In Julio Cortazar's short story "Blow -Up" the main character begins his story by explaining his reason for telling the story. He says that people like to retell events that happen in their own lives that were out of the ordinary. He later says that people get enjoyment out of telling stories. An example he gives is that when someone hears a joke in one room, they quickly look for another person to tell.
The reasons the narrator lists for his telling stories in the beginning seem to portray the character as detached. However, the end of the story seems to be much more emotional. Do you think that the narrators motives are important in trying to decode what the story actually is about? Do you think that the narrator has any other motives for telling the story? Does he give us any cues in the way the story is told that suggest his motives?
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In the Antonioni film, a photographer, Thomas (David Hemmings), blows up a photograph and discovers a hidden gunman in the bushes. Thomas initially believes his photograph saved an old man from being murdered but discovers later that the murder happened anyway. In the Cortázar short story, a photographer thinks he has captured the bittersweet seduction of an adolescent by an older woman only to discover to his horror that she is “pimping” him for a dirty old man waiting in a nearby automobile. In a further transformation, the photographer is drawn into the slow motion of the photo montage – now this is complicated becomes his camera, becomes the seduced boy and yet remains himself. It is while he is in this tripartite state that he is murdered by the old man and lies dead in the photograph staring at the sky as camera, boy and photographer are all rolled into one. Please discuss how both film and short story are meditations on æsthetics and morality. Please discuss how the idea of abandonment is central to the film as in structuring of people, objects, and ideas.
ReplyDeleteThe narrators of both the short story and film titled "Blow-up" seem somewhat skitzo. To a certain extent it seems to me that the narrators like to build their characteristics by acting unsual. For instance, the main character of the movie acts indifferent towards mostly everyone yet, he has playful side when he is skipping and jumping in the park. The narrator in the short story is also very "back and forth" within his own mind; he tries to tell the reader his story but it takes him quite a while to actually finish it because he is constantly reffering to his own analytical opinions. The movites of both narrators cues us to believe they are trying to create an abstract atmosphere where the viewer and/or reader have to figure out the puzzle by cluing all the scattered pieces together. This story did not depict sequence of events as many do; it was purposely mastered in such a way that the reader will have to take each written line into a critical context. The same sort of work must be done for the film; each scene has certain aspects where the mind is unable to follow the storyline, however, the human thought process can work twice as hard to piece it together. The director and author wrote their works based on intriguing an abstract thought process within the human mind.
ReplyDeleteIt seems as if the narrator of Cortazar's story goes from being unreliable to being reliable. After we finish the story, we realize his early detachment must have been feigned becuase the story is written retrospectively. The narrator knows when he begins that at the end he will cry and become emotional.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the narrator's role in the impact the story has the reader depends on the readers themselves. If somebody opens up a book expecting it to have a specific tone, it will have a major impact on their interpretation, regardless of any main point the narrator is trying to get across. Narration is important in the sense that it offers a guideline to the reader and allows them to follow a re-telling of an event but it doesn't force any perspective on the personal interpretation of the reader.
ReplyDeleteI think the narrator's motives are very important in trying to understand the story. We see that he takes a photo of an adolencent boy, and a older woman. He first thought at first that it was a young boy and his mother at a park. But when he blows-up the photo, it reveals that it means something much more. The narrator may have a motive for telling the story, but I feel that depends on the reader themself. I feel the narrator changes from the beginning of the story, and at the end. He is telling us why he's writing, and at the end he is a different person and begins to cry over a photo.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the narrator's motives depend on how you read the story. The reader takes different parts of a story out that they like, and makes their own inferences to what the narrator is saying. The narrator is using different identities to portray himself, which can lead to confusion for the reader. It seems as if he uses this identity crisis as a motive to make the reader feel bad for him at the end of the story. The narrator looks at things from a different perspective while taking the photo, which confuses the reader. The reader has to figure out what the picture is about, and his motive for this was get us thinking about the picture from different perspectives.
ReplyDeleteI think the narrator's crying at the end of his story is very interesting. He is mourning the fact that while the photo allows him to relive his experience, it does not allow him to return to it to change anything. The photo allowed him to better understand the situation with the boy, the woman and the old man, but this success is bittersweet because the moment is gone and his newfound information is useless. This is the detachment he describes which aggravates his emotional attachment. I think he mentions the detachment to help alleviate his guilt. He can't help but feel like he played a part in the situation as an observer, but at the same time he feels detached because he can't do anything now. He is permanently attached because he once had the opportunity.
ReplyDeleteI think that as in any story the narrators motives are very important to figure out the point in which he is trying to get across. Many storylines have a sequence of chronological events that allow us to depict the main ide of a piece. While watching "Blow Up" it was difficult to decode the chronology of events because of the silence carried throughout. The movie focused on the use of visual imagery. The photographer only discovers the reveal of a possible murder case when he looks deeper within a photograph. I think the narrator does have other reasons for creating the story this way because people do not look at things deeper for what they could be. Many people are content with just having a glance.
ReplyDeleteI think the author had no other intentions for telling this story other than that he wanted to tell people his thoughts about the picture. We have no real way of knowing what actually happened in that picture, and so the author is going to tell us a "story" about it. His story may be one hundred percent true, or his story may be a complete fabrication. I do think that all the side notes and tangents that the author makes when telling his story are cues to us that he has a wandering mind. With all of these extra distractons, we as readers may choose to believe that his mind cannot follow a steady track and that it may be easy for him to build up these fictional stories about the pictures he takes.
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