Talk:Diegesis

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I'm not a wiki user, but "diegetic sound", "diegetic" and "diagetic" could all use redirects to this page if someone has the time.


Contents

[edit] Diegesis in literature

Sounds interesting, can you give us a few samples of Stephen King's technique? It would amplify your para. Dieter Simon 23:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Source music"

I think that actual Hollywood types use "source music" more often than "diegesis"... AnonMoos 18:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC) Actually, most scholarly journals are moving to the term diegetic and non-diegetic, although I prefer the simplicity of source music and underscore.


[edit] Expert Request

Where did the WikiProject inclusion request come from on this page; there is no discussion here? Rykalski 19:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

It originated with an unregistered editor (89.241.163.125) who inserted an "expert" template. Probably couldn't read anything more abstruse than an average essay. Sorry, I get a bit bitter about that sort of template. Dieter Simon 22:27, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Could we remove it? Rykalski 14:34, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Have removed it. It is one thing to substantiate statements made in the article by citing sources, but it is another to throw the whole into doubt by inserting an "expert" template. Have removed it and am endevouring to find the sources for the Platonic, etc. involvement. Dieter Simon 23:27, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Tarantino

Is it worth adding a section on Tarantino as music that shifts between the diegetic and non-deigetic is one of his trademarks and given his popularity it is in his works that a lot of people are going to come across this concept? Rykalski 10:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Score vs Sound track

This is a bit of an opinionated insert IMO, that the score is erroneously called the sound track. A score can refer to any sheet music; it's not specific to the musical content of a film. I would be surprised to find any kind of factual source on this. I agree the soundtrack usually refers to something else, but it's not necessarily erroneous.74.192.45.17 01:54, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what you're disagreeing with here. Are you saying sound effects and the like are part of a films 'score'? Or that scores refer to music outside of the context of cinema (the discussion here is specific to that context). I think the point the article is making there is that soundtrack is a more general category, of which score only forms a part. Unless I'm confused, that is.

I've inserted a section on diegesis & mimesis in cinema, as the previous description gets it wrong; the reason film uses the term diegesis and not mimesis is that it's an epic/narrative medium. Subject-object relations (the poet sings to the audience), not interpersonal autonomy (the poet speaks through the mask of character only). The moment you move a camera or make a cut, even in continuity editing conventions, you have narrative not drama; diegesis, not mimesis. Have tried to explain this, but it's looking a bit clumsy at the moment. Feel free to snip and tidy if so inclined. DionysosProteus 04:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fuzzy reasoning

The section “Diegesis in film” seems conceptually weak and confusing. The text makes a hard distinction between theater and cinema; yet narration, parallel/simultaneous action, attention getting techniques (e.g. lighting; scrims), and music are all common parts of live theater. The distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic elements seems clear enough, but would appear to apply equally in both media. Both media show and tell; both include elements from within and without the “world” being presented. But to say that stage is dramatic and film narrative is to make a false distinction. One gets the feeling that some academic has taken the Aristotelian dichotomy and run with it. I suppose the arcana of textual criticism deserve a place in this all-inclusive encyclopedia; but I submit that this article does more harm than good. Jim Stinson 20:44, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

No, it's your distinctions that are confusing you. You're failing to make the distinction between theatre and drama. On the one hand you describe metatheatrical devices (lighting etc.); these are a feature of modern theatre only, since its technological basis didn't exist before the end of the nineteenth century (and modern theatre, as described below, involves a 'crisis of dramatic form'). Music was used in a way analogous to cinematic underscoring only with the invention of melodrama (melo=music and drama), which required a new term to distinguish its genre, precisely because it conflicted with neoclassical understandings of what drama was (and it was incorporated in order that its theatrical entertainments weren't drama, because of the legal interdiction against unlicensed drama). Other than that, it only ever existed in what you would call a non-diegetic form in rare cases and then to cover act divisions. When you have music relating to dramatic form in more significant ways than this, it is given a new generic name--opera.

On the other hand, you describe elements of dramatic form - narration, parallel/sim. action. This is a complicated question, since it relates to two different aspects - pre-c19th Realism and c20th non-naturalism. As far as pre-Realism goes, throughout the history of drama the elements you describe have been decried by just about every major theorist precisely for violating dramatic form (see below). The big problem, of course, is Shakespeare, who violated neo-classical decorum frequently and looked great doing it. At the opposite end of the spectrum you have Jean Racine. The history of dramatic theory describes Shakespeare as incorporating 'epic' elements into a dramatic form.

With the c20th it gets more complicated, and the interaction with cinema becomes significant. In a nutshell, the techniques you describe begin at the level of theatrical production rather than plays - Erwin Piscator in Germany and Vsevolod Meyerhold (i.e. Eisenstein's teacher) first incorporate cinematic projection into the theatre as a way to get past the interpersonal limitations of drama (towards the social overview of the epic). Hence, simulataneous action. In playwrighting terms, it's first fully-realised by Brecht, who calls his drama "epic theatre" for that very reason. He 'solves' the crisis of dramatic form (see below).

Drama is traditionally a mimetic art form. As you observe, though, it has often incorporated 'epic' elements. Shakespearean drama, Restoration comedy and modern non-naturalistic forms all depart from strict dramatic form. Many, however, do not - Stanislavskian acting and its descendant Method acting in performance terms and Ibsen and his c20th imitators (Arthur Miller, et al) all observe the neo-classical autonomy of drama and exclude the epic. In terms of elements that depart, rendered in the vocabulary of classical poetics, there is also a tradition of the incorporation / articulation with the lyrical; Anton Chekhov and Maurice Maeterlinck and other Symbolists, Expressionism in the theatre and drama (Sophie Treadwell, some of Elmer Rice and Eugene O'Neill, Federico Garcia Lorca, all incorporate lyrical dimensions to their dramatic form. This is part of a historical poetics, traceable to the 'crisis of drama' at the turn of the twentieth century. Dramatic form, it was realised, couldn't cope with the full-representation of reality as we were coming to understand it, and in two contrasting directions: the social (mass movements happening outside the window of the bourgeois drawing-room) prompted the incorporation of the epic (most fully-realised in Bertolt Brecht; and the inner, subjective world (happening inside inarticulate characters' heads that in realistic terms we can only hear about, not experience directly), perhaps most fully realised in Samuel Beckett. That, in a nutshell, is the story of the crisis of dramatic form in the twentieth century. When you are dealing with Brechtian epic theatre, you could argue that diegesis becomes relevant; but Brecht has his own term to deal with the non-mimetic narrational aspects of his theatre... what he calls the gestic principle (Deleuze discusses this briefly in relation to cinema in his second book). By and large, however, when talking about the dramatic world in drama, you are talking about mimesis - the representation of a world (not its report).

As far as cinema goes, it is 'epic' from the word go (i.e., it can narrate, do the dramatic and do the lyrical, just as it pleases). That is inherent to its technological foundations. The epic, Aristotle says, combines imitation/representation and narration. This is why cinema studies uses the word 'diegesis' at all. It would make far more intuitive sense to use the word mimesis to refer to the film's fictional world, were it not for its epic form. Because of this epic form, cinema is not subject to the interpersonal limitation of drama That is, you can see nature directly, like all those long, lingering lyrical shots at the opening of the original Solaris; you can hear a character's thoughts directly through voice-over narration. You can see the representation of vast social movements like the revolution in Eisenstein or the movements of the AIDS pandemic in And the Band played on. In brief, that is, drama gets mighty jealous of the technical and dramaturgical possibilities of the cinematic medium - you guys can do all the things we can't but wished we could. If you are interested in these debates, there is plenty of literature on the subject - in the drama, at least, it stretches back for centuries and is a major axis of dramatic theory.

Your criticism of fuzziness may be valid insofar as it's a complicated subject and could do with a substantial citation drive in its narration here. However, the terminology is sound and the distinctions well-established. You imply it's the eccentric theory of a solitary academic. I'd point you to an overview of the history of dramatic theory like Marvin Carlson's Theories of the Theatre--that would give you an idea of just how fundamental and persistent these debates have been. Take a glance at the debates between Goethe and Schiller, for example, who were loving Shakespeare but unable to reconcile him with traditional dramatic form. In theatre, what cinema calls 'non-diegetic' is, in its theatrical equivalent, called 'non-mimetic' (which is why the section in the article on musical theatre will struggle to find some reputable citations). It might be that the reason this isn't clearer to a layman is that we live at the end of a century in which just about every major form of theatre rebelled against its mimetic foundation (there is a similar relationship in painting thanks to the emergence of 'abstract art').

Sorry if that's information overload. If you'd prefer to investigate yourself in the sources, let me know and I'll point you in further relevant directions.

DionysosProteus 19:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
It would take far too long to wade through this reply; but to take just one example, you absolutely cannot see (or hear) anything directly in cinema, not only because you are in the presence of recordings only, but also because even the simplest and most straightforward presentation is mediated by the characteristics and constraints of its medium and shaped by that medium's users. Even the most rabid verite documentarist can never escape the decisions of 1) where to aim the camera, 2) what to frame (and frame off), 3) when to start and end recording, 4) whether (and what parts) to include in the eventual presentation and 5) where to place the material in the presentational sequence.
More broadly, I suspect that the term diegesis, originally signifying narrating/telling, in contrast to mimesis (imitating/showing) has now been burdened with the additional and completely different meaning of fictive world creating. It's easy to see how this happened. Mimesis became the depiction of an action and diegesis became everything else. Understandable. Jim Stinson 00:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it's precisely the inherently-mediated aspects you describe that mean that cinema's storytelling is a narrative form; it's not so much determined by the presence of an agent with volition, though, since this dimension is present in theatre also (the playwright, director and actor all select action in different ways, without it becoming narration), but rather is inherent in the technology. This is why, though, the sense of fictive world-making in cinema is identical to its traditional meaning - it's the same thing... A world created through cinematic narration (that is, 'narration' isn't merely a linguistic thing but in cinema is embodied in the technology, in just the ways you describe; this is the really original development that cinema inaugerates, as far as this critical tradition is concerned). Cinema narrates with the audio-visual, not merely the written (or spoken, as it was with Plato and Aristotle, of course) word.
Mimesis is the embodiment of action, traditionally (rather than depiction - that gets complicated); it isn't narration because there is no 'mediating communication system' (usually). It's not an action vs. everything else distinction, but a distinction of means.
In terms of cinema, there isn't a shift where you're sensing one; diegesis means 'the world that is narrated'. Take the OED definition: "A narrative, a report of action, a plot, now especially in a cinema or television film"; note the 'of action' - that's there to provide the contrast with mimesis. The definition doesn't recognise a difference report/world. I suspect you're hearing a shift of meaning because you're aware that there's a difference between narrating and what is narrated - the report (how) and the world (what); the same tension exists in the use of the word mimesis (indeed, that tension, under the rubric 'representation', is a preoccupation of much post-structuralist philosophy; the rise of semiotics, more generally, is an anti-mimetic approach, which unpicks the difference). This hasn't been helped by a c20th development in literary studies, which used mimesis to describe 'realism' in the Western literary tradition more generally, which introduces a completely different axis (Auerbach - what he's actually talking about is more properly described as diegesis, since it's literature for the most part. But that's a tangent).
So what I'm struggling to say clearly, is that its meaning as 'report' or 'narrative' is the same thing as its meaning as 'created world' in cinema, because cinema is inherently narrational (if that's even a word). Even when cinema mimics theatre, there is still a 'narrator' standing in-between. But this is also why one can't use 'diegesis' to talk about the fictional world created by the drama - the technological basis is absent. DionysosProteus 01:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Very simply, then, you insist that the term mimesis be applied ONLY to an imitation of an action by live performers in real time in the presence of a live audience. And, therefore, diegesis must cover ALL other tactics, strategies, methods -- you name it -- for the presentation of narrative, dramatic, or poetic fiction. In that case, I submit that "diegesis," (like "fiction," in fact) is so inclusive as to be functionally useless for criticism. The ancient symmetry between the opposites mimesis and diegesis becomes dangerously misleading, because now the actual distinction has become "mimesis" vs. "not mimesis." This impoverishes the vocabulary available for the analysis of action dramatized in motion pictures and written fiction, both prose and poetry.Jim Stinson 18:13, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Shazam! Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 22:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Time for cooler heads to prevail

Frustrated by the exchanges above, I consulted two distinguished professors of theater history and theatrical literature. Dunbar H. Ogden (UC Berkeley) and Robert K. Sarlos (UC Davis). Neither had heard the term diegesis. My old theater history professor, A. M. Nagler, never used the term.

So I hit the dictionaries. The American Heritage, Miriam Webster, and Cambridge advanced on-line dictionaries omit the word. The six dictionaries consulted that did list the word all defined it, tersely, as “a narrative.” My own copy of the OED defined it almost identically and found only one brief citation to quote – from the mid 19th century. Deduction: the word may be most politely characterized as obscure and little used – at least until it was repeatedly revived, appropriated and re-positioned by post-modern critics of all major schools.

Next, I read closely the relevant sections from Plato and Aristotle, in the translations cited by the Wikipedia article. The term is used only as “narrative,” (although Prof. Gilbert Murray explains that the greek roots really mean “through-going”). Footnote 2, included in the article, says, in part, “Certainly, he replied. / And narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, or a union of the two? / [...] / And this assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture, is the imitation of the person whose character he assumes? / Of course. / Then in this case the narrative of the poet may be said to proceed by way of imitation? / Very true. / Unmistakably, imitation can be a part of epic poetry, which, like motion pictures, is reported to an audience rather than created in front of it.

Then I re-read the Wikipedia article and all the above discussion. As before, I found it a frustrating mess of inconsistent statements unsupported by citations. The most conservative conclusion is that diegesis is an old, fairly simple term that is being Humpty-Dumptied by anyone who wants to use it. Since that’s a usual and customary critical process, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.

But an encyclopedia’s charge is to report information and meaning, not to create, modify, or debate it. Since “diegesis” in its modern incarnations may well be no more than ephemeral jargon, all we should do is note its existence, explain its classical meaning and usage, and report its revival, transformations, and presently unsettled status.

With that in mind, I think the current article should be replaced with a new one more appropriate to an encyclopedia. Jim Stinson 01:06, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. This is an obscure word that one is only likely to find when referenced elsewhere, as I did. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 01:13, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
There is MUCH misunderstanding in your two responses above. Firstly, I would suggest a return visit to these professors. The Plato / Aristotle debates are fundamental to theatre history, which my own professors for my MA and PhD--both in the US, I might add, and taught by 'distinguished' etc.--did not neglect to explore with me in considerable detail.
FIRSTLY--Perhaps it wasn't clear from the discussion above, but MIMESIS and DIEGESIS are the Greek words. That may--possibly--explain your professors' ignorance. Mimesis is translated as 'imitation' or 'representation', depending on your translation. Diegesis is narrative or report. This is why you may struggle to find direct uses of the original. The translation was usually used. The concepts, however, maintain regular relationships to one another. You are right to suggest that the pre-cinematic use of diegesis is 'obscure'--but that's not because it wasn't used, but rather because it was translated. Mimesis, in this respect, had a (slightly) broader usage (but not much more). The contrast report/representation or narrative/imitation is a major strand of dramatic theory through the ages (see below).
SECONDLY--Re: the 'inclusive' criticism in the first reply. No, you didn't follow. Drama is different from other forms of fiction. They report, it represents (epic poetry combines the two). This is standard stuff. As I suggested above, consult Marvin Carlson's Theories of Theatre, Dukore's Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Elam's Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, Pfister's The Theory and Analysis of Drama. For example:
“ classical narrative is always oriented towards an explicit there and then, towards an imaginary 'elsewhere' set in the past and which has to be evoked for the reader through predication and description. Dramatic worlds, on the other hand, are presented to the spectator as 'hypothetically actual' constructs, since they are 'seen' in progress 'here and now' without narratorial mediation. [...] This is not merely a technical distinction but constitutes, rather, one of the cardinal principles of a poetics of the drama as opposed to one of narrative fiction. The distinction is, indeed, implicit in Aristotle's differentiation of representational modes, namely diegesis (narrative description) versus mimesis (direct imitation). „

—Elam (110-111)

All due respect to your professors, then, but there is clearly a gap in their knowledge. Diegesis explicitly does not include 'dramatic fiction', which is why the second half of your first criticism above loses its way and misunderstands the nature of dramatic action in the cinema. There is another, separate issue concerning the development of the term 'mimesis'; if you return to your OED, you will note two definitions (in fiction, that is): RHETORIC, from the M-c16th and REALISM from the M-c20th. We are discussing the first sense. The second I mentioned via Auerbach, in passing. His use complicates all this, but doesn't have a direct bearing on this discussion.

THIRDLY--I'm not sure if this misunderstanding has arisen from one of my suggestions or whether it's part of your own background, but you appear to be confusing the role the "postmodernists" have played in this development. The post-structuralists have engaged with 'representation' or 'mimesis' as well as 'narrative' in various guises; however, I'm not aware of a direct use of diegesis, though that may be one of my own gaps. The modern use of the term--untranslated into "narrative", that is--originates in film theory. It is principally used in the Greek form as diegesis in cinema studies. I know about the term from teaching it in my film classes. I am able to contextualise its background and the critical history it joins because of my substantial theatre training. It takes an inter-disciplinary approach to appreciate the connection. Without that, it might appear, as it seems to have to you, that the Aristotle usage and cinematic are different and unconnected, but that is not the case.
FOURTHLY--re: your reading of Aristotle. I pointed to this very passage above, when I said "The epic, Aristotle says, combines imitation/representation and narration." I also pointed to the development of 'epic theater', which, precisely, is (to approach what you offer from the reverse direction), epic poetry becoming part of imitation, or, more specifically, the genre of epic poetry being articulated with the genre of tragedy to produce epic theatre (still schematic, though). Now, you say "Unmistakably, imitation can be a part of epic poetry, which, like motion pictures, is reported to an audience rather than created in front of it." The first part of this is true, but actually the passage you quote doesn't say this. Aristotle makes that observation a little later in the poetics, where he identifies the 'union of the two' as epic poetry. But you've misunderstood why epic poetry is a union of the two. It is reported (hence diegesis), yes. But it is reported by a human being in a live performance situation, who during the course of his report adopts characters and speaks in their voice sometimes. Hence mimesis. The cinema can never do this (well, with the possible exception of The Rocky Horror Picture Show type events). Remember that for Aristotle there is no live/reproduced distinction, since there's no such thing as reproduced action prior to the invention of the cinema; it's all live. Aristotle and the critical tradition that follows invoke a report / representation dichotomy. The poet speaks in his own voice "Meanwhile on the other side of the forest..." or becomes the character by adopting its mask (literally) "the use of voice or gesture..." Representation for Aristotle means live theatrical performance. For the technical reasons offered above--camera shot selection, editing--cinema is a 'report' within the terms of that critical tradition. It is for this reason that cinema studies adopts the term diegesis to describe its fictional world. There's no humpty dumpty about it. It's very clear and I can provide the citations--the standard Bordwell/Thompson Film Art, if I remember rightly, uses diegesis in some detail. Uses, I might add, without discussing its theoretical history. But for that, go to the report/representation--i.e., English translations of diegesis/mimesis--debates in the theatre history books given above. I see that Baseball Bugs finds the word to be obscure. Well, all I can say is that its a basic term of cinema studies and pretty much every intro to film theory class is pretty likely to use it. Its critical history, and the way the term connects across disciplines, it won't give you. The reason why the two definitions offered in the intro of this article are, in reality, two different ways of saying the same thing, you won't get in an intro-level cinema class. That such a history is a 'post-graduate' level subject, however, doesn't mean that it's inappropriate material for inclusion in an encyclopedia article. If you'd like the names of the worthy professors who taught me all this stuff, I can provide them. I have, slowly but surely, been gathering material for a citation drive--mainly, I might add, for the drama and mimesis articles, but it is relevant to all this too--but the theatre pages are in such a generally shoddy state on here that these high-theory issues are a little lower on my priority list than basic theatre topics like Brecht and Stanislavski. But the material is all out there in reputable and scholarly works. I have, no doubt, many startlingly original and innovative theoretical ideas of my own; these, alas, are not to be counted among them.
FINALLY--I'm a little confused as to why you say 'cooler heads'. Is your head feeling hot?
DionysosProteus 02:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
1) Standard stuff? Since when; and when do new usages become standard?
2) Ignorant professors? I won't bandy their credentials with you; but you can check them out at any or all of the US and international theater history associations and journals, or just Google them. As for me, I wouldn't ordinarily wave this about, but I graduated from Harvard magna cum laude in English literature, spent three years at Yale in History of theater and theater studies, and three years at the UCLA film school. As Ralph Richardson says in Time Bandits, I'm not entirely dim.
3) Post modern? I used the term loosely, more-or-less in the spirit of Harold Bloom, to include all the post-WW II schools that seem to have arisen to prevent grad students from running out of dissertation topics.
As for your nearly 1300 word reply, ipse dixit -- in more ways than one.

I stand by my opinion of the article in its present form, and herewith escape from this wrangle between Big Enders and Little Enders. Good luck to you. Jim Stinson 20:43, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Consult the literature. It's there in black and white. If you have difficultly accepting that, no one can help you. ipse dixit my arse. You didn't read Aristotle? You passed over genre? Elam sound familiar? How do you spend so many years studying theatre and film, for shame!, and miss the connection? There are PLENTY of sources listed above. Pick one. DionysosProteus 20:49, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
You lost me at the Bakery. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 22:09, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Once Upon a Time in the West

There's ambiguity in the status of the harmonica theme in Once Upon a Time in the West. At the end of the first scene, the three goons turn their back on the train from which no passenger has descended; then they turn to see the nameless hero standing on the far side of the track. Why did they turn? They heard him play the harmonica – but the first two times I saw the movie I mistook it for non-diegetic. The hero plays his theme in several later scenes, but there are also some shots where the theme is heard and he is seen not to be playing. Does this belong in the list of anomalies? —Tamfang (talk) 23:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)