THE MECHANICS OF DIRECT GENERATION

Is the machinery of direct generation any more orderly than that of implication? Lest anyone be tempted to suppose that it is, that repre- sentations establish their primary fictional truths in relatively simple and predictable ways and that things get messy only when it comes to extrapolating from them, let us look briefly at a few instances of direct generation. A quick survey will suffice for this purpose. But we

will have occasion later to examine some of the examples more closely. Again, the particulars of the means by which fictional truths are generated in various kinds of cases will be of interest in their own right.

It is evident that the principles of direct generation for verbal and pictorial representations differ greatly, but one might look for con- sistency within each of these modes. Do literary works say what is to be made fictional and pictorial ones show it? This suggestion is easily undermined, even without capitalizing especially on the fuzziness of the notions of saying and showing. In rejecting it we will see why in § 4.2, I resisted identifying directly generated fictional truths with those the works make explicit.

Any inclination to suppose that the propositions whose fictionality a literary work generates directly are simply the ones its words express, given the language in which it is written, dissipates quickly.35 Many of these propositions are not fictional at all, most obviously in the case of works with "unreliable" narrators (such as Ford's Good

Soldier), and when they are fictional their fictionality is often implied

rather than primary. It is fictional that someone (the narrator) utters the words of the text, in many cases, and, if the narrator is "reliable," this implies the fictionality of what the words express. Is it always fictional at least that someone utters the words in question: Does this constitute the core of primary fictional truths? No. Sometimes it is fictional merely that someone thinks those words without uttering them, or that they express his fantasies or dreams or desires. Some- times, perhaps, there is no narrator and it is simply what is expressed by the text (taken perhaps in one or another nonliteral manner) whose fictionality is generated directly. It is not uncommon for readers to be very uncertain which of these alternatives obtains.

Ordinarily there is nothing analogous to narrators in pictures and other depictions, so ordinarily we do not have to worry about untrustworthy ones. Do pictures generate directly the fictionality of whatever is shown in them? Can we assume that if a man is shown, it is a primary fictional truth that there is a man, although it will proba- bly be only implied that he has blood in his veins or a brother in Vienna? No. Rousseau's painting The Dream shows an elephant, a pair of tigers, and a snake charmer in a jungle scene, in the midst of

35. Even if that were so, direct generation would be no more simple or systematic than the semantic rules by which those propositions are determined. Moreover, it is obviously not just the literal meaning of the text that needs to be taken into account but also metaphors, irony, and so on.

which the dreamer sleeps. But it is fictional not that there is an ele- phant and so on, but merely that the dreamer dreams that there is. And it is fictional neither that she sleeps in a jungle nor that she dreams of doing so, though it would seem that this state of affairs is "shown." In the dinner scene of Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf (figure 8.12.) we see a dinner party through the eyes of a neurotic artist, Borg. The faces of the diners are shown monstrously distorted, but it is fictional merely that this is how they appear to Borg, not that they are monstrously distorted. What is shown in Rashomon, in its several conflicting portrayals of the incident in the forest, is what happened according to the testimony of various witnesses. Their testi- mony cannot all be true. (See § 8.7.)

The notion of what a picture "shows" is open to some manipula- tion. Does Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase show a series of ladies following one another down the stairs, rather than successive stages of a single one? Does Benozzo Gozzoli's Dance of Salome and

the Beheading of John the Baptist, which portrays Salome dancing,

the beheading of John, and Salome presenting the head to Herod, all within the same frame, show these events occurring simultaneously? We could insist on answering negatively in order to accommodate better the hypothesis that what is shown is fictional (and that these fictional truths are primary). But this would merely transfer the per- plexities of ascertaining a depiction's primary fictional truths to the question of what it "shows." What would be the grounds for denying that Nude Descending "shows" a parade, if not that this is not what it represents, that it is fictional that there is only a single woman on the staircase? So how could an appeal to what it shows assist the task of determining what it makes fictional?

When in response to these negative observations we look to see how direct generation does work, we are treated to a veritable variety show. Artists use every trick in the book and more. Some techniques are more or less traditional; others are strikingly ad hoc. (One is reminded of the impromptu utilization of unconventional props in children's games.) Some, even some ad hoc ones, leave no doubt about what is fictional; others keep us guessing forever. Some require familiarity with the genre to be understood, or familiarity with one or another aspect of the outside world. Artists are no less inventive in devising ways of getting fictional truths generated than they are in choosing what fictional truths to generate.

There is a convention in Central Javanese theater that (fictionally) the witch Rangda is flying, when two attendants cross bamboo poles

in front of her. It is traditional, in many cartoons, to put characters' unspoken thoughts in dotted-line balloons. Manuel Puig's use of italics to indicate unspoken thoughts in Heartbreak Tango is no less transparent, but as far as I know there are no precedents for it. Large letters, in cartoons and in captions for silent films, sometimes mean that a character speaks loudly. Musical sounds are conveniently por- trayed by bits of musical notation - emitted, for instance, from the mouth of a trumpet. Film music and music in opera and dance often contribute subtly but effectively to the generation of fictional truths - helping to establish, for example, that fictionally a character is ner- vous or cocky or ecstatic.36 Sometimes music makes it fictional that there is music, that a band is playing, for instance. How do we decide whether it does or not? If, in a film, the visually depicted scene includes a band that appears to be playing, the sound track will probably make it fictional that music is heard. If the scene is that of a sheriff's posse chasing bandits in the desert, it will not.37 Common sense is our guide.

One could argue with some credibility that the personalities or personal lives of movie actors, or the public's image of them, affect what is fictional about the characters they portray; we have a ten- dency to read our impression of the actors into their characters. This can be understood as an instance of RP or MBP in operation. But it is clearly illegitimate to allow them to operate similarly in Shake- spearean theater, for instance. We are not to attribute to Hamlet what we think we know about Laurence Olivier's life offstage.

In his film La Roue Abel Gance uses accelerating montage, an increase in the rate of alternations between shots, to indicate the increasing speed of a locomotive.38 This is not a clear instance of

direct generation, however. The acceleration of the montage consists

36. Such fictional truths may be generated only with the assistance of fictional truths about the character's actions and circumstances. To the extent that this is so, the former fictional truths are implied. But the generation is probably direct as far as the music's contribution is concerned; that is, it is probably not by generating any other fictional truths that the music contributes to their generation. We might call this "partial implication."

Generating fictional truths is not the only function of music in these arts, and probably not the main one. It "sets the tone" for a work or a scene, and this is not simply a matter of generating fictional truths. Sometimes music underscores or reinforces fictional truths gen-erated by other means, and it may give appreciators premonitions, which may or may not turn out to be right, of what is to be made fictional later.

37.In Blazing Saddles, music that seems at first to be a mere accompaniment to the movie is incorporated in the fictional world when we suddenly come across a band set up in the desert.

in the increasing frequency of sharp discontinuities in successively generated fictional truths. So the fact that fictionally the locomotive accelerates depends on other fictional truths. But not simply on what other fictional truths are generated; it depends on the order in which they are generated. The order of the film images thus contributes to the generation of this fictional truth directly, not by virtue of its contribution to the generation of other fictional truths. In any case, we have here a device for generating fictional truths which, though surely obvious enough to the viewer, does not fit neatly into any very general scheme or principle of generation.

It is difficult to say, in many simpler cases, whether a fictional truth is primary or implied. One might assume that a halo in the portrayal of a saint makes it fictional that a ring of light hovers above his head, and that this implies that fictionally he is a saint. But viewers in a different frame of mind might prefer to take the halo at less than face value, denying that fictionally there actually is a ring of light and understanding the character's sainthood to be established more directly by the white ellipse on the canvas. Note, however, that it is only because the ellipse is such as might be taken by literal-minded viewers to portray a ring of light that it indicates sainthood.39

Do motion lines in cartoons portray air streaming around and behind the moving object, thereby implying that fictionally it is moving? Or do they make it fictional merely that the object is moving? Concentric ares around a bell may serve to make it fictional that the bell rings. Do they do so by making it fictional that there are sound waves emanating from it, or more directly? Some artists distort human figures for expressive purposes (which may but need not involve the generation of further fictional truths). We might say either that fictionally the person's body is distorted in such and such a manner, and that this fictional truth has certain expressive conse-quences, or that the expressive purpose is served merely by the fact that the figure is painted as though it were to be made fictional that the body is distorted.40"

39.One might count this an instance of what I will call ornamental Representation. It may be merely fictional that it is fictional that there is a ring of light above the saint's head, and that may be why it is fictional that he is a saint. (See § 7.6.)

40."Miró produced very powerful images of savage violence, of which Head of a

Woman, 1938, is perhaps the most extreme. To obtain this effect he has used

contrasts of colour, an entirely illogical scale of proportions and arbitrary distortions of the human form. There is nothing of illusionism in his methods; yet we are presented with an image of terror and aggression, a nightmare, childish and grotesque, at which we might wish to laugh were not its primitive strength so overwhelming." (Penrose, "In Praise of Illusion," p. 270.)

In general, when it is clear that the main reason for the presence of what seems to be a certain fictional truth, perhaps a primary one, consists in its implication of others (or, for instance, in its achieving a certain expressiveness), and when the implying fictional truth itself is anomalous or unrealistic or out of place in one way or another, it may be reasonable to think of it as dropping out after it has done its Job- to think of the fictional truths which seem to depend on it as arising simply from what would ordinarily have generated it.41 This is not the only available option, however. We might accept the anomalous implying fictional truth but declare it unemphasized, not to be dwelt on. Or, in some cases, we might think of the implying and implied fictional truths as belonging to different fictional worlds. Often, no doubt, there is no choosing among these alternatives.

It would appear from observations in this section that the pouring of the foundations of fictional worlds is no more orderly than the erection of their superstructures; the mechanics of generation are soggy to the core.

As a matter of fact, it is time now to expose the fiction that there must necessarily be a core to support the superstructure. The various fictional truths generated by a work may be mutually dependent, none of them generated without assistance from others. There may be no primary fictional truths.42 How does it all get started? The words or color patterns of the work are suggestive of certain fictional truths, some of which, in this tentative status, lend support to one another sufficient to remove the tentativeness. The interpreter must go back and forth among provisionally acceptable fictional truths until he finds a convincing combination.