Aiming to underline the link between storytelling content and ritual structure and to show how the building of community constitutes the meta-theme of storytelling in general and film narrative in particular, L. A. Alexander explores the...
moreAiming to underline the link between storytelling content and ritual structure and to show how the building of community constitutes the meta-theme of storytelling in general and film narrative in particular, L. A. Alexander explores the notion of symbolic community and provides a detailed account of narrative (film) genres in terms of three parameters–their origin in a basic ritual, the cultural need they address, and the cultural function they fulfill–as well as sets of rules for the successful creation of fictional worlds. Though it does not pay much attention to such important narrational elements as distance, speed, and point of view, Alexander’s exploration sheds decisive light on the foundations, characteristics, and possibilities of fictional worlds represented in (film) narratives.
