brief blabs:

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It occurs to me that it's possible to conceive of a narrative that isn't representable within literature or film or some other medium because these mediums require a suspension of disbelief -- or if you're watching a particularly self-aware Brechtian play, then a meta suspension-of-belief is required, you believe on some level that you are watching a play that exposes itself as a play. That is:

Maybe what passes as the sheen of production quality, suspension of disbelief, professionalism is this: the awareness and presentation on a second-order level that, regardless of the believability of the story itself, makes it aware that you are indeed watching a movie.

two thoughts:

1) there's a necessary shine of believability that is usually generated with a cinematographic or visual grammar that exists on the peripheries. For cinema: the way things are lit, shadowed, framed, angles, correct zooms, post-production color processing, the crispness of a professional digital camera versus the subtle aliasing and chromatic aberration of a 'prosumer' hand-held camera. Also, the certain way actors move, speak. For literature: presentation of text on the page, layout decisions cover title, back cover. Often the most common mistake of amateur book designers is that there's not enough on the page due to an attempt at simplicity: simplicity generated through emptiness, which is not the way to go. There are things like: barcodes, tiny text indicating publisher, category, cover credits, publisher logo, etc. As supplementary as these are they constitute prerequisite conditions of a perceived legitimacy (emphasis on perceived) from the point at which someone picks up and crack open the spine.

It occurs to me that there might be a point at which the story-- of what really happened in this narrative -- clashes against this grammar of believability. Maybe, if the logic of fiction holds up this believability, it's where: (the logic of fiction)C ∩ the narrative.

Things happening in a story that inadvertently or not puncture the sheen of not only believability but perceived story-ness. Is there a way in which there is a narrative that has elements that are so absolutely non-filmic? An analogue is: despite the fact that within a film there is supposedly no camera in the story itself, no characters are supposed to look at the camera, or else the scene will look strange, it will look fake. For the characters in the story, there is an zone of space at which they can not look at. What's the equivalent of this in literature, or in film in terms of plot?

2) there's a standard of taste here too not at the level of 'good X' or 'bad X' but in terms of the veneer of production quality. We are speaking of wooden frames and matteboard, versus images pinned onto the wall. There is a grammar of legitimacy on another level, not a criterion of 'is this good art or not' but 'does the way in which this thing is seen generate a perception of it as something to be seen as art'.

et cetera.