Spirála coby inovativní schéma filmového vyprávění
Spiral as an Innovative Schema of Film Storytelling

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with a specific pattern of audiovisual storytelling, where a character is stuck in an iterative segment of space, time and causality, is aware of that and tries to find a way to deal with it. It introduces the term “spiral narrative” for this narrative pattern known from films such as the 1993 Groundhog Day. It identifies it as an innovative schema which helps American film and television creators to defamiliarize various amounts of already established models of narrative development. The first part of this article defines the spiral narrative schema on the one side and the so-called loop narrative schema on the other side, explaining several aesthetic norms in films that exploit the spiral narrative schema. It also inquires into the possible ways in which spiral narratives can affect the viewers as well as the aesthetic sources of the spiral narrative schema as such. The second part brings a much more specific explanation using reasonably detailed analyzes of threefilms (the short 12:01 PM shot in 1990, the television film 12:01 from 1993, and the already mentioned Groundhog Day). These three analyzes reveal a historical trajectory, which might functionally explain the process of the establishment of the spiral narrative as an innovative auxiliary pattern in popular American audiovision.

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