[ANTHROPOLOGIE #1] A quoi sert le récit ?

00:43 - And this coming from a world highly confident in its viewpoints, in how the world was going to open up.

00:51 - The key issue for us is the context has changed.

00:58 - We’re far from that period of absolute trust in the world’s perspectives at that time.

01:05 - The creation of meaning has become problematical in Europe and elsewhere.

01:13 - Hence the need to review the characteristics of storytelling and how does it benefit mankind ? It’s our fundamental question.

01:25 - It should also be a priority for the scriptwriters, the storytellers.

01:31 - Before beginning the work. Where do they stand in the world and how do they interract with the world ? Perhaps I’ll start as Antoine suggests with a historical analysis.

01:42 - hopefully avoiding a simplistic analysis as Pierre mentionned.

01:46 - Indeed a storytelling crises in the 60s and 70s appeared in the Fench intelligentsia.

01:55 - It occured in several cultural fields, notably in cinema.

02:00 - Also in literature with the “nouveau roman”.

02:02 - The non-narrative novel was a prototype. And as Pierre said, it’s certainly not a worldwide phenomenon.

02:11 - It was specific to southern Europe. The French believed it to be worldwide movement because whatever we think is universel.

02:18 - Concerning influences, I’m familiar with Spanish culture.

02:20 - There was an influence in Spain but it remains marginal because the Spanish cinema avantgarde was completely marginalized during the Franco regime.

02:26 - One of my colleagues studied what we call the “Ecole de Barcelone” which was orientated towards the the new French cinema which purposefully made films to destroy cinematographic narrative.

02:39 - It’s interesting to note that the trends weren’t…

02:43 - In one respect the trends were similar in both literature and cinema.

02:47 - Rejecting narratvie paved the way for ideology developement.

02:51 - There was a lot of it. We can develop this specifically as a social function.

02:56 - But from an aestheic point of view what happens is that the creators reexamine their particular media.

03:04 - For example those from the “nouveau roman” said we don’t tell stories, we write literature.

03:10 - Roland Barthe’s famous speech was on that, on the future of literature. Could it disappear ? People say we write literature we give priority to the writing essentially the style, with an outdated literary analysis and we don’t necessarily tell a story.

03:27 - So in the cinema world they say we create images.

03:31 - The image predominates. ????? The editing, the framing, the depth of field, the sound, to deconstuct, aiming for a different point of view and to reflect on this.

03:48 - The story becomes a sort of parasite to be done away with.

03:52 - Perhaps that’s what people see first, forgetting that the arts also use artifices.

03:56 - There is that in the refusal of storytelling.

04:01 - Then there’s the idealogical aspect. Which possibly resulted from World War 2 propoganda when people rallied to great narratives.

04:13 - Although some lead to defeat. A book describing this well is Jean-Francois Lyotard’s works on post-modernism.

04:24 - He talks of the collapse of grand narrative.

04:26 - When he wrote this in the 70s he didn’t know what this would be replaced by.

04:32 - And the United States took over the famous French theory to recycle in political communication.

04:38 - And they told stories. Christian Salmon writes about this in his book on storytelling in 2006.

04:44 - He says they latched onto Barthe’s structuralism theory adapting it for ideological purposes.

04:50 - With Reagan arose the whole concept of a political narrative.

04:55 - Salmon is disillusioned because in his most recent book in 2018, “L’Ere du clash”…

05:02 - He remains focussed on the American example.

05:06 - He says storytelling is over, everything has gone it’s the era of the clash, it’s twitter.

05:11 - It’s like the stock market. A single tweet at the start of the day from Trump, he’s the epitome, There’s a quote ????? that he retweets.

05:22 - That’s a tweet, there’s no story. It’s a comment, it’s re-tweeted, and the next day it’s forgotten.

05:29 - And you move on to something else. He identified that in storytelling saying it replaced the grand narrative because we need the world to be formatted otherwise there’s no meaning.

05:38 - Perhaps also in abandoning narrative for certain artists in the 70s, narrative of the future was adopted by science.

05:48 - It seemed inevitable. It was euphorical.

05:51 - Let’s develop this etcetera. After the oil crisis we started hearing of Dumont’s candidature and that things weren’t right.

06:02 - So narrative of the future was left for science.

06:04 - The arts left narrative of the future to sciences.

06:06 - We musn’t forget that the arts took over the narrative of the future in the 1920-30s the whole futurist side, how to represent speed Poincarés works which inspired the cubists.

06:22 - At that point it was scrapped, the future was left to sciences which claim they don’t tell stories they put figures into context, it was a data based world, story had disappeared.

06:36 - So the arts were doing the same thing. Roughly.

06:40 - And historically, the follow-up ? The historical follow-up was as you said.

06:45 - There was a sort of conscience crisis with the production model about 20 years ago.

06:56 - The question of origins arises. We try to define that story.

07:02 - And above all where we’re heading. At this time there are alternative narratives.

07:08 - We keep thinking we can compose with this data but then realise the data is no longer relevant.

07:15 - What’s interesting with the IPPC which is relevant to us, is what we call the scenarios.

07:24 - Which provides… . depending the year, and who’s directing the report.

07:28 - Some years the scenarios are catastrophic. It depends on how the report is conducted.

07:34 - What’s possible and at what percentage with the intention of controlling the future.

07:42 - To avoid being stressed by time. Time in the future.

07:47 - Storytelling has nothing to do with the present.

07:49 - Storytelling is either future or past-oriented.

07:52 - It’s used in the present but it relates the past.

07:57 - Obviously there’s anteriority. Maybe you could tell us about it from a linguistic point of view.

08:01 - It varies according to the language. Or it’s future-oriented.

08:05 - We relate what could likely happen. We try to situate the present within that.

08:11 - A war starts, some phenomenon starts we put this in story form to keep the control, from an imagination point of view to prepare for what may happen.

08:22 - When using the term storytelling ad minima, the events ? The principle of putting into narrative form comes from a structuralist theory.

08:32 - Narrative occurs with the upset of balance.

08:35 - It started with Propp. It was developed in different ways.

08:40 - Why do we tell stories ? Jerome Bruner says what humans like the least is the unexpected.

08:48 - And adds we deal with the unexpected with fiction.

08:52 - When we’re caught out in day to day life we need to know immediately what will happen afterwards. We need the scenario.

09:03 - What is particularly distressing in the case of an industrial accident.

09:08 - is to say nothing happened. Because people are aware of an incident that was unexpected.

09:15 - They’ll immediately need an afterwards scénario before reassuring them it won’t happen again.

09:23 - You can’t say nothing happened. Because something really happened.

09:26 - They engage in an explanatory narrative. They need to find meaning so they can deal with what may follow the unexpected incident.

09:35 - It’s the essence of narrative. To have control over the unpredictable.

09:39 - In the time line. Language avoids establishing our position in reality.

09:50 - By that I mean… To use a concrete example, the imperfect tense in French it’s a past tense.

09:59 - Logically it should relate events of the past.

10:02 - Not at all. The imperfect is used in many ways.

10:05 - Notably to tell fiction stories. It’s even used to tell futuristic stories.

10:11 - A science fiction is written in the imperfect.

10:14 - I was on the planet such and such when such and such happened.

10:21 - We have language… The way in which language enables the construction of our reality is to extract it from reality, from real life to place it in a context relating it to the relevant individuals, which will place it exactly how we want it to be.

10:51 - And not dependent on the pressure imposed by reality.

10:58 - It’s difficult to say what I’m telling you is the truth.

11:02 - I have to add it’s the real truth. I have to really insist to make it clear my story doesn’t just concern us.

11:12 - It is part of reality. Even actual reality is complicated.

11:18 - Language has trouble identifying with reality.

11:21 - When I use a metaphor, I want to say it’s true, that guy is a total cow.

11:28 - He can’t be a cow. So you see the connexion ? We’re permanently trying to construct something with the sole purpose of sharing.

11:42 - When with others language gives common ground for sharing an experience that is essentially personal.

11:53 - Suddenly it becomes inter-subjective. The act of sharing it helps us understand we’re both human beings that we both experience sensations of colour, pain, sadness, joy, pleasure… which we can’t communicate in other ways.

12:15 - We think we’re the only ones to suffer in a certain way Language allows this.

12:21 - It’s even considered its primary function. If this notion of sharing is essential and if the aim of narrative is to put the past into perspective and also allow us to anticipate the future, does this sharing refer simply to a past event or a society’s or community’s common future ? Do you think this is the aim of sharing ? This would need to be expanded on.

12:52 - Firstly, what we can say the narrative as such, storytelling, roughly the unfolding of time ahead of us, that is what language does brilliantly. It’s very difficult to accomplish this without language.

13:12 - Long before cinema, which is recent in the history of mankind.

13:16 - The only way of communicating time passing was through language.

13:22 - There was no other way. Time is frozen in paintings.

13:28 - Comic strips have tried, starting with the Bayeux tapestry which tried to depict time using a series of still frames.

13:40 - It’s not great. Whereas language is immediate.

13:46 - As soon as we start to narrate, we evoke time passing.

13:51 - The essence of a storytelling lies in the passing of time, the actors etc.

13:56 - What we could be asking is, I think Marc is best qualified to answer this, why do we always need…

14:05 - I agree that historically there were periods, be it the movies or the novel or different forms of art which tried to detatch themselves from that, but fundamentally I’m not sure it’s changed anything for the populations.

14:21 - We always need to tell stories. We need to tell our own story…

14:26 - One of my colleagues, Jean-Louis Dessalles, who like me has worked on the origins of language was researching the utility of language, what actually goes on in a conversation.

14:38 - He found that the most important feature in a conversation was to reveal something unexpected.

14:52 - He took a microphone and went to restaurants, where a group of six were having a meal and conversing.

15:00 - He took note of the time they took to say what they had to say and what they said.

15:06 - He was astonished by what he heard, each time someone spoke it was to say something he considered to be of interest.

15:13 - And what he believes is interesting is the element of surprise.

15:16 - If he says, that’s funny the table is covered with white paper, the group will look at him bizarrely wondering what on earth he’s on about.

15:29 - We don’t share such banalities. But if you say when I went out this morning there was a dreadful car accident, three cars had crashed.

15:43 - And I actually saw it. It’s interesting information.

15:48 - It’s unexpected, a rare event, the probability of it happening is very low.

15:53 - He developed his theory on the origin of language from those observations.

15:57 - We began talking to relate unexpected events, to share real information with others and in sharing this information we gain in social status because we were able to provide information that others didn’t have. I thought hard about this.

16:18 - I didn’t agree with him for a reason of linguistics.

16:23 - I reflected on this and concluded, of course, it’s logical, he goes to restaurants and sees groups of people.

16:29 - But do we always talk in groups ? Generally it’s with two or three people.

16:35 - What do two or three people discuss ? What happens when friends meet ? They don’t relate surprising events.

16:40 - They talk about their lives. A woman might tell her friend yet again what her partner did again and she’s sick of it and why does he do it ? And she did this and that…

16:54 - We talk about what happens in our lives which aren’t at all new for the listener, but they’re fascinating because during these accounts what’s playing out is the way we interract with the world, our social behaviour, as an individual because we are alone otherwise.

17:15 - Alone to make all the decisions. Who do I vote for ? Do I stay with this guy ? We have to deal with these questions on our own.

17:27 - By telling our story or that of a mutual friend or a book we’ve just read.

17:36 - It’s very frequent. People talk about the films they’ve seen, the books they’ve read. Why ? To share our opinions we might have on the conduct of the heros in the story.

17:51 - I think it’s absolutely fundamental in human society for building coherent social behaviour.

18:00 - Not necessarily good or bad but coherent. So that a given time we’re all functionning together.

18:10 - Marc, going back to our main question. We haven’t actually moved away.

18:18 - Do we need fictional narrative ? And why do we need it ? A vast question.

18:31 - Yes, it’s a vast question. We won’t go back on the notes you gave us.

18:40 - Fictional narrative, as in fiction and not personal experiences, are a comfortable means of experiencing an event which we wouldn’t generally live in real life.

18:56 - It means experiencing something without risk.

19:00 - At the same time within this system of pretence a way of acting “as if… ” Accepting… obviously when we go to the movies we’re going to watch a fiction.

19:13 - We have to listen to… whatever the right word is, for a spectator of a fiction film.

19:20 - We accept it’s fiction when we go in. The movie theatre is part of that.

19:26 - It’s culturally established. This cultural set up prepares you for fiction.

19:33 - I’m going to have an experience. I will experience emotions which I can’t, which I won’t experience for real.

19:43 - It’s a case of I can’t so I don’t want to…

19:46 - It depends on the kind of film. For a horror film it could be I don’t want to.

19:53 - Rather than I can’t. Or a vampire film.

19:55 - Which could be both. Even if it’s confusing.

19:59 - We aim to have those experiences, not vicariously, but genuinely experience the emotions without putting oneself in physical danger.

20:11 - That’s the idea. which is in line with what Bernard was saying.

20:16 - Fictional narrative’s purpose is to strenghten the notion of community by highlighting the forbidden.

20:25 - For example. So we can experience the off-limits without breaking the rules.

20:36 - Which is the main purpose of of scenarios with bad guys.

20:41 - Also in video games, we can do whatever we like.

20:44 - So there’s the fictional experience with a return to normal life afterwards.

20:51 - Even if the bad guy wasn’t appropriately punished at the end.

20:54 - The fiction comes to an end. We differentiate between the fiction and the social norm.

21:01 - It’s roughly the idea. There’s that story about Johan Braekman a Flemsih philosopher who hopefully will soon be among us, qui defines a fiction narrative as a flight simulator.

21:17 - The equivalent of a flight simulator to prepare for real life.

21:21 - Essential, by definition. Stories for kids. Psychiatry emphasises the importance of storytelling as a preparation for life experiences.

21:34 - But he believes it’s globally more for adults.

21:39 - The fact we need to prepare for life experiences in order to determine our position when the situation has been prepared we can therefore anticipate.

21:52 - Narrative is never in a crisis. We’re forever creating narrative from events particularly in cinema.

22:01 - Cinema relies on the “out of shot”. When watching a film we accept to be shown scenes, the frames with all that’s going on out of shot, moments that happened before or after which aren’t shown on screen.

22:15 - What we do in the movies, especially if the film is good, and we’re not spoon-fed, is to put together the chain of events, and build a story from fragments.

22:26 - Whether narrative is in a crisis or not there’s no…

22:30 - The way we interpret images is through making connections. We create stories by associating images.

22:36 - How they’re told is not important. You mean there’s always a story ? Permanently reshuffling events we build narrative.

22:45 - The way we create continuity… Interpret ? Do you mean interpret ? Yes.

22:51 - The way we approach things is by putting them into narrative form enabling us to go from point A to point B It’s how we explain the world.

23:00 - For me it’s all about storytelling, about the storytelling function.

23:06 - Story helps us work out how to go from A to B.

23:09 - It’s not so much… Propp’s idea was…

23:15 - In fact Propp was used both he and the structuralists ended up became a writing manual.

23:22 - Propp didn’t write a set of rules it was his observation of a corpus from which identified repetitions which are typical of Russian fairy tales.

23:33 - Let’s not be mistaken about the underlying principle of structuralism.

23:38 - Structuralism reflected on what it stood for.

23:41 - Structuralism, for Levy Strauss, began with a humanistic approach intending to prove there was no hierarchal difference between among different cultures.

23:53 - In fact the non-variables were a means of proving that all cultures were equivalent.

24:00 - All rhe main problems ranked the same, therefore it was a structural problem.

24:05 - But it was in the originality of the treatment.

24:08 - When we tell stories to small children when they’re very small the first questions that pop up are about time.

24:15 - When we begin a story they ask “and then what ?” And then what, and then what, and then what…

24:20 - Many children’s stories rely on consecutive events There’s not much intrigue It’s what we call the “promenade story” A little pig went out he meets a rabbit on the way then a deer and goes home.

24:34 - There’s no drama he hasn’t lost his parents.

24:39 - The second question which in theory for developmental psychologists is ranked second, is why.

24:47 - We identify these two story elements. What Paul Ricoeur says on storytelling, is to set… . Paul Ricoeur explores the inner narrative.

24:54 - He places an experience on a time scale and also on a scale of logics.

25:02 - Chronological. When they’re both present, the events follow one after the other because one happens before the other.

25:11 - But our tendency is to make them interact with some form of causality.

25:18 - This happens because that happened. When you mentioned reconstructing a story…

25:23 - Obviously we can’t tell the viewer everything.

25:26 - The precept of cinema lies in its relationship with time.

25:31 - I have 90 minutes to tell a life story.

25:36 - Fifty years, thirty years, ten years. Bearing in mind the idea…

25:40 - This is what series do. They’re on a time scale of 1.

25:44 - What happens in one and a half hours is told in one and a half hours.

25:47 - It’s difficult in terms of the sequence-shot.

25:51 - In a story there are inevitably these ellipses.

25:54 - They rely on the ability to piece together.

25:57 - to produce causality where there is none, to get rid of unnecessary scenes because nothing’s happening.

26:06 - The character opens a door, in the next scene he’s already inside.

26:12 - We leave out the bit when he walks. It was a problem for literature.

26:16 - In English literature the novel Tristram Shandy the character ponders the fact that if he tells his life story he won’t be able to to give all the details because if he writes every detail he’ll spend his life writing so he can’t tell everything or he’ll end up writing that he’s writing.

26:34 - So there’s the use of time amongst the stylistic devices.

26:38 - They’re in all the manuals in the works of ????? in literature.

26:43 - The ellipse, the résumé, the expansion of time, stretching the real time duration.

26:51 - All those stylistic devices. Ricoeur’s main concept the reorganization of the past, in a continuity of time and a causality continuity.

27:03 - Psychoanalysis used this alot. Even Lacan who was anti-narrative, stated in his seminary 17, that Freud’s theory was narrative.

27:14 - For him it’s a case of words. He says essentially what we study is the way people give meaning to experiences by creating narrative.

27:25 - There was a period in psychoanalysis where the trauma theory was, what didn’t make sense was what was unidentifiable and people were unable to relate.

27:35 - They couldn’t put it into story form to give it meaning.

27:40 - It’s what Lacan called an “unfortunate encounter” a perfect example of an unexpected event.

27:46 - We’ve sadly had recent examples of this. The terrorist attacks is a perfect example of this.

27:53 - France 2 showed a documentary made just after the attacks in November, a documentary made 10 days afterwards with eyewitnesses.

28:05 - They needed to relate their experience to try…

28:10 - It’s the first account after a traumatic experience…

28:15 - They cope by trying to describe the event.

28:18 - But at some point they block. There’s part of it they can’t describe.

28:22 - They say they don’t remember… Certain details have been repressed. It’s a close brush with death.

28:29 - That’s a primary function of narrative. , In response to the question, what is the purpose of narrative ? It helps us come to terms.

28:40 - In a way, yes. It’s interesting to look into different cultures to see how they deal with their pasts.

28:47 - The national memory, national fiction. It’s absolutely fascinating.

28:52 - I’ve studied in depth the way Spanish culture dealt with the Spanish Civil War won by a faction.

29:03 - We’ve never abandoned Franco’s fascist legacy.

29:09 - And all that entails when it re-emerges.

29:13 - The way it’s treated but without really treating it…

29:19 - achieving a consensus-based national fiction.

29:24 - That’s what counts. Consensus is possible by sweeping everything under the carpet.

29:30 - The French are pretty good at that. Or a misrepresentation of the past.

29:39 - The skeleton in the closet. In Fench national fiction it was collaboration.

29:43 - It wasn’t until the 80s, the Vichy régime… .

29:46 - Then there was the Algerian war. Which is still very much in the closet.

29:52 - Often the narrative arts deal also with these topics.

29:59 - So its prime function is to process. Deal with trauma.

30:04 - Yes, that’s for the psychoanalysists. For both individuals and groups.

30:10 - And another use ? Going back to what you said, there’s quite a big difference between narrative as used by individuals and narrative arts.

30:21 - Quite a big difference. It’s easy to mistake collective narrative for those part of the narrative arts’ repertoire.

30:37 - Whereas there are differences. The real question is to what extent do narrative arts serve the community’s need for storytelling or is their role to question the need for narrative to bring about change, to provoke.

30:55 - Yes. When the artists… Cinema appeared in this era, when artists were free, no longer commissioned.

31:04 - The 19th century. Certain questionned the idea that conventional narrative suited everybody.

31:12 - We talk about national fiction, national legends yet it’s a narrative that doesn’t actually exist.

31:18 - As opposed to ancient mythology with their set narrative form.

31:23 - Ovid’s Metamorphosis is considered paramount in Greek mythology.

31:27 - He wrote a text. Concerning a national legend they’re not really written and historians and anthropologists try to reconstruct them.

31:37 - They belong to different domains. There are the war memorials, and official speeches at memorial services, and roughly what’s in the history books.

31:50 - That’s what national fiction entails. What’s easier to grasp is what’s included in that.

31:57 - It’s that thing of the skeleton in the closet.

32:00 - Why isn’t that included in national fiction ? There have been films on subjects which deal with skeletons in the closet.

32:09 - The liberation of France by indigenous troops in the film “Indigène”.

32:18 - We decide to film what wasn’t filmed. Why wasn’t it filmed, why wasn’t it made into a movie ? Because it’s actually on the military records.

32:30 - Those who went to see the rushes, saw the indigenous soldiers but in the final cut they’re no longer there. Someone made a striking remark on the bible An Israeli and an American archeologist were doing research on the bible.

32:52 - Does that ring any bells ? At the time the bible was written about the 4th century before Christ, in all neighbouring societies there were the same kind of novels.

33:08 - There was a patriarch, a god, the tribe lived under that God’s influence, because he was the only one…

33:19 - The patriarch… There were tales of their exploits just like in the bible.

33:25 - Except the bible differentiated hugely compared to all the other stories, All the other stories were unilateral.

33:32 - The patriarch was always the best his behaviour was flawless.

33:38 - God was always kind to his people and the people won every battle.

33:45 - The bible was the exact opposite. The patriarchs always made huge misjudgments, broke all the rules…

33:56 - From time to time God was mean to his people.

33:59 - There are victories and failures. They explained that historically the bible was written to bring the tribes together which were fundamentally opposed who were forever at war.

34:16 - They took a bit of one’s story then a bit of the other’s.

34:19 - Anything negative came from the other side, if referring to King David or to Soloman, They had two opposing approaches They managed to bring them together in the same story and the result provided diversity.

34:40 - Which story survived over time ? The bible.

34:44 - Because this story provided levels of complexity to our actions in life, to storytelling.

34:54 - That’s very interesting. It’s narratively way more interesting.

34:57 - It’s an art form which doesn’t compare to other narratives such as Soviet narratives…

35:08 - We find the same elements. The content is so similar we see it straight away.

35:17 - Whereas in the bible, it’s a complex narrative.

35:20 - Which is why the story became a huge success. .