Patchwork Girl: Is it Frankenstein Regurgitated???

I plinked around a bit with Patchwork Girl tonight, two different sessions, and found myself, once again, in somewhat uncomfortable territory. Unlike Afternoon, there were many different screen in Patchwork Girl where you could not just hit and proceed to the next screen. In order to move on you had to pick a word and click your way to unknown territory.

I realize that there isn't SUPPOSED to be a "right way" to proceed through the story, but I can't help but think that I might enjoy this better if I could just flip through the pages in a book. The subject matter that I encountered was primarily of the "digging in the graveyard and people being brought back from the dead" variety. (A style that I am rather familiar with...) But, after a series of clicks I ended up back at the "contents" page... I don't know if this means I explored as far as I could go in the direction that I was going (random though that seemed to be to me) or if I somehow did it "WRONG," or that I "DIED" (as if it were a role-playing game) and had to start over.

Like I said, I wish this particular tale where printed as a book. I kind of liked what I read (and clicked on lots of words like "graveyard" and "squirm" and "Aquinas") but wonder if I'm missing STUFF because of my random clicking on words that I find interesting... Is there a STORY here that I'm supposed to find???

The Long Day's Journey Into "Afternoon"

This is a "I'm BLOGGING about AFTERNOON as I'm playing AFTERNOON type of entry...

Who is Werther? He is thinking about having "dueling scars" surgically etched into himself. This is a wonderful detail... Especially for a man who is "smiling, if diabolically. I know some things about Wert now, but who is he?

Ok, now this is odd. I clicked on what I thought was a hypertext word and landed on a screen that I remember being on before so I backed up and just pressed the key... and landed on the exact same screen as the hypertext word that I clicked. So I went back and click on another hypertext word and danged if I wasn't again deposited on the page I had rejected more than once... What kind of hypertext doesn't take you anywhere???

Now I'm on some segment where someone is talking about a computer program that can estimate the worth of "things" as long as they're in "the domain of industrial facilities insurance..." Hmmm.... And I click the key and get rainy day walks, maple leaves, "red flowers (only red flowers)," and a fountain... Where did the computer program go? Where is Wert? Why can't I figure out what's going on? How are all of these things connected? Can I really have dueling scars added to my features???

Now I've followed someone wearing headphones into a mall. This person is watching a young lady working at a computer terminal, particularly the headphoned individual is staring at her legs which apparently are revealing more than she is aware of. When she catches on to the fact that she is being stared at, she "primly closed her legs." Hmmm... I don't know much about the character I'm following except that they like to stare at young girls' private parts, wear headphones, and talks about "the teenagers."

More about "Afternoon..."

Here is a link to another human's attempt at navigating "Afternoon."

Bloggin' About "AFTERNOON"

Michael Joyce's early hypertext creation, "Afternoon, A Story" was a strange experience. I'm a fan of reading. I read often. I also tend to like to finish what I've started.

With "Afternoon," I found myself somewhat uncomfortable. After clicking on a few odd words, I went off on an American Indian fable tangent that, after a few clicks brought me directly back to the point that I left to go on the trip. Like taking the scenic root and finding out that you've landed back where you started. Hopefully, you enjoyed the trip. (And, actually, the story of Crow and Snake was pretty cool.)

But I also had a hard time following a specific story-line. There must have been an actually, core, story that I was diverging from with my random clicking; at least that's what I kept telling myself, or wondering, anyway... The EASE with which you could leave the main story made it almost irresistable, for me, to click myself away into the labyrinth. I wanted to get lost (see what was at the center) and I did... But I don't know if I ever FOUND the center. Storywise, it was very stream-of-consciousness like. Dream words leading to dream images...

Response to Dr. Kendrick's article...

Questions for today:

1) We read in both the essay "The Laugh of the Modem" and in Murray's text that hypertext is a means of liberating the reader. "Linearity, hierarchy, the submission of a passive reader to a controlling author - according to these theorists (George Landow, Jay Bolter, Michael Joyce...) - is being overturned by the recursive structures of hypertextual writing." (Section 7 of the essay.) Is an author truly "controlling" a reader in a traditional text? The author leads the reader through the story, but if the reader doesn't like where they are going, can't they just stop reading, or skip ahead? (Bored or time-pressed readers do this all the time.) I have to wonder if the metaphorical notions of a heirarchical, dominating author is stretching a bit too far.

Answers: CB: I think you make some valid points in questioning if a (text-based) author is truly "controlling." There is no "Book Police," cops standing behind people- making sure you read books in a "linear" fashion. For the most part, the constraints of reading a printed book depend on the reader (starting from the beginning, skipping ahead, etc.). Yet because the very nature of hypertext fiction requires people to move in a roundabout way, this notion may not be so obvious. Forcing someone to move around (as hypertext does), now isn't that a form of "control" as well?


2) In hypertext, are we really given that many more choices than a traditional text has? It seems to me, again, that the reader of a traditional book can choose to read the text any way they want, last page first, skipping to the middle, what have you. Most people don't do that because they prefer the linear narrative (I would imagine. I know I don't skip around because I want to see how the author has constructed their tale.) Hypertexts, which leave the reader to decide how a story will progress, in most cases, are still bound by what the author has written. You may be able to choose which path to follow in the text, but the text still has an author who has created the choices for you. How is allowing the story to become fragmented a positive step for narrative?

Answers: CB:I think that this becomes a matter of texts being truly "self-explanatory." Writing in a fragmented way can be seen as way to reinvent ideas and keep things fresh (none of this "Old Dead Male Poets 101"). Perhaps the rules of narrative were made to be broken. And whether or not it is a "positive step" for narrative, I suppose we'll have to wait and see,...and possibly learn if we've made some grave mistakes in the process.


3) I was intrigued by the idea that was brought up in section 9 of the essay: "...what is achieved on-line is an assumption of whiteness and a glorification of the masculine." It has never occurred to me before to really consider WHO is writing the materials online. Perhaps this is because most of my online experiences are with an email group that has a very strong female element. (I belong to the Portland Industrial Goth email list and the female members of the group don't take much flack from the males.) What sort of gender, racial, or other biases exist online? Do most people think of online materials as "mostly white" and "glorifying the masculine?"

Answers: CB: This is tricky, as I think online text assume a more "anonymous" voice. Of course, there will be texts that are blatantly "female" or "white," but the beauty of the internet is that anyone can assume an identity that is different from who they really are.

More class related links... (Because my memory is bad and I'm tired of looking them up all the time... Plus, One Assignment...

Sites related to the class:

http://fictionandgames.blogspot.com

http://www.my2cents-engl496.blogspot.com/

http://apathyisenemy.blogspot.com/

http://newyorkave.blogspot.com



Kendrick’s Essay: (Read and respond)

http://www.rhizomes.net/issue4/kendrick.html

Bullet Through the Head...

Just "played" the Richard Corey Interactive Adventure, based on a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson. The object of the Interactive Adventure is to take your character, Richard Corey home and end his life by gun shot to the head. The "prize" to "winning" this game is the image of a person, it appears to be an actual photograph, who has shot himself in the face.

Perhaps this is an argument for gun control? No, it seems too... tongue in cheek for that. What I gather is that this is a "game" with a rather dark sense of humor to it. (I have always felt that the poem was also darkly humorous as well.)

The reason I keep putting "game" in quotes is because the adventure consists of only about 10 steps total between starting the game and "winning," if you don't repeat segments. I suppose, if you don't want Richard to die, you could just keep going back to town instead of having him pull the trigger. But, eventually, you are drawn towards the choices that you haven't yet made, despite the knowledge that the character is doomed. (The poem, which ends with the lines "And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,Went home and put a bullet through his head," is provided at the beginning of the game for those who are not already familiar with the work.)

Interesting. Somewhat ill, mentally, I believe, but I also think the creators have every right to do what they've done... (As long as they aren't in copyright violation for using the poem...)

OK, then...

Some URLs

Here are two interactive fiction sites:

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/index.html

http://www.igs.net/~tril/if/


And, this is a a Stuart Moulthrop site (the PAX guy):

http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/sam_home.html

A.P. (After Pax...)

>>Read "Pax, an instrument" -- for as long as you can remain interested. What characters can >>you identify? What is the "plot"?? What does the text add or take away from the project? >>What do you make of the title?

The idea behind PAX seems to be that, by clicking on the naked people floating up and down the screen, you get a sense of interaction with the story. By getting to pick WHO you click on, I'm guessing the author feels, you get a sense of command, maybe, over the tale... I don't know. Maybe I'm just lazy, but it's not my thing...

The characters... ugh, I really didn't CARE about the characters. I know a couple was having problems with a marriage... I just wasn't invested in any sense into these characters. (In fact, if you hadn't told us to click on them, I would have just turned it off after I saw the first few naked people float by and random letters occasionally spelled out a word or two.)

I don't know what the title meant. I'm not sure what "Pax" means. The "instrument" part is probably in reference to the fact that you USE these characters to tell the story... I don't really know. Maybe I just don't GET IT...

Blog 4: Post MEMENTO paper...

Memento, as a film, probably the most accurate way to describe it, was an interesting twister. The general consensus in the class seems to be that the film did not follow traditional narrative form but, instead, deviated into an experimental area that did not jive with modern conceptions. The fact that the film begins with the ending and then circles around, (I wonder why I want to use a motion metaphor when describing this effect) and comes at the scene again.

In a very real sense, it’s as if the movie is at the end of a video tape and the director rewinds for a few seconds so that we get to see a man being unkilled by a bullet coming out of his head. Then he rewinds a bit and turns the film back on. We see the characters going through a scene leading to the shooting (which we formerly watched in reverse.) Then the movie is stopped and rewound again, dragging us to a scene that leads us just up to where the previous bit we watched began. This process is repeated until we reach the “beginning” of the film and discover why the murder at the end of the film took place.

What can we make of this? The film is not incoherent, nor is it a collection of non-sequiturs or random scenes thrown together with no apparent rhyme or reason. The different segments of the film contain nearly complete episodes and always give us another clue in the mystery of why Leonard killed Teddy (even though, when we saw the killing, we had no idea who Leonard or Teddy actually are.)

As I mentioned in my paper, I still feel that this story has a chronological structure that could be reconstructed from the fragmentary views that we get, although I don’t know if all of my classmates agree with this statement. The presentation of the story was definitely unique, but the structure was still there.

Now, I suppose, if PRESENTATION is what is meant by “narrative structure” then this story does not follow traditional conceptions of standard structure. The classical idea of a beginning, rising action, denouement, climax, etc... does not apply to this film. Nor, as we discussed in class, does it work for most stories larger than a fable or other short narrative.

I did like how one of my classmates said that the story “devolves.” Another said that the story’s cluttered ambience, Leonard’s photographs, tattoos, and less than perfect relationships with the supporting characters, was reflective of our modern world. These are both interesting points.

I really enjoyed the movie, and reading the other critics comments about the film. And, that’s it for now…

MEMENTOs of the Story

According to Wallace Martin (and I don't think he's the only person who believes this) traditional narrative structure (as it occurs in Western culture) follows a standard format: The story starts, tension builds towards a climax or crisis, the climax or crisis occurs, and the story drops off in tension or suspence towards an ending (81).

The problem, as we discussed in class, is that this pattern is far too simple. Very few books or films follow this pattern, and some, like Memento destroy it.

With Memento, a film that I haven't seen before, (I feel a bit like a magician or a tent-preacher, "This person, who I've never met before, nor given any prior instructions to...") we seem to have a story that is cyclical, moving, along with the primary character, Leonard, through a predestined series of steps through a story arch. First we awake, confused and must look around for clues as to where we are and what we're doing. Next we gather, from the various tatoos, notes, pictures, and physical evidence of the area, a gun, a tied up bloody guy, a bottle of booze in our hand, where we are at that instant. Then, following our clues, we add a bit of information, hopefully drawing us a step closer to the conclusion of our quest: finding the man who raped and murdered our wife. (I say "our" and "we" because, following Leonard and hearing his thoughts and, to a certain degree, sharing his memory condition, we identify only with him throughout the film.)

A particularly nice touch to the film is the fact that we start at the end of the quest, having just shot the suspected rapist in the head and then moving backwards, adding the clues that brought Leonard to his conclusion that this particular man is guilty. The disorientation caused by this reversal of instances is ingenious. We "wake" with Leonard in each episodic segment, hoping that we can piece together how we've come to be where we are and what's going on. And, in turn, each episode repeates some facts we already know, but adds a bit of evidence, coloring the conclusions we previously held.

So Memento doesn't follow the standard beginning, rising action, climax, resolution pattern at all. It starts with the climax then runs in circles, backwards, drawing us closer and closer to the "beginning" of the tale.

I haven't seen the whole movie yet, so I don't know how it begins... (And, to me, that's a particularly interesting sensation. I've felt similar sensations with a few movies; Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkees, Tarantino's Kill Bill, Resevoir Dogs, and, of course, Pulp Fiction, the movie that virtually DEFINED non-traditional narrative structure for this generation...)