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These three terms are exactly complementary, neither overlap nor exceptions, and can summarize all the possibilities under the “narrative order” issue.

Gérard Genette’s “Narrative Discourse”, a classic monograph on the issue of narrative timing

not necessarily a “flashback” of “upside down”

However, after setting aside three “disturbances”, our troubles have just begun:

According to our experience when answering reading questions in Chinese class, “flashback” is often regarded as a “technique”, and the teacher will ask us this “technique” what’s the effect”.

This may give us a wrong suggestion: we may think that any “flashback” must be a “technique”, a “violation” of the “normal” narrative, and it must be There are some “functions”, and even some specific functions.

Do you see the problem here? Let’s take a plot that everyone has seen as an example: the protagonist finds a certain character, and the character begins to recall his (her) past And tell the protagonist.

In “Attack on Titan”, the head of the training regiment Keith tells Ellen his memories of Ellen’s father

According to our definition, the content of this passage must be a “flashback”, but if I ask you what is the “function” of the “flashback” here, how would you answer?

The author first admits that I can’t answer this question because it’s pure nonsense: since a certain character has to be told backRecalling, it would be strange if this narrative was not a “flashback”. In this case, “flashback” is not about “technique” at all, let alone “function”, it is just the most normal and natural logic of this narrative, and there is even no other possibility.

You may ask again, yes, memory as a kind of “flashback” may not have any special function, but the author arranges a memory here. This kind of plot arrangement itself should always have some meaning?

Let us not use any works this time, but use our lives as an example: In our lives, do we also read or listen to other people’s stories about the past? We would never say that there was a “flashback” in our lives?

This fact means one thing: The existence of “flashback” may be much more common than we thought, even we can hardly find many narrative works without “flashback”(This type of work is often short), and the reason is that “Flashback” largely conforms to our life experience.

As a person, our perspective is narrow. We can only see what we can see and experience what happens around us. However, endless things are happening all the time in the world, far exceeding our ability to perceive.

So if we want to know something we missed, we must read or listen to the narrative of the past in order to see the logic and order. On the contrary, if we tell a lot of complicated things completely in chronological order, the chaos may exceed our imagination.

In this regard, the author uses the animation “The Headless Horseman” as an example to illustrate this phenomenon:

The story of “The Headless Horseman” (hereinafter referred to as “Headless”) takes place in the Ikebukuro area of ​​Tokyo and tells the story of Ikebukuro A story that collides between people and organizations with different personalities and behaviors and urban legends.

As mentioned above, this is a very bold work in terms of narrative timing, but different from the group drama “The Wine of Eternal Life”, which fragments the narrative time of the whole story, “Headless” I often experiment with various storytelling sequences in different segments of my work to achieve the most novel and interesting effects.

Let’s focus on Chapter 8 “Nanke Yimeng”. This sentence adopts a complete “shunxu”, that is to say, time has not been turned back for any reason, and it tells the sequence from the dream of the heroine Searle one night in advance to the dream of the next night. What happened in a day.

Picture: “Headless” Chapter 8 “Nanke Yimeng” Title Screenshot

However, Serti is not the only character and the only clue that this statement focuses on. Many of them are related to Serti or (for now)< /span> Irrelevant characters all appeared in this sentence and unfolded their own stories. As for “Headless” as a group drama, if you want to clarify everyone’s perspective, the most traditional way is to “sub-narrate”-after telling a person’s story in chronological order, turn around and say that it happened simultaneously The story of another person.

However, in this sentence, the narrative time has not been reversed, so “sub-narrative” has not been used. As a result, what we see is the experience fragments of different people in different places in each time period, These clips will not tell the audience all the stories of each person in an orderly manner, but rely on the audience to collect and stitch their stories together after watching the episode.

The experience fragments of different characters in this story are strictly chronologically connected together, as if you are holding a camera and recording different protagonists’ activities

The narrative mode in this sentence is actually equivalent to a miniature “chronology”. When sorting out more complicated, especially long stories with a long time span, fans often use “chronology”(“chronology” ) to assist understanding.

The Chronicle of World of Warcraft, to clarify the history and details of the game story for fans

The problem is that the premise of using the “chronicle” narrative to aid understanding is that fans have already seen the story itself at least once. And if the main plot of the work is narrated in the form of “chronicles”, then the trouble will be big: “Chronicles” has no protagonist, no main plot, no beginning and end, and even the logic between events is not found, only cold. Time and its corresponding isolated incident.

Perhaps for this reason, Chapter 8 of “Headless” restricts this narrative to a very micro time period, and the plot is relatively weak, without dramatic development, but only shows the daily life of the characters. , And the inner thoughts of some characters.

But this example is also sufficient to illustrate that It is almost impossible to tell a story that does not involve a little “flashback” completely in chronological order. “Flashback” is a conventional mechanism of narrative. It is not a special technique. It is not a special technique to “reverse” the order of “normal” to “abnormal”. Instead, completely exclude “flashback”.

Of course, we cannot go from one extreme to another, claiming that “Shunxu” is more special than “Flashback”. Pure “flashback”-pushing the time period back step by step to narrate the story will also lead to a special narrative effect. At this time, it can no longer be called “flashback”. In some recent studies, there is a special term called “reverse narrative(backwards narratives)” or “Anti-time narrative(reversed time narratives) “. There is also a passage in “Headless” that puts this narrative into practice, namely, the 12.5 chapter “Skynet Recovers”.

“Headless” Chapter 12.5 caption screenshot

12.5, as shown by its number, is an insertion plot outside the main line. The time span involved in this sentence is shorter than that of the eighth chapter, only a few hours, but what happened in these few hours is much more tense and more complicated than the eighth chapter. The story starts at 10 o’clock in the evening, and the time is constantly being dialed back to earlier points in the telling: 9:30, 9:00, 7:00…

‍In this sentence, the time of each story is clearly given through the subtitles and the clock screen

From 9 am to 10 am, Ikebukuro staged a thrilling and chaotic chase. The target being chased was a red handbag, and many forces were actively or passively involved;

But when the time went back to an earlier moment, we discovered that this chaotic farce originated from a series of absurd coincidences and misunderstandings, which gradually turned the story from tension to a relaxed comedy atmosphere.

It is easy to find that this comedy atmosphere is gradually revealed, which is why this sentence chooses “reverse narrative”, although this sentence is easy to get confused at the beginning . However, the difficulty in understanding this statement is by no means only caused by the inversion of the timing.

Let’s do a little experiment: if we arrange the story of this story completely in chronological order, we will also find that the fragmentation of the plot and the level of confusion have not decreased much, and there are several logically unrelated clues. It is described in parallel without being fully developed, and some intersections may not occur until time advances. From this perspective, even though the form is completely opposite, this narrative form still reflects the incomprehensible weakness of the “chronological” narrative in the process of narration, and it has the same goal as the complete “shun narrative”.

Because of this, conventional narratives do not stick to any specific time narrative sequence. Most of them will set the clock of storytelling back or forward when needed. We can call a “time back” It is a “flashback”, but it is difficult to summarize a complete plot simply in one term, because its telling time is often “repeatedly horizontally”. In the most extreme cases, it is even questionable whether the phrase “flashback” makes sense.

A narrative sequence chain presented in Genette’s Narrative Discourse

If we can’t find “now”, what “flashback” is there?

If we want to discuss whether a certain narrative time has been “reversed”, we must find a standard: compared with what is it reversed?

“Flashbacks” and other terms imply this standard—We acquiesced that there is a “now” in the story, and flashbacks are to temporarily leave this “now” and go back to tell the “past”. Of course, the “pre-narration” is the same, leaving the “now” to talk about what will happen in the “future”.

However, if the “now” no longer exists, how do we find the “past” and “future”?

This may sound “philosophical”, but in fact this is what we have seen: the kind of “fragmented” narrative that some viewers call “random”.

The term “chaotic” is modeled on terms such as “flashback”, and the reason for creating this term may be because many people realize that the existing terminology faces “Wine of Eternal Life” and “unlucky.” Fragmented narratives such as Pop Does Not Smile are at a loss.

“The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” is also one of the animations that is often used as an example of “out of order”

In this kind of narrative, the plot becomes almost a puzzle piece, and the audience (at least the first time you watch) it’s difficult to sort out each one Where is the plot “puzzle” in the timeline, I can only watch the content of each “puzzle” in a dizzying manner, trying to clarify the logic between them.

The result is that “flashbacks” and other terms have completely lost their meaning: narrative fragments jump around in the timeline, making it difficult for us to find a “main line”. At this time, if we talk about “flashbacks” and “pre-narrations” “, not only can we densely label every part of the work with such terms, but also because we can’t find a unified standard, some places are “flashback” to plot A but “predictive” to plot B. In the end, only a mess was left.

But what we cannot deny is that “fragmented” narratives are not chaotic, only when we look at them from the perspective of chronological order will they feel chaotic. What we should do at this time is to temporarily let go of our obsession with narrative timing and find another way to appreciate them.

The Douban scores of works such as “The Wine of Eternal Life”, “Unlucky Pope Don’t Smile”, and “The Headless Horseman”, these works are actually equivalent Popular

Next, let’s take a look at what the fragmented narrative of the animated film “Sora no Kyokai: Contradiction Spiral” looks like:

“Spiral of Contradiction” is the fifth chapter of the animated film series “The Realm of the Sky”. Compared with the original novel, the animation does not have much adaptation to the plot, but it is quite “extraordinary” in the way of telling—— Completely fragment the original narrative in chronological order. The author believes that this adaptation has achieved its charm as an animation work.

“Spiral of Contradictions” poster

This animated film has a total of 1 hour and 53 minutes, with 41~42 minutes as the boundary, and the first half of it is made of rouge (the hero of this chapter)and the two rituals (Story heroine) is not very special, and the second half of the narrative centered on Heitong Ganya and Aosaki Orange The plot at the center is edited to be “fragmented”, and when the time is suddenly switched, it may be accompanied by a “click” as a sign.

At first glance, this kind of editing is rather blunt, but it is not random. There is a clue that is different from time. In terms of editing techniques, it is called “Match Cut” (Match Cut).

The so-called matching editing means that the two shots that are edited together have a certain level of matching. For example, let’s look at the following snippet:

Picture One Two TwoThe shots are joined together. Picture 2 is a close-up of the woman sitting in picture 1, which is Aozaki Orange, but she is obviously no longer in the room in picture 1, and the time and place have changed

In this clip, the time and space span before and after the editing is very large, but the time and space span is not important here, although the audience does not understand where and what the Aozaki Orange in the second picture is doing at this time. This is in the follow-up It will be explained in the clip, but the audience can understand that the topics discussed by Orange are in the same line before and after the editing, and they can even be combined into the same sentence. Understanding the topic she is discussing is the core of this part of the narrative.

The matching editing brought about by the continuity of the topic can be classified as “meaning matching editing”. In the lens language, this editing can bring a sense of fluency. In narrative, this kind of editing brings a narrative clue that ignores time and space.

A similar situation exists in the following clip:

If you are familiar with the plot of “Spiral of Contradictions,” you may be keenly aware that the space where these shots are located is the same, but not continuous time.

The first and second shots are the second duel between Aruba and Orange due to the appearance of Hei Tong Qianya, and the next few shots are their first duel. However, several consecutive shots of different times were edited smoothly in just a few seconds from 66:31 to 66:37 in the film, making it almost impossible for the audience to perceive that these were actually two battles at different times.

Different from the previous “meaning matching clip”, this matching clip is about “sports”. The reason for this is that the dress and position of the two people in the two battles. , Demeanor, etc. are almost the same. Although the causes and consequences of the two battles are obviously different in the plot, it is not important for the viewer’s visual experience and appreciation logic to identify these shots at different times.

The climax of “Spiral of Contradiction” in matching editing is also the climax of the plot. It is a matching editing of “sound”:

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In the previous picture, Yan Tiaoba yelled “Don’t be kidding me!” facing Ye Zonglian. What’s interesting is that this sentence was spliced ​​with the scene when Aruba faced oranges. At the same time, Aruba happened to be very shocked by Orange’s words in this scene, which gave us a feeling: Maybe Aruba also yelled to Oranges before this sentence “Don’t be kidding!” “

What’s more interesting is that the narrative time of the editing here has not been switched. The dialogue between Yan Tiaoba and Yazong Lian and the dialogue between Aruba and Orange took place almost at the same time in plot, and also in location. It’s just two different floors of the same building. However, we don’t care about the timing of the two. The dialogue they unfold and the coincidence and interaction between them are the greatest charm of this narrative climax.

Conclusion

Time is interesting and mysterious. The time we experience in life is gone forever. However, in the process of telling a story, we can move the clock of the story forward or backward at will.

Maybe this will make our attention extra attracted by this mechanism, but “time” is not all of the narrative. Space, cause and effect, words, sounds, etc. can serve as clues to the narrative and become us Appreciate the focus of the story.

In some cases, we can indeed use terms such as “flashback” to analyze noteworthy narrative fragments. But in other times, they are just the basic mechanism for the normal operation of the narrative. In addition, there are still Many analytical perspectives are waiting for us to explore.

This is in line with the point that the author has always wanted to convey: for the appreciation of literary works, the recognition of the “diversity” of perspective is an important reason for us to continue to have fun from it.

This article is from WeChat official account:Animation Academic Party (ID: babblers), author: mysterious branches, edit: Thinking Ji