Character, Actor, StarCh. 3 Building Narrative

Character, Actor, Star

• Centrality of characters to TV narratives and structures

• Continuing existence of characters beyond the text are imagined through ‘stars’ and ‘star texts,’ as actors appear in other media texts.

• Performance of Actors & Acting Strategies

Building Characters• Easy to mistake TV characters for real people with real lives

beyond TV.

• Programs work to hide or make invisible the construction that goes into creating characters.

• How are characters manufactured, and how to we understand meanings associated with particular characters?

• Character Signs: (Richard Dyer) all those aspects of a character that communicate his/her nature and personality to the viewer. We interpret these signs according to 1) Our understanding of the world; 2) The context/program/genre in which the character appears; and 3) The viewing situation.

• Codes of Character Construction: Conventions of costuming and props often seem most ‘invisible’ to ordinary viewers, but these conventions are historically & culturally defined, and our connotations for various signs change over time (p. 58).

A Typology of Character Signs

• Viewer Foreknowledge

• Character Name

• Appearance

• Objective Correlative

• Dialogue

• Lighting and Videography or Cinematography

• Action

Viewer Foreknowledge & Character Names

• Trailers and Advertisements

• Parent Programs generate Narrative Image

• Credit sequences rehearse character relationships.

• Names can be used to indicate relationships between characters.

• Names can also be used to invite connotations (with ethnic/religious stereotypes, character traits, etc.).

Appearance• 1) Face (and Hairstyle); 2) Body (build & posture); 3)

Costuming.

• Close-up and Facial Expressions (indeterminate meanings indicating emotion).

• Characteristics become distinct as they differ from the prescribed ‘norm.’ These variations create meaning and can even become cultural symbols (hairstyles).

• Actor physiques and gestures.

• Costumes:

• Code of dress predominant in a specific culture at a specific time.

• Code of dress specific to television and television genres.

Objects, Dialogue, Lighting/Videography & Action

• Objective Correlative: an object or animal that is associated with a character and conveys something about him/her. These may include the character’s environment or props.

• Dialogue: infer information about characters as it is revealed through conversations.

• Lighting: lighting from below makes actors look sinister, lighting from behind creates a mysterious silhouette. Lighting creates connotations for characters.

• Camera Lenses: influence character development through technical manipulation, which can distort or show characters in many different ways.

• Action: Characters understood through their actions within narrative logic.

Building Performances

• Typology of Performance Signs:

• Vocal

• Facial

• Gestural

• Corporeal

• These signs construct characters’ emotions.

Vocal Performance

• Volume: Loud/Soft (connotative meanings may vary).

• Pitch: The highness/lowness of a note. Interpretations of pitch tend toward gender-oriented meanings.

• Timbre: The quality of the vocal tone.

• Rhythm of Speech

Facial, Gestural and Corporeal Performance

• Facial Performance: how actors use facial expressions to construct characters.

• Codes of gesture carry connotative meanings that vary over time and from culture to culture.

• Corporeal performance: how the entire body is utilized to convey a character’s personality.

Strategies of Performance

• Naturalistic:

• Repertory

• Method

• Non-Naturalistic

• Vaudeville Performance

• Brechtian Performance

Repertory Performance

• Developed within theater troops that would perform a series of plays with the same group of actors.

• Actors constantly assume new roles by selecting gestures and dialects to construct a performance.

• Work of the actor is to study human movement and speech, borrowing gestures and dialects from life in constructing characters. Repertory actors are dispassionate in this assemblage of actions and accents. They signify through movements and gestures (not their own emotional investment).

• Body language norms shift over time and between cultures.

Method Performance• Method acting encourages the actor to ‘become’ the character,

fusing his/her personality with the role.

• Once the actor fully embodies the role, the Method approach assumes that the gestures and dialect will grow organically out of this process.

• Emotional Memory: actors draw upon memories from previous emotions to match the emotions of the character.

• Sense Memory: remembering the physical sensations of a particular emotional event to generate emotional performance.

• Improvisation: method of entering the ‘mind’ of a character.

• Constantine Stanislavski; Lee Strasberg; James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, Marlon Brando.

• It is impossible to discern the acting technique used from watching a performance.

• Relationship to Freudian Psychological theories, preference for melancholy emotions, and often generated quirky, distinctive performances.

The Non-Naturalists

• “Faking It”

• Actors separate themselves from the roles they play and point to the mechanics of their performances.

• Actors using non-naturalistic styles don’t become characters, they just present them to us, as though quoting the character.

Vaudeville Performance

• Built around song-and-dance numbers, comedy routines, tableaux, and short dramatic skits.

• Vaudeville does not demand that we forget the presence of the actor within the guise of the character. Frequently remind viewers that characters are not real people.

• Direct Address acknowledges and involves the audience, breaking “4th wall” continuity.

• Vaudeville influenced TV Variety Shows until the 1970s, and continue to influence the styles of sketch comedy and late-night talk shows.

Brechtian Performance• What ought acting to be like?

“Witty. Ceremonious. Ritual. Spectator and actor ought not to approach one another but to move apart. Each ought to move away from himself. Otherwise the element of terror necessary to all recognition is lacking” -Bertold Brecht

• Viewers should not identify with the characters, but achieve distanciation.

• Viewers do not become immersed in the narrative unknowingly, but instead are confronted by the construction of the performance and thus alienated from the characters.

• As a Marxist theorist, Brecht believed that theater should point out social ills and prompt spectators to take action, advocating revolutionary theater.

The Star System

• Star Image

• Texts & Intertextuality

• Promotion

• Publicity

• Television Programs

• Criticism

Star Image: Texts and Intertextuality

• Star Image: actors/personalities whose image circulates through culture in a variety of media.

• Star as Text: We must recognize the illusion of intimacy and read stars through their media appearances as texts to be interpreted.

• Our knowledge of stars comes from an assemblage of media texts, lending polysemy to any star’s image.

• Stars are featured intertextual, whereas actors do not develop a presence beyond their programs.

• A star’s intertextual presence is developed through promotion, publicity, television programs (and films), and criticism of programs.

Promotion

• Generated by stars and their representatives, including advertisements, appearances on talk shows, and other industry-controlled media outlets.

• Most promotional texts place stars in the context of their TV characters.

• Stars and their images are more central to prime-time than to daytime TV.

Publicity

• Often indistinguishably intertwined with promotion.

• Information circulating about a star that is beyond his/her control (news reports about scandals, unofficial biographies, unauthorized interviews).

• Promotion often poses as Publicity.

• Tension between star’s official images and divergent representations.

Television Programs

• Typecasting: a star’s image perfectly fits his/her character (also called a “perfect fit”)

• Problematic Fit: when an actor is cast in a particular role against his/her typical type.

• Most programs make selective use of a star’s polysemy.

Criticism• Fans & Bloggers

• Official Critics

• Social Media

• These sources of material on stars often write from the viewer’s perspective and appear immediately after a pilot airs.

• Meaning and impact of discourses is uncertain.

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