tone of voice, etc.
b) symbolic /semantic (non/-verbal/visual/ soundtrack ) generic conventions
from other genres ( internal vs. real world) (e.g. in Westerns: horses, guns,
sheriff etc.)
d) implicatures and explicatures: visual/non/-verbal/ soundtrack;
e) relevance driven-interpretations (i.e. inferential task to interpret the
meaning of whole episode/ series)
(cf. Fodor 1983, Altman 1989, Yus 2008)
Framework for the analysis
Focusing on the relationship between
Humour
&
Central coherence
Genericmixture
Context /Parallel stories
Two parallel stories: conflict emerges in both contexts.
Story 1
Spy life/Government/ world security
Story 2
E 1 Chuck vs. the First DateE 2 Chuck vs. the SeductionE 3 Chuck vs. the Break-UpE 4 Chuck vs. the CougarsE 5 Chuck vs. Tom SawyerE 6 Chuck vs. the ExE 7 Chuck vs. the Fat LadyE 8 Chuck vs. the GravitronE 9 Chuck vs. the SenseiE 10 Chuck vs. the DeLoreanE 11 Chuck vs. Santa ClausE 12 Chuck vs. the Third DimensionE 13 Chuck vs. the SuburbsE 14 Chuck vs. the Best FriendE 15 Chuck vs. the BeefcakeE 16 Chuck vs. the Lethal WeaponE 17 Chuck vs. the PredatorE 18 Chuck vs. the Broken HeartE 19 Chuck vs. the Dream JobE 20 Chuck vs. the First KillE 21 Chuck vs. the ColonelE 22 Chuck vs. the Ring
Genre mixture: function
The inclusion of multimodal generic conventions (implicit orexplicit) from other genres in both stories leads to relevancedriven interpretations whose function is bring together bothparallel stories; and thus give coherence to the wholeepisode/series.
They also help the audience process the whole story accordingto certain schemata and realise that certain genres are beingparodied for the sake of establishing a relationship between thetwo parallel stories:
The incongruity of the situation however(especially as exaggerated as they make itlook like at the Buy More) makes it possibleto identify the workplace with spy life, thushumorously magnifying it for the purpose ofmaking the audience laugh
[e.g. video extract the somersault,+ spy music]
Video game exhibition (vocabulary, limit situations when s.o. isabout to win the game and thus beat the software)
Women in Advertising (reproducing Sarah’s entrance in the BuyMore in slow motion, as if announcing women’s products (cf. del Saz and Pennock 2009)
Bachelor Party (Chuck’s brother in law)Concert/s ( Humour in music/ Zappa Is there
"Thunderdome", a cage match tournament (in the storage room of the shop)
Parody of spy series (metadiscourse)Robbery with hostagesA TV game show “The Wheel of Misfortune” to choose theemployee of the month
Other genres reproduced in thecontext of the Buy More
Chuck women’s advertising
Episode 203: Chuck vs. the break-up
Spy Life Buy More
Facing Fulcrum Facing Mighty Sports (bullies)
Chuck has to take decisions on hisown
Morgan also faces the bullies onhis own
Genre conventions: Classic Western
a) Soundtrack: High Noon/ Solo ante el PeligroSpy music in the Buy More when tryingto get rid of the bullies
a) The figure of the lone ranger (Chuck & Morgan)b) Attitudes and gestures of the charactersc) Vocabulary and expressions characteristic of classic
westerns dialogue
Episode 205. Chuck vs. Tom Sayer
Spy Life
• Video game humanity depends on it
The Buy More
• Past references: Jeffrey Barnes, the missile Command world champion (video game).
Genre conventions: military
Voice quality: tone and pitch of the voice: Stu Brewster (the boss)imitating the military exhortation tone of voice, loud,strong;while Jeffrey Milbarge is more ironical, subtle and
manipulates his voice quality in order to make it sound assuch
(cf. Pennock and del Saz 2009)
Genre “Military inspection”
Vocabulary: to tighten your slack-asses up. to meet all of you in the flesh;looking forward to spending more time here in the Buy Moretrenches, getting to know the rank and the file.
Non-verbal language: position of the arms of some of them, silence, facial expression showing defiance in some of them
Military inspection
Implicatures vs.
explicatures[anchorage]
Example of multimodal analysis of graphic novels:
Journalist: I’ts not fair. Nothing ever happensin this town
Fire in a building in thedistance, peoplejumping from thewindows
The journalist is a disaster
Art critic commentingupon a picture in a gallery: “This is more like it!”
The second picture isalmost the same as thefirst one (the one he disliked)
The art critic is a disaster
Yus (2008: 242)
Interview with Milbarge
Implicature and explicature: The herdnerd are all a bunch of loosers
Milbarge: We'll just start out simple. Why do you belong at the Buy More?
Jeff: I satisfy a quota. My dad's part Indian. The cool kind of Indian though, not like Lester.
Morgan: Why do I belong at the Buy More? You know, I'm going tohave to think about that. I'm going to go grab a soda.And... You want one? 'Cause it's my treat.I'll gr- I'll grabyou one. And I'll be back in a jiff.
Milbarge: (writes down on the report ) “Untrainable “
Ana: I speak more than one language, binary code. Zero, zero, zero, one,e... zero.
Milbarge: (writes down on the report) “Prostitute?”
Symbolic information (stereotypes)
The choice of the cast
Relevance driven interpretations
Yus (2008: 242): “ [graphic novels] In specific contexts, theinformation “literally” coded in the utterances isinsufficient to account for their intendedinterpretations and hence the addressee’sinference is needed in order to turn theschematic input into relevant interpretations[…] Similarly, readers of comics have to infer theintended interpretation of both the narrativetext (captions) and the characters’ dialogues inorder to grasp the story correctly. “
The same would apply in the case of the interpretation of all the elements included in a TV series.
Relevance-driven interpretations
Episode 203 The two stories come together by a comment by Morgan
Morgan : Man, you ever have someone show up in your life and just make you feel so damn small?
This comment leads the audience to think that maybe spy life is not that different from normal ordinary life at the workplace.
One step forward into the interpretation of each episode and of the whole series
Yus (2008:223) rightly points out that “perception is not asautomatic as it seems to be, but is always mediated bythe person’s background knowledge, expectations andassumptions about the world (actual or possible) andthat “whatever the visual input, inferential hypotheseshave to be made in order to match [….] information andtheir referents.”
As such, the final interpretation or vision of the Buy Moreas an extraordinary place that may be perceived by theaudience as a competitor of spy life depends on theinference that each spectator makes of the discourse inChuck which includes a mixture of generic conventionsfrom different genres
Conclusions: the role of inference and relevance driven interpretations in the perception of the Buy More
Conclusion???
What so magnificent about ?
Thanks for your time
