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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Three
Spring 2004
The Myth of the Thousand Words: Exploring the Role of Narrative in La Jetée and 12 Monkeys - Page 5
by Philip Krachun
Commentary: “The Myth of the Thousand Words”
by
Sagar Patel
Philip Krachun’s essay meditates upon the narrative of photographic meaning in the two movies whose actions depends almost totally on the existence of photographs. The issue is a difficult one and Krachun’s analysis is able to address it in a way that makes it accessible to the reader without simplifying it. By using essays on the construction of meaning through photography, Krachun addresses the dilemma of photographic meaning, the distortion of artistic intent, and the imposition of competing narratives in a world viewed through pictures with varying amounts of contextualization. Krachun’s essay thus gives its reader a good forum from which to think about the nature of the photograph. Unlike a painting or a written description, the photograph assumes a certain sense of truth since what it depicts actually existed and the image was produced by the mechanics of a camera, not the hand of a human. However, Krachun points out that in 12 Monkeys and La Jetée, the burden of the truthfulness of the interpretation of the event does not fall on the artist, as it can with the painter or writer, but with the viewer of the picture. The artist’s responsibility is to work within a context, but he has little control over the loss of this context. With the photograph, the viewer must understand the picture’s context. Without this context, the picture loses its meaning and must assume a new one that may misrepresent a past event, may create a new narrative that is completely different from the reality of the situation. The essay thus raises the concerns of photographic interpretation as a means of the creation of the narrative. One must ask oneself if his interpretation of a picture is accurate. More importantly, one must ask whether a photograph can actually capture an event without distorting the circumstances and events it aims to relate. The movies ask us to question the whole idea of meaning in a medium that relies on its ability to create an objective account of an event. Where is the meaning of the event created? Can one even create a story from just pictures? What has really been created through the photograph? Who controls the narrative that a photograph must have? Krachun’s essay raises many such questions and provides a great catalyst to thinking about these questions. A more lengthy treatment of La Jetée would have helped to answer these questions, but the independence of thought and the ambitious nature of the project of this meditation on visual imagery through 12 Monkeys is a provocative contemplation on the topic that draws from past work but is not completely attached to it.
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