Sunday, September 7, 2008

An Example of Temporal Linearization

I scoured my movie collection looking for an excellent, or should I say obvious, example of temporal linearization in cinema. Trust me; this is harder than I thought it would be. However, I think I have come up with a great example. My example is from Reservoir Dogs; more specifically the section of the movie concerning the story of Mr. Orange.
The temporal linearization starts with a black cut screen with white bold text stating ‘Mr. Orange.’ The murmur of conversations allows us to temporalize the black screen.
The next transition, from a restaurant at night to a rooftop during daytime, is bridged with a continuous conversation. Mr. Orange’s undercover trainer says “Use the commode story” at the restaurant with Mr. Orange responding with “What’s the commode story” on the rooftop. We can temporalize these events as being linearly progressive because of the continued conversation regardless of the change in scenery. The audience is allowed to assume that the conversation continues the next morning because of the dialogue.
A similar transition occurs when Mr. Orange is reciting the commode story out loud. At first, it starts in his apartment where he is speaking to himself to memorize the story. The scene then changes over to Mr. Orange continuing the story but this time he is outside and talking to his undercover trainer. Finally, it transitions to a bar scene where he is talking to the antagonists. The switch scene would seem less coherent if it wasn’t for the continuing dialogue despite each transition.
In fact, because the dialogue continues, the audience is allowed, again, to see the scenes as linearly progressive. This assumption is reinforced with a change in the tone of Mr. Orange’s voice. With the first scene, Mr. Orange stumbles with the beginning of the story and has to refer to a script he was given to make sure the story did not get jumbled. The next scene, Mr. Orange continues the story but this time he speaks freely and begins adding or modifying the story. Finally, we see him at the bar finishing the story. By seeing the mastering of this story, we can see the creation of a product. In this case, the product is the story. We understand the creation of any product as requiring time and, more than that, as a process with beginning, middle, and end. This greatly reinforces the linearization created by the audio of the dialogue.

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