Ultimately The Wire is about individuals grappling with inherently corrupt institutions who at best may claim small victories None of these institutions can deeply recognize what is just and good in its own operation despite the many individuals who try This is the basis of the series fam ID: 1018072
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1. Chimamanda Adichie warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
2. Ultimately, The Wire is about individuals grappling with inherently corrupt institutions who, at best, may claim small victories.
3. None of these institutions can deeply recognize what is just and good in its own operation, despite the many individuals who try. This is the basis of the series' famous anger, and realism. Melodrama does not demand a happy ending, though Dickens's readers did. It merely demands an awareness of what would be just.
4. The Wire's added dimension of the institutional level of melodrama, meshed with the stories of truly diverse social strata, is the most bravura achievement of The Wire.
5. It is the day-to-day workings of these institutions, at the nitty-gritty level of budgets, drug profits, political horse-trading, editorial practices -- not private loves, kindly uncles, or personal villains -- that determine fates. Popular melodrama is a heart-rending mode we may think we are too good for but which pulls us back again and again to heavily plotted stories of the battle between good and evil.
6. It is better, modern melodrama -- one that even grants an occasional happy ending to a particular individual without betraying its principles of showing the way the "game is rigged" against the poor and black.The Wire thus is, and isn't, Dickensian. More properly, it is serial television melodrama in which good and evil are raised beyond the personal to the institutional level. If Dickens represented the great serial melodrama of his time, The Wire represents the great serial melodrama of our own.
7. Two Crime Stories: Social Realism and Canonical It is better, modern melodrama -- one that even grants an occasional happy ending to a particular individual without betraying its principles of showing the way the "game is rigged" against the poor and black.Detective Film: Presupposes stable but concealed emotional nexus (A hates and kills B, but pretends he did not hate or kill B)
8. Fabula and SyuzhetFa bool aSee o j(h)et
9. FabulaEmbodies the action as a chronological, cause and effect chain of events
10. SyuzyetConsists of a particular pattern of events (actions, scenes, turning points, plot twists)
11. Style The films systematic use of story devices: canonical, genre, linear, non-linear
12. Fabula Crime: the investigation of a crime involves establishing certain connections among eventsThe fabula is a pattern that perceivers of narratives create through assumptions and inferences The viewer builds the fabula on the basis of prototype schemata i.e. identifiable types of persons, actions, localesProcedural Schemata: a search for appropriate motivations and relations of causality, time and space A film’s fabula is not materially present on the screen or soundtrack
13. Syuzhet: Consists of a particular pattern of events (actions, scenes, turning points, plot twists) Manipulation of causal intervention Dramaturgy of film: the organized set of cues prompting us to infer and assemble story information The Syuzhet and style interact in the course of cueing and channeling the spectator’s construction of the fabula Denotation and connotation “become fellow travelers in the story”
14. Denotation: the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.Connotation: The associated or secondary meaning of a word or expression in addition to its explicit or primary meaning: A possible connotation of “home” is “a place of warmth, comfort, and affection.”
15. Logical, temporal and spatial nature of syuzhet Gaps are created by choosing to present certain pieces of fabula information and to hold back others
16. A detective story calls attention to its gaps, makes us fret over the lack of certain data Omitted fabula information will become important later Retardation (Delay of story information) cues spectator’s comprehension Revelation of some (not all) information can arouse anticipation, curiosity, suspense, and surprise In a crime story crucial murder evidence emerges piecemealThe case can’t be solved too quicklyResolution is suspended until conclusion
17. Detective Story: SerialCrime• Cause of Crime• Commission of Crime • Concealment of Crime • Discovery of Crime Investigation• Beginning of investigation • Phases of investigation • Elucidation of crime• Identification of criminal • Consequences of identification
18. The genre aims to create curiosity about past story eventsSuspense about upcoming story eventsSurprise with respect to unexpected disclosures about either story or syuzhetWe learn what the detective learns when he or she learns it The detective film justifies its gaps and retardations (delayed story development)
19. We are not allowed access to the detective’s inferences until he or she voices them-(unless the detective is baffled or turns out wrong)
20. The activity of piecing together cause and effect in the crime fabula constitutes the central formal convention of the detective tale
21. Romance becomes another factor. The detective is attracted to the Femme Fatale even if he suspects them of deception, betrayal or even worse (Could be why listeners interpret Sarah as “in love” with Adnan.)
22. MelodramaSubverts everything to broad emotional impact Pity, irony, and other dissociated emotionsMaximizes the viewer’s urge to know what will happen next—and, especially, how any given character will react to what has happened The emotional expressiveness of the film issues partly from the narration’s tendency to be omni--communicative To wring every emotional drop out of the fabula situations the narration employs omniscience Various characters discover what viewers already know
23. Crosscutting different plotlinesFollowing several characters from one locale to another expands range of knowledge Melodrama can still manipulate knowledge in as complicated a fashion as detective stories Syuzhet will inform us of initiation of a chain of action and then skip over some time or move to another line of actionDetective Film: Presupposes stable but concealed emotional nexus (A hates and kills B, but pretends he did not hate or kill B)The melodrama assumes violent and overt changes of emotional attitudes The Wire—Social Realism/Melodrama (Not bad or corny melodrama)
24. Detective Film: Presupposes stable but concealed emotional nexus (A hates and kills B, but pretends he did not hate or kill B)The melodrama assumes violent and overt changes of emotional attitudes The Wire—Social Realism/Melodrama
25. Popular melodrama is a heart-rending mode we may think we are too good for but which pulls us back again and again to heavily plotted stories of the battle between good and evil.
26. Fabula:Character centered causality and the definition of the action as the attempt to achieve a goal are both central features of the canonic formatTHE CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD STORY
27. Plot Undisturbed stageThe DisturbanceThe StruggleAnd the elimination of the disturbance
28. Two plot linesOne involving heterosexual romanceThe other involving another sphere: work, war, a mission or quest
29. Scenes Continuation of time, space and action (cause and effect) A scene may be temporally closed, but it is causally open
30. Each scene displays distinct phases ExpositionMiddle—move towards their goalsAction must be left suspended
31. Mystery film. Resolved enigma. Develops towards full and adequate knowledge
32. The ending is the crowning of the structure The logical conclusion of the string of events The final effect of the initial cause, the revelation of the truthThere is a need for a logical wrap-up. When we do not get this logical wrap-up we may feel frustration or sadness
33. The classical ending is not all that structurally decisive It’s more or less an arbitrary readjustment of that world knocked awry in the previous storyDuring the time of the book, out of 100 randomly sampled Hollywood films, over sixty ended with a display of the united romantic couple. The cliché happy ending with a clinch The Classical Hollywood Story
34. The retardation (delay) of the middle portions make the tied up ending even more satisfying“Closure effect” The strain of resolved and unresolved issues seems strong
35. The most coherent possible epilogue remains the standard to be aimed at The narration knows more than all the characters, conceals relatively little (What will happen next?) If time is skipped over a montage sequence or a bit of character dialogue informs us; if a cause is missing, we will typically be informed that something isn’t thereIn the beginning of a Hollywood Motion Picture we don’t know anything During the course of the story, information is accumulated, until at the end we know everything
36. Citizen Kane (not classical storytelling)It reveals the mysteryIt doesn’t reveal all of Kane’s motivationsThe priority of causality within an integral fabula world commits classical narration to unambiguous presentationOn the whole classical narration treats film technique as a vehicle for the syuzhet’s transmission of fabula information
37. In classical narration, style typically encourages the spectator to construct a coherent, consistent time and space for the fabula action. Utmost denotative clarity from moment to moment. Each scene’s temporal relation to its predecessor will be signaled early and unequivocally (by intertitles, conventional cues, a line of dialogue) The Hollywood Classical Style passes relatively unnoticedThe Hollywood fabula is a product of a series of particular schemata, hypotheses, and influences
38. The spectator comes to a classical film very well preparedShape of Syuzhet and fabula is likely to conform to the canonic story of an individual’s goal oriented, causally determined activity The viewer has internalized, exposition, development of causal line, Realistic motivation Finding important links between cause and effect
39. Generic ConventionsGeneric Motivation On the basis of such schemata the viewer projects hypotheses Hypotheses tend to be probableRendered as either/or alternativesAimed at suspense Future-oriented “suspense” hypotheses Many long range hypotheses must await confirmation Delaying devices being unpredictable to a great degree can introduce objects of immediate attention as well as delay satisfaction of overall expectation The structure of a Hollywood scene which almost invariably ends with an unresolved issue assures that an event centered hypothesis carries interest over to the next sequence
40. The Open Ending Leaves the viewers with an ambiguous or missing plot resolution Fails to fulfill the viewer’s emotional expectations by not offering a climax or other emotional relief --Not Such a Happy Ending: The Ideology of the Open Ending –Eran Preis
41. Ideology Relatively coherent system of values, beliefs or ideas shared by some social group and often taken for granted as natural or inherently true --Bordwell Thompson
42. Art reveals the true nature of ideology not by purely criticizing or mocking it, but by experiencing it
43. The classical narrative forms are not always capable of expressing complexity
44. Questioning ideologies—breaks conventions of form and content
45. Requirements of Successful Use of an Open Ending A writer with ideological awareness and the ability to penetrate to the true nature of the experience A historical situation that allows him/her access to such insightsA viewer willing to replace closure with conflict and accept ideology as a process rather than taken-for-granted truth