JOUR240
Contemporary Cultural Studies
Mid-Term Presentation
Group Essay
24th November 2004
GROUP 8
Sylvia Lai Suet Yi / 035122Joshua But Chor Fai / 035134
Queenie Leung Kwan Ni / 035135
Korie Sit Wai Suen / 035143
Christina Chau Ting Wai / 035145
Nicole Lau Hang Yuk / 035163
Introduction
<The Man Who Planted Trees> (L’Homme qui Plantait des arbre) is a story written by a French writer Jean Giono in 1954. The story was about a shepherd named Elzeard Bouffier living alone in a sparse area in France. He planted trees on the land everyday and thus finally led to the re-establishment of the forest on the land.
In 1987, Frederic Back had produced an animation which its content is based on the written text of Jean Giono. And it had even become the Academy-Award Winner for Best Animated Film in 1987.
It is interesting that though the text and the animation are describing more or less the same story, their technique for expression vary. In this essay, it is to discuss how realism and expressionism being presented in the text and the animation. It will also focus on the role of the authors and the audiences take to the context.
In order to have more efficient use of example, the essay will focus on a selected section; it is from “The Company of this man brought me a feeling of peace……” to “…...in thirty years he would have planted so many other trees that these ten thousand would be like a drop of water in the ocean.”This selected section mainly describes how Elzeard Bouffier planted the trees.
Realism and expressionism presented in text and animation
Realism is a genre of art in which there is a detailed presentation of appearances, especially of the familiar details of everyday life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization butis commonly in favor of a close observation of outward appearances.
On the other hand, expressionismrefers to is the artistic work applied by the artist to show thefeelings and emotions. Their approach is to release the creativity of their unconscious minds. For the expressionist, it is not important to show objective objects with details but emphasized on the subjective expression of the artist's inner experiences.
Indeed, it is quite impossible for a lengthy artwork, such as the story of Giono or the animation of Back, to be totally realist or expressionist. They must have a mixed use of realist and expressionist elements. However, we may still try to compare the use of these elements in the two artworks to find some hints.
Reading through the text of Giono, it is not difficult to find out realist elements. For instance, in the part describing how he planted the trees:
“Having arrived at the place he had been heading for, he being to pound his iron rod into the ground. This made a hole in which he placed an acorn, whereupon he covered over the hole again.”
Jean Giono has been putting emphasis on the details of how Elzeard Bouffier did to plant the trees. Even the small movements such as to “cover over the hole again” are also described.Thus, it brings a real and accurate impressionto the readers. And the readers are easy to follow and imagine the flow of the story. It is just like describing the real thing in the real life.
Meanwhile, in the animation ofFrederick Back, itwas obvious that it had tried to follow the story of the text even for the small details. In the above example, Back had drawn the scenario of how Elzeard Bouffier planted the trees step by step and it seemed to give a visualization of how it really happened.
Nevertheless, Jean Giono seemed not aiming at writing a realist story. In the text, it is rather obvious to see the writer’s mind and emotion. Giono had shown his love to the natural environment and the trees and we can easily feel that he is full of praise to Elzeard Bouffier. Moreover, the Christianity concepts are applied in the text and the quotations like “if God gave him life” had shown his respects to religion. All these are idealization of certain values and judgments originated by Jean Giono. We must say Jean Giono had poured his values and emotions to the text which make it an expressionist piece of work.
For the animation, fundamental limitations are set as the story was originated from the text. Thus, Frederic Back must generally follow the flow of the story which limited his expressionist elements. However, it is interesting to find how he tried to breakthrough the limitations and show his idealization and emotions through the drawings. For example, in the animation to show “For three years now he had been planting trees in this solitary way”, Elzeard Bouffier was being drawn at the middle of the screen, planting trees alone with free, sparse space around, together with the sound of the wind. It seemed Back was trying to show the solitary emotion by visual and audio elements.Apart from that, he impressionist drawing style had also taken part to express the more abstract feelings.
Indeed, the text of Giono had a lot more spaces to apply the realist as well as the expressionist elements. He had really made detailed descriptions to certain actions by Elezeard Bouffier. However, we suggest that his major purpose of writing is to express his feeling to the love of trees as well as his praise to the character of Elezeard Bouffier. Meanwhile, the animation had a bigger limitation and it is more like a realist artwork compared to Giono’s original text.
The role of author and audiences in text and animation
The existence of a text implies the existence of two roles – the authors and the audiences. In fact, they have contributed to the text in different aspects and their role will also vary when the text change from literal language to audio-visual language.
Author refers to authority. Author partly authorizes the content of the text. He creates the text as well as its value. Someone once said, once the product is being accomplished, the role of author is died. Text is not only kinds of product, it also interpret the thinking process within or according to the social authority. Text makes up language. Author would use abstraction in order to allow audience to think in categories, and give them the ability to generalize.
Animation author progress the ideas into visual and audio. He is responsible to settle and manage the optics, photography, electronics and discoveries in the psychology of the perception of motion.Sometimes, author transforms text into visual or audio and sometimes vice versa. Author can transform and produce more complex idea through audio or visual and it would make a deeper impression.
Restrictions to authors in text
In making text, there are several restrictions. Text is static and limited, but reality is dynamic and virtually unlimited. Some continuous process such as motion is hardly to convey in words, we usually need to contain a picture to get the message across. Besides text is abstract, this leads to more indirect correspondence. Hidden assumption is built into language, which requires more explanation and clear definition of the text generated.
Restrictions to authors in animation
With limited technique and resources, the author is hard to make an animation that can be understood or satisfied by the audience. There are also some conflicting force which restrict the author in creating animation, such as the desire of efficiency, a view of what the audience wants, and an individual’s desire to shape the animation. It somehow requires large, lively and significant medium.
Relationship between text and animation to author
Basically, if the audience is able to read text and understand animation, the degree of freedom between text and animation is insignificance. Nevertheless, text is relatively more downright, either understand or do not understand. However, for animation, audience may suck in the stage between understand and do not understand. Therefore, in expressing higher abstract level, animation may perform the job better, whereas, in expressing more factual things, text would be the better choice.
To readers or audiences, “Text”‘s degree of freedom is far more than “audio visual”.
The meaning of “Text” is produced by the interactive fiction of “Text” and “reader”. They are changing from generation to generation. “Text” is changing and exceeding its produced period. Its interpretation was renewal during different era; this is how its meanings were renewal unceasingly also. There’s linkage between writing and reading, reading is a kind of creativity. Every text’s structure, meaning and interpretation are variables. They are pending development, renewal and proceed again. It obtains infinite continuously.
“Reader’s intention” and “Reader’s experience” also bring their beforehand stand point and motive. These beforehand stand point and motive build up the product that made by reader’s imagine. Every reading behaviors is a type of writing, every reading brings out specific critical, interpretation,historical and political, and therefore bring a new product out.
The perfunctory and ambiguity of script, there’s existential mode and rhetoric mode for the interpretation of readers. Existential mode is the reader’s projectile of environment though the process of reading. The characteristic of environment around readers, its influence the imagination of creative the world of “text”. The rhetoric mode, it can show reader’s psychology and emotional characteristic though the central of script. Moreover, it can show the literature and the level of education, though different level of interpretation of script, the imagine of text‘s background and the appearance of characters. For example, there are thousands appearance of Elzeard Bouffier that can be imagine by several readers.
However, when the audio visual was produced, the imagination spaces for readers are limited. Audiences understand all script by the explanation of audio visual. Although the audio visual‘s interpretation by audience also changing by generation. However, it is limited comparing by Text. “Audience”‘s intention and experience gives less interpretations to the film. Needless to say the script of perfunctory and ambiguity. The film gives one version to all audiences, there’s not much imagination then, but only the degree of understanding to the film.
Conclusion
Comparing with the text and the animation, we will suggest that the text is more expressive. The text author can produce the text idealization, so it will be less like a realist. That is what we can see as Giono freely design the content to express his feeling. However, the animation by Back has to follow Giono’s original text. Although Back also tried to show his feeling and emotion in the animation, there are still fundamentallimitations.
Meanwhile, for the freedom of “text” and “animation” to readers and audience,readers have a higher degree of freedom in reading “text” because of the reasons that we have mentioned above. As compare to “text” and “animation”, readers or audiences have more room for imagination and they may get more inspiration in reading “text”.
And the freedom of “text” and “animation” to author is different.The degree of freedom between “text” and “animation” is insignificance because in both case, we have different roles and we face different problems. Both of them have different degree of restriction and have benefit in different areas. Therefore, the degree of freedom for author of “text” and “animation” is insignificant.
Apart from frequent grammatical mistakes, the essay looks rather readable. The contents are rich, the arguments sound. Remember the term ‘text’ carries a specific meaning in communications. Thus, both literature and audio-visuals can formulate media texts. Nevertheless, I have to congratulate your group for writing this essay. I believe it has taken up much of your time and efforts. But it must be rewarding, right?
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