Week 7: Visual Narrative and the Media: An Image speaks a thousand words- because I made it so

Tutorial Question: Why is Narrative important when shaping a visual image to the audience?

In this week lecture, we covered the topic visual narrative and the media. With the knowledge that have been thought to us during this week lecture, I am going to answer the tutorial question that has been stated above. But what is Narrative? Narrative is story-telling, it consist of a series of events, actors, time and location. According to Altman (2008), Narrative is "the practice of story-telling". Without narrative, a visual image will be just a picture and the definition of the image will unknown. 

A narrative has two natures; Story and Discourse. Story refers to the chronology of events that is in a narrative. Story is WHAT is told, which means it is the content of the narrative. According to Genette, discourse is the "oral or written, that narrates them." In other words its HOW the narrative is told. Discourse makes clear on how a story is to be told. Due to this nature of a narrative, the visual image now produces a story to the audience in a form of a picture. This two natures of narrative helps to shape the visual image, thus making the audience or the consumer understand what the picture means. For example the picture below show what is told, which is about the war and how one of the person is shot and how it is told, which is by creating a picture of different scene in one picture.

Another feature of narrative that makes it important is that it has a paradigmatic and syntagm. Jackson & Amvela (2000), stated that Syntagm is "sequence" and Pragmatic is "substitution". Syntagm is the element in a narrative that must have a liner configuration and relationship, where this elements are signs that produces meaning in connection to the signs before or after it. While pragmatic is the one element in the configuration that could be substituted/change for another element belonging to the same category. Due to this features, it will be difficult to shape a visual image without narrative cause there won't be a story line in the image and signs that will relate to each other that will generate meaning/story. In the picture below shows where syntagm is applied. The picture shows the sequences of the image moving left to right. The cat could be change into a dog or any other animal, as long as the storyline of the image is not ruined.

Also one of the reason on why narrative is important to shape visual image is because of one of its component which is focalisation. According to Fulton, Huisman, Murphet and Dunn (2005), "focalisation refers to the viewpoint or perspective from which the narration is told, positioning narrative voices, who may or may not be characters in the story, in relation to events and other."  Where focalisation is where a perspective is created. With this component it helps to shape the visual image into a perspective for the audience. Thus it will be easier to understand. 

In conclusion, the reason why narrative is important when it comes to shaping the visual image to the audience is because narrative is story-telling. Another reason is the dualistic nature of narrative which is story and discours and lastly, is the narative features which is the paradignmatic and syntagmatic features which hepls in shaping the visual image. Lastly due to its component to be able to focus an image to a certain perspective, it helps in shaping the visual image to the audience.

reference list:

Altman, R. (2008). A Theory of Narrative. New York: Columbia University Press.

Fulton, H., Huisman, R., Murphet, J., & Dunn, A. (2005). Narrative and Media. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Genette, G. (1988). Narrative Discourse Revisited. New York:  Cornell University Press.

Jackson, H. & Amvela, E. Z. (2000). Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology. New York: The Cromwell Press.