10.13125/2039-6597/4174
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2039-6597
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Massimo Fusillo
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Between
360° videos.
Focalization as Transmedial Category
Text.Serial.Journal
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Essay
2020-11-30
2020-06-30
2020-11-30
2020-12-07
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Massimo Fusillo
2020/11/30
10.13125/2039-6597/4174
46
University of L'Aquila
2039-6597
20
360° videos.
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57
urn:nbn:it:unica-26943
Focalization as Transmedial Category
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/4174/4540
10
                   Focalization as
                Transmedial Category

                            Massimo Fusillo



Abstract
     In the last decades formalistic and structuralist narratology has
been intensively recovered and reinterpreted in a cognitive
perspective, and with a new focus on transmedial dissemination. The
goal is, as Marie-Laure Ryan and Jean-Nöel Thon state, a media-
conscious narratology. In particular focalization appears to be a crucial
category to define the various narrative techniques through different
media.
     The paper will deal first with the theoretical debate on
focalization, analyzing the shift from Genette’s canonical triadic
pattern to the more fluid scale proposed by cognitive narratology (for
example by Manfred Jahn), and the coexistence between different
meanings and applications (basically: perceptual, emotional,
informational). The second part will be devoted to some significant
examples: Alfonso Cuaron’s recent movie Roma, as a vivid example of
central focus in cinema; focalization in videogames; and the 360°
multifocalization practiced by new media, which radically change the
notion of point of view itself.

Keywords
    Transmediality, Narratology, Focalization, Literature, Cinema,
Videogames,                      360°                       videos.
Between, vol. X, n. 20 (Novembre/November 2020)
ISSN 2039-6597
DOI: 10.13125/2039-6597/4174
Massimo Fusillo, Focalization as Transmedial Category




 Focalization as Transmedial Category

                                 Massimo Fusillo


              Theories and Problems of Focalization
     Narratology is certainly the scientific field which best survived
poststructuralist and cultural turns, especially as it became an
important part of the cognitive approach, increasingly detached from a
purely literary perspective, and, consequently, transmedial and
multidisciplinary. This series of transformations created what David
Herman called post-classic narratology (1999; see also Alber –
Fludernik 2010). Narrativity is now a crucial concept in anthropology,
psychoanalysis, neurosciences, geography, gender studies and several
other fields; at the same time it represents a significant dimension in
multifarious, old and new media. This is the reason why Marie-Laure
Ryan, in her Narrative as Virtual Reality (2001), was able to develop a
phenomenology of narrative experience that encompasses reading,
watching and playing; she was able to propose, in some other essays
(for example 2014), a cognitive narratology based on processual,
analogical and functional approaches, focused respectively on
psychological relations with narrated stories, on narrative presentation
of characters and on the role of narration in the construction or
deconstruction of personal identities.
      Focalization is certainly a key concept in narratology, because
every narrative act exploits a complex relationship between a narrator
and a series of characters, revealing a wide range of possible forms and
clearly influencing the reader’s response. It is also an effective
transmedial concept, since it does have quite different realizations in
various media, especially in literature and cinema (as a matter of fact, it
is a visual concept which gave birth to the category in literary



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criticism). Drawing inspiration from Henry James’ brilliant Prefaces to
the New York edition of his works (a vivid example of a writer’s
laboratory), Gérard Genette conceived the most canonical theory of
focalization in his Figures 3. Discours du récit (1972), now considered a
classic work of narratology in its semiological and structuralist phase.
In particular, Genette’s narratology focuses on rhetorical strategies and
expressive techniques (the récit), and not on the logic structure of the
plot (the histoire), as demonstrated, on the contrary, by the
functionalist, more abstract narratology inspired by Propp’s
Morphology of the Folktale (1929). Moreover, Genette retrieves and
expands on the triadic pattern conceived in the same years by Tzvetan
Todorov (1966: 141-142); this was extremely successful and effective,
owing to the magical and Hegelian lure of the number three. At the
same time, Genette was certainly aware of the risks that a rigid
categorization always implies, and I think that this often self–ironical
consciousness is one of the reasons why his theoretical work is,
nowadays, still quite vital; suffice to think of the skeptical closure of his
magnum opus on intertextuality, Palimpsestes (1982). In the case of
focalization, Genette clearly states that there is a rather fluid and
problematic difference between zero focalization (i.e. a narrative with
an omniscient narrator, symbolized by Todorov’s formula Narrator >
Character, where the narrator knows more than the actual character)
and variable, internal focalization (a narrative with a restricted ‘point
of view’, according to Todorov’s scheme Narrator = Character, where
the narrator expresses only what the given character knows). As a
matter of fact, a purely panoramic view from above barely exists, or is
extremely rare; even the most traditional omniscient narrator (Homer,
Balzac or Manzoni) needs to adopt the perception of a single character
for a given time. The narrator, more or less frequently, shifts its
perspective, bestowing on it the term “variable”.
      This is one of the two subcategories as defined by Genette, the
second one being fixed internal focalization, a quite rare case of a text
entirely told from the perspective of a single character, as happens in
Henry James’ extreme and more programmatic written works (for
example What Maisie Knew), something that is practically impossible in


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Massimo Fusillo, Focalization as Transmedial Category



the world of movies. Robert Montgomery’s The Lady of the Lake (1947) is
a renowned exception, showing how untenable this solution is for
filmic narration. On the other hand, the 2015 Russian-American science
fiction film Hardcore Henry, by Ilya Naishuller, entirely shot from a first
person perspective, works much better, because it stems from an
intermedial contamination with videogames. An effective, partial
example in classic noir is the first half hour of Delmer Daves’ Dark
passage (1947), chiefly shot from Humphrey Bogart’s point of view; we
first see his face only when he has recovered from facial plastic
surgery.
      To sum up, we could say that zero focalization (in the visual,
informational and emotional meaning of the term) tends to be the
result of multiple internal focalizations, of single subjective sequences.
      The other problematic category in Genette’s triadic pattern is
external focalization (Narrator < Character: the narrator says less than
the character knows). A narrative in which the narrative voice pretends
to know little of the story and nothing about the inner life of its
characters, to spy on the action from a limited perspective, is certainly
a fascinating experiment, and may be considered a brilliant example of
the rebound effect of cinema on literature, and of the transmedial
nature of focalization. But to label it as a general category is quite
tenuous and questionable; external focalization usually involves
limited sequences in different focalization systems (the famous carriage
ride in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary), or very specific genres (the hard-
boiled, the nouveau roman), or authors (Ernest Hemingway, Dashiel
Hammett), and rarely entire works (Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon is
maybe the most famous example). In my opinion, it ought to be
considered, rather, as a variation of internal focalization, of the
restricted point of view, based on a deliberate absence of access to the
character’s inner life, thoughts and emotions. This would be a
behavioristic reaction to the psychological and subjective narration of
the late 19th century novel, which was influenced by Flaubert and
theorized by James.




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                 A Morphological Progression
      Among the impressively wide-ranging literature on narratology
and focalization, Manfred Jahn’s contributions discussed and
reformulated Genette’s system in the most convincing way. His point
of departure is the excessive overlapping of different meanings and
criteria in the classification:

       The main problem, perhaps, is that Genette's typology mixes
    too many heterogeneous ingredients. Among the parameters that
    go into it is the number and identity of focal agencies (fixed vs.
    variable focalization, focal character vs. disembodied observer),
    the distance from which something is seen (close or far), the
    knowledge potential of narrators and characters (features of
    characterization involving quantitative and qualitative aspects),
    perceptional limitations (access or non-access to inside views),
    scope (whole texts or individual passages), and combinatorial
    constellations (variable or multiple) (1999: 95).

     Jahn decides to concentrate his critical analysis on the
visual/perceptive aspect and proposes a four-type scale of focalization,
inspired by Ryan’s concept of «story line windows», imaginary screens
produced by an imaginary camera. The quality of this scale comes
from the homogeneity of the types, positioned in a morphological
progression and not in binary opposition. The scale is visualized in a
diagram, in which Focus 1 indicates the point of view, the deictic
center, and Focus 2 the object of focalization; it is summarized by the
author in the following terms:

        I have placed four main categories graphically symbolizing a
    morphological progression. The rightmost type, strict focalization,
    replicates the vector-field shape of figure (1), but in order to
    indicate its more general nature, its "eye" has been removed and
    its focus-1 has been indicated by a "+" representing a point of
    origin. In strict focalization, F2 is perceived from (or by) F1 under
    conditions of precise and restricted spatio-temporal coordinates.


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Massimo Fusillo, Focalization as Transmedial Category



      In ambient focalization, the field of subjectivity is shown as an
      ellipse: like a geometrical ellipse, which has two foci, ambient
      focalization is based on two (or more) F1's, depicting a thing
      summarily, from more than one side, possibly from all sides,
      considerably relaxing the condition of specific time-place
      anchoring, and allowing a mobile, summary, or communal point
      of view. In weak focalization, all F1's, and with them all spatio-
      temporal ties, disappear, leaving only a focused object (F2). Lastly,
      in zero focalization the focused object itself disappears, as possibly
      do the limits of the perceptional field itself (which for this reason
      is shown as a dotted shape) (1999: 97-98).




     Genettian zero focalization thus became almost an exception,
whilst ambient focalization better describes the standard, more
widespread kind of focalization, which frequently dominates an entire
narration, and can also be applied successfully to cinema and other
audio-visual media, thus becoming a true transmedial concept.

                           Subjectivity in Cinema
      This certainly does not mean believing that a story is independent
of the media and the techniques that convey it, as functionalist
narratology (especially Claude Bremond’s radical Logique du récit, 1973)
was inclined to believe, because of its hyper-rationalist and
universalistic attitude. Although we do not share «radical media
relativism» (Ryan 2004: 35), we are certainly aware of the different


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narrative resources of the various media according to their different
potential and features (spatial, temporal, diegetic, interactive and so
on). The goal is to build a media-conscious narratology, which can
handle every act of storytelling, every kind of storyworld. Genette’s
theory of focalization implies a language-based conception of
narrative, which necessarily implies a narrator, a series of characters
and a temporal development. Jahn’s scale, on the contrary, can be
applied to any medium
      Ambient focalization seems to be particularly adept at depicting
the complexity of the cinematic representation of subjectivity. First of
all, point of view (POV) is notably a specific and technical category: a
view from a character’s eye (also called “ocularization”), usually
encountered in the gaze/object/gaze three-shot pattern (very typical of
Hitchcock’s style), which makes identification with the character
explicit; the purest form, the totally restricted view, is rare and rather
problematic. But the adoption of a character’s point of view is much
more complex and varied in cinema, especially because filmic narrative
has impressive mobility, produced by a central visual instance (the
camera-eye, like Wagner’s orchestra, can be considered a narrator only
in a metaphorical way). In his landmark book Point of view in the cinema
(1975), inspired by a vision of narrative as dialectical interaction
between a narrator and a reader, Edward R. Branigan offers an
extremely rich and nuanced typology of cinematic subjectivity.
Subjectivity exists when the six elements which usually produce space
in classic movies ˗ origin, vision, time, frame, object and mind ˗ all refer
to a single character. I shall not go into detail as regards typology,
which produces a matrix of twenty-four combinations (perhaps too
articulated and structuralist a taxonomy). However, I do find it
interesting that Branigan also includes frames from a character’s
standpoint «through metaphor», which produce phenomena such as
reflection, projection and various mental processes (dreams, hopes,
fears, desires, forebodings). His theory of focalization also involves
«attitudes», being both perceptual and emotional at the same time. If
we go back to Jahn’s more visual pattern, we might state that ambient
focalization is certainly the standard situation, privileged by classic


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Massimo Fusillo, Focalization as Transmedial Category



cinema which is narrated «as if from the point of view of an observer
capable of moving about the room» (Branigan 1975: 24). Because of the
rapid mobility of the cinematic narrative instance, we might better say
«from the point of view of some observers», in this way conforming to
the multiplicity of foci imbedded in Jahn’s notion of ambient
focalization. Occasionally the continuity of this standard focalization is
broken up by some impossible POV shot, which may be considered to
be impossible observers (e.g. the interior of a refrigerator,), or by some
more or less abrupt shift to non-focalized, total shots, or to a more
narratorial viewpoint and weak, or zero, focalization. We might say
that when the visual instance, in other words the narrator, is felt to be
an observer internal to the diegetic world, we can talk of ambient
focalization; when it coincides with a character’s eye, we can talk of
strict focalization. When it comes from an overhead view, producing
more or less total vision not accessible to the characters, we can talk of
weak or zero focalization. But even in these cases, if the main character
is part of the shot, we may still consider him the central consciousness,
as defined by Henry James in his Prefaces (2011).
      Alfonso Cuaron’s recent and highly successful movie Roma (2018)
provides an effective example of this kind of focalization. Cleo, the
indigenous live-in maid of a middle-class family in the Roma
neighborhood of Mexico City, is a figure from the director’s
autobiographical experience; she represents the focal point of the entire
narration, made up of long sequence shots and a detailed
representation of daily life in the seventies. The camera mostly remains
tight on her, enveloping her, and even in the descriptive, non-focalized
total shots (for example the scenes of martial arts, or some beautiful
rural landscapes) she is part of the dieghesis; we actually feel her
presence and her emotional involvement. The formal configuration
featuring her as a center of consciousness, produced by silences,
glances and facial expressions, contributes to the political impact of the
movie – at the same time a retelling of a recollected personal obsession,
and a reflection on political and ethnic issues (the indigenous
community, the class conflicts of the seventies). I do not think that her
frequent silences should be read as a stereotyped vision of a working-


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class figure (a kind of female Job); silence is, in this case, an allusive
and sublime form of expression, a cinematic way of expressing
emotional states.

                  Videogames and Focalization
      Focalization has proven to be a useful concept in game studies,
since players are often given control of character-avatars of the game
world. Basically exploiting Genette’s model, Fraser Allison (2015)
explored the various ways of conveying subjectivity in video games,
which involve the various figures of the user (an offline identity), the
player (a socially performed identity), the character (a fictional
identity) and the avatar (a virtual visualization). The paper also
examines previous contributions on focalization in videogames
(Nitsche, Calleja), the first based on Mieke Bal’s more visual model of
focalization (which, in my opinion, rather overcomplicates the number
of instances); and analyzes a series of case studies: The Sims 3 (The Sims
Studio 2009), Top Spin 4 (2K Czech 2011), Mirror’s Edge (EA Digital
Illusions CE 2008) and Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar North 2014). These
are Allison’s conclusions:

        Video games in which a player directly controls a character
     have opportunities to convey the character’s subjective experience
     and ways of thinking to the player. Whether the audiovisual style
     is photorealistic or stylized, the presentation of the game
     environment can be suggestive of the subjectivity of the character
     that views it – as is commonly seen in specific cases such as
     hallucinatory sequences. The ludic affordances of such video
     games typically convey a great deal about the character’s nature,
     goals and mental models, as well as their abilities. In doing so, the
     player’s own perspective and way of thinking is shaped according
     to what is required to operate the video game. This gives game
     designers a powerful opportunity to present a diversity of
     perspectives and open up particular desired experiences for the
     player (Fraser 2015: 13-14).




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Massimo Fusillo, Focalization as Transmedial Category



     Even in the case of videogames Jahn’s reconfiguration of Genette’s
canonic model seems to me valuable and useful in describing the
complex interplay between author, character and readers; especially
ambient focalization can be considered the standard pattern implying
various formulations from the visual, emotional and cultural point of
view.

                     Multifocalization: 360° Videos
     Videogames often give multiple choice to the users, thus certainly
involving aspects of focalization. That is the reason why I would like to
conclude with a short mention of 360° videos, a highly immersive case
of Virtual Reality, which creates an environment close to real life, and
leaves the viewer the choice of focalizations while limiting the
director’s creativity; this freedom for the viewer has been fully
exploited by feminist 360° porn movies, which aim to overwhelm the
dominant male gaze. As a matter of fact, this communicative situation
resembles that of a very ancient art, i.e. theatre, which is basically a
single set with a fixed audience viewpoint. Scholars of 360° videos
have highlighted the various audio-visual cues used by directors in
order to enhance the viewer’s focalization and to orientate the
response: «Visual cues include movement of objects or characters,
gestures, alignment of objects, the gaze of characters, lighting, extreme
contrast, semantic opposites, video in video, text, graphics, special
effects and camera movements. Audio cues include characters talking,
screams, video in video, sound effects, and music» (Elmezeny,
Edenhofer and Wimmer 2018). Some of these are certainly the same as
those used by theatre directors (especially gestures, gaze, lighting,
sound effect and music); on the other hand, some are more specifically
applicable to video expressive strategies. In any case, this last example,
which unites an ancient art, based on physical presence and bodily
performance, with a sophisticated technological one, brilliantly
demonstrates how central focalization may be in a media-conscious
narratology and in trans-medial comparative literature.



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                             Works Cited
Alber, Jan – Fludernik, Monika (eds), Post-Classical Narratology. Ap-
    proaches and Analysis, Columbus (OH), Ohio State University Press,
    2010.
Branigan, Edvard R., Point of View in the Cinema. A Theory of Narration
    and Subjectivity in Classical Film, Berlin, De Gruyter Mouton, 2010.
Bremond, Claude, Logique du récit, Paris, Seuil, 1973.
Elmezeny, Ahmed - Edenhofer, Nina - Wimmer, Jeffrey, “Immersive
    Storytelling in 360-Degree Videos: An Analysis of Interplay be-
    tween Narrative and Technical Immersion”, Journal of Virtual
    Worlds, 11,1 (2018): 1-13.
Fraser, Allison, “Whose Mind is the Signal? Focalization in Video
    Games Narratives”, Digital Games Research Association, May, 2015
    Volume 12 (2015): 1-16.
Genette, Gérard, Figures 3. Discours du récit, Paris, Seuil, 1972; Engl.
    trans. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method, Forward by Jonathan
    Culler, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1980.
Genette, Gérard, Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré, Paris, Seuil,
    1982.
Herman, David (ed.), Narratologies. New Perspectives on Narrative Analy-
    sis, Columbus (OH), Ohio State University Press, 1999.
Jahn, Manfred, “More Aspects of Focalization: Refinements and Appli-
    cations”, in: John Pier (ed.), GRAAT: Revue des Groupes de Recherches
    Anglo-Américaines de l’Université de Tours, 21 (1999): 85-110 Recent
    Trends in Narratological Research.
James, Henry, The Art of the Novel. Critical Prefaces (1934), Introduction
    by Richard Blackmur, with a new Foreward by Colm Tóibín, Chi-
    cago, Chicago University Press, 2011.
Propp, Vladimir, Morphology of the Folktale (1929), Austin, University of
    Texas Press, 2010.




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Massimo Fusillo, Focalization as Transmedial Category



Ryan, Marie-Laure, Narrative as Virtual Reality. Immersion and Interactiv-
   ity in Literature and Narrative Media, Baltimore (MD) - London,
   Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Ryan, Marie-Laure, Introduction, in Ryan, Marie-Laure (ed.), Narrative
   Across Media. The Languages of Storytelling, Lincoln, University of
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   Towards a Media-Conscious Narratology, Lincoln and London, Uni-
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Todorov, Tzvetan, “Les catégories du récit littéraire”, Communications 8
   (1966), Recherches sémiologiques: l'analyse structurale du récit: 125-151.



                                    Filmography
Dark Passage, Dir. Delmer Daves, USA, 1947.
Hardcore! (Hardcore Henry), Dir. Ilya Naishuller, Russia-USA 2015
The Lady of the Lake, Dir. Robert Montgomery, USA 1947.
Roma, Dir. Alfonso Cuaron, Messico-USA 2018.



                                     The Author
Massimo Fusillo

     Massimo Fusillo is Professor of Literary Criticism and
Comparative Literature at the University of L’Aquila (Italy), where he
is Coordinator of the PhD Program on Literatures Arts Media: The
Transcodification. He is also Chair of the Research Committee on
Literatures Arts Media (CLAM) of the International Association of
Comparative Literature (ICLA), and member of the Academia
Europaea. His book Feticci (2012) was translated in 2014 by Champion
and in 2017 by Bloomsbury: The Fetish. Literature, cinema, visuality.

        Email: massimo.fusillo@univaq.it


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                             The Article
Date sent: 15/07/2020
Date accepted: 20/10/2020
Date published: 30/11/2020



                     How to cite this article
Fusillo, Massimo, “Focalization as a Transmedial Category”,
Transmediality / Intermediality / Crossmediality: Problems of Definition,
Eds. H.-J. Backe – M.Fusillo – M. Lino, with the focus section
Intermedial Dante: Reception, Appropriation, Metamorphosis, Eds. C.
Fischer – M. Petricola., Between, X.20 (2020).




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