C-CS

Elements of Configurations

ABSTRACT

The film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade exhibits all of the elements of a cultural configuration—figures with conflicting desires in virtual worlds—that enable transpositions and affect our belief systems. The basic elements of any configuration are: a situation with specific temporal and spatial parameters in which a self figure desires and conflicts with other figures in a story world. Stories, however, are not configurations until they are configured, that is, until their audiences transport themselves into the virtual world and transpose (identify with) a self figure. Transposition is the KEY ELEMENT & DISTINGUISHING FEATURE of a configuration. Its effect is to alter the audience's world view.

Cultural stories are configurations, that is, representations of inter-personal situations that configure (show the shape of contours of) cultural practices. In this entry, I delineate the elements of configurations as a particular type of story rendering—with the emphasis on the audiences. In the preceding section, we considered the Grail Quest story to one of the most significant of the cultural stories we have inherited from the past. It is first recorded as a story about Jason and the Argonauts, shows up in Celtic lore as a story about Peredur, and in Christian countries as the Grail story featuring King Arthur's knights. Countries in the middle ages had their own Grail Quest knight, France’s was Perceval, Germany’s was Parzival, England’s was Perceval’s fellow knight-Lancelot who failed in the quest. Once medieval romances gave way to novels, the grail quest story was retold as a Bildungsroman, beginning in Germany with Goethe and traveling to England with Dickens and others. In this entry, we will look at contemporary cultural configurations as a way of illustrating the elements of configurations.

indiana jones

I will take as my example one of America’s quest heroes—Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1989 film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliott, Julian Glover, Alison Doody, River Phoenix and John Rhys-Davies.

elements of configurations

We begin with the hero, Indiana Jones, who had considerable impact on audiences in the 80s. Once we can determine the elements of the configuration in which he appeared, it gives us a model to use in determining how the impact on its audiences was achieved.

story situations

spatial and temporal parameters (movements through time and through places) which constitute the story world.
desires and conflicts expressed by a protagonist

self figure (audiences' identification with a figure in the storyworld—most often with Indy)
other figures (opponents, helpers, victims, etc.)
transportation (involvement in the story to the point of losing a sense of one's actual situation—e.g., being in a movie theatre.
transposition (experiencing situations from the perspective of a self figure) THIS IS A KEY ELEMENT & DISTINGUISHING FEATURE OF A CONFIGURATION.

What sets a configuration apart from other stories, is the way in which the audience (or members of it) identify with a figure in the narrative and experience events from that figure's perspective, as if they were living through him or her, and consequently feeling emotions commensurate with their "self figure"—desiring what he or she desires, conflicting with what he or she conflicts with, feeling his or her emotions as events take place. For a very long time in American culture, the prototypical configuration was the cinematic version of the Wizard of Oz. Children identify with Dorothy (who is on a quest), feel the threat of the witch, exult with her defeat, and so on.

figures in situations

It seems obvious to say that a necessary condition of a configuration is a FIGURE. But, as I have insisted above, a figure without a story doesn't’t provide the conditions for identification. That’s why the phenomenon is termed, a CONfiguration—figure(s) interacting with other figure(s). A configuration, as it name implies, requires figureS in a story.

Stories, narratologists argue, require dramatic situations for their starting points. Although there are many variations, two situations are usually recognized as the most likely ones to inaugurate an interesting story. A situation in which someone desires something he or she does not have is an ideal beginning for a story since the audience can easily identify with desires and thus become anxious to find out what happens, whether the desire is fulfilled or not. Desires motivate the figures in stories. Quest stories are prototypical desire stories.

It can be argued that we understand ourselves as bundles of desires. Our self-concept is oriented toward the future, toward the person who we believe we can become. When we remark that “we like who we are,” the present tense is misleading. We are not static things. We grow and develop. If I feel fulfilled, it is because the person I desire to be is becoming me. Language tends to present us to ourselves as if we were frozen, changeless entities. We are always journeying. To be content to “be” yourself is really to believe that you are headed in the direction you want to go, toward the fulfillment of your desires.

The second widely recognized situation that serves as the starting point for narration is a conflict between persons. Whether the conflict is internal or external does not matter. The difference is whether the focus of the narrative portrays psychological rather than physical events. As in the case of desire, when a audience identifies with a figure in the story in conflict with other figure(s), the readers or viewers are anxious to find out what happens, who wins.

Commonly, narratives are built around situations in which various figures are motivated by the same desire and therefore in conflict with each other. A perfect example is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade wherein several persons wish to obtain the Holy Grail and thus conflict with each other. Though unrealistic, more a fantasy than an account of normal behavior, viewers of the film easily identify with Indiana and share his antagonism toward the villains. The Grail is a symbol of the fulfillment of one’s identity, or as Maslow (a major theorist of human potential) might put it, a symbol of “self actualization.” For Maslow persons “need” and therefore want to actualize themselves. From another point of view, the Grail can be construed as the “achievement” that identifies the achiever by which he is known. Achievement is thought to be one of the four major motivation systems. Viewers who identify with Indiana Jones do so, in all likelihood, because he achieved what he desired by finding the Grail and saving his father. He set out to find his father, his living history, and he did. Culturally speaking, his achievement was a most important one. Perceval’s identity is as the one who found the Grail and restored the land from infertility. Indiana Jones’ identity is as the American quest hero whose adventures are astonishing achievements in the face of formidable obstacles and conflicts which he overcomes with brain and brawn.

If, as film goers, we enter the virtual world Indiana inhabits by identifying with him to the extent that we lose sight of where we actually are, then we have transposed ourselves with him. This is the key “element” and distinguishing feature of a configuration. Without this element, the virtual world is not entered and it cannot be construed as a possible world for us. It is not that finding the Grail is possible for us but that an achievement that will be self actualizing is possible for us. Because we are continuously “in progress” so to speak, we need to renew our faith in this possibility since we often doubt that what we have done in and with our lives is not worth much. The enjoyment of films like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are opportunities for such renewals.

The basic elements of configurations are figures with conflicting desires who transport us into virtual worlds where we transpose ourselves with self-figures.

figures and desires

Let us return for a moment to the element of desire. In the English language, it does not “make sense” to desire something that you already have. As Vladimir Propp cogently noted at the beginning the twentieth century, narratives are structured by “lacks.” One desires something or that one lacks or a response from someone that one lacks. The quest for it propels the story and defines its ending. A lack, in the context of this study, is a “null experience.” If you lack a particular response from someone—love, then you have not had the experience of that response. Staying with the example of Indiana Jones, let’s say that you “lack” the Grail, meaning that you are pursuing a goal in life that you have not yet reached.

A digression is called for at this juncture. As we go through life, we have many achievements. Nonetheless few persons feel that have achieved everything that they can and so have nothing further to seek. It is more characteristic to feel that one’s past achievements are less significant than something one has yet to achieve. For example, when an athlete breaks a record, he or she is likely to want to break their own record. Another characteristic human scenario is to believe that you have achieved all that you can in one domain but not in another; hence the quest continues because you still are not the person you desire to be. The quest for self-actualization is endless. When it ceases, we have in effect stopped living.

The “path” the hero or heroine takes to fulfilling his or her desire is culturally instructive. Not in its content but in its structure. Unlike Indiana Jones we need not confront the Nazi army or contend with figures like Schneider and Donovan. Like Indiana Jones, we have to confront numerous obstacles and enemies in our quest. We learn from the way Indiana Jones behaves in confronting his enemies. He provides for us, for better or worse, a model of appropriate cultural behavior. We must be fearless, strong, adept, and adaptable. These are the traits that make the hero a hero, that is, an exemplary figure in this particular situation.

transpositions

I mentioned above that a figure is a necessary condition of a configuration and that it has to be one with whom persons in the audience can identify. The identification is precipitated by the defining desire in the situation and abetted by the “other” figures who present challenges to the “self-figure.” The identification occasions a transposition.

As the term implies, a trans-position indicates that the viewer or reader changes or transfers his actual position (sitting in a theater) to take on the perspective of the self-figure (Indiana Jones). The audience, instead of seeing events through their eyes, see events from the perspective of the self-figure. Once this occurs, then when another figure such as Donavan attacks the self-figure, he becomes an enemy in the audiences’ perspective and emotions surface such as taking pleasure in a victory over the villain. Often, as in the case of Fatal Attraction, the audience cheers when the “other-figure,” in this case Alex played by Glen Close, is killed. The intensity of the transposition is reflected in the degree of emotion evoked by the situation. The curve of emotion that accompanies a powerful configuration is “cathartic,” a release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit. Stories about desires and conflicts create tension in their audiences. When they are resolved, the tension is “released.” If you have ever taped a whodunit only to discover as you are watching it with rapt attention that the tape runs out before the murderer is revealed, you probably experienced the tension that remains because the story is unresolved.

A transposition requires the mapping of remembered past experiences of the audience onto the virtual experiences it is enjoying. In a typical John Grisham narrative, the self-figure(s) are usually pursued by the villains. The Pelican Brief is a good example. When the self-figure(s) escape the clutches of the villains, the audience enjoys the virtual escape. When Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts) narrowly evades attempts to kill her, the audience is "with" her. (Imagine how disconcerting it would have been if Darby, who gains our sympathy early on, was killed in the second or third attempt on her life.) In a film such as The Rainmaker, when the hero (Rudy Baylor played by Matt Damon) succeeds in bringing down the insurance company that allowed its victim to die because it refused to pay his claim, the audience enjoys his triumph. In this example, it is easy to discern the mapping of past experiences onto the virtual situation. Most of us have had claims denied by corporations whose priority is profit rather than its clients' welfare. The legal victories that Grisham portrays against insurance companies, tobacco companies, and so forth, all depend upon the audiences mapping their past experience of corporate greed onto the virtual situations portrayed in the narratives.

It is important to recognize that the mapping is not a simple one to one correspondence. Rather, as Giles Fauconnier and Mark Turner argue in their The Way We Think, the mapping blends aspects of past experiences together to match the virtual situation. Whether we used tobacco or suffered from insurance denials is not critical to the mapping and the transposition. Any experience of corporate greed at the expense of the consumer’s welfare can be mapped onto these virtual situations. Grisham’s success owes much to the circumstance that his villains are invisible corporate executives from corporations that maintain their profit margins at the expense of their clients. This is experience that millions of persons have had to one degree or another.

Since transpositions depend upon past experiences, we need to distinguish between “individual” and “cultural” configurations. Though configurations are invariably narratives not all narrative are configurations. Configurations are imagined worlds that provide the settings for transpositions. Transpositions are not intrinsic to narratives. Some narratives occasion transpositions in only a few individuals whose past experiences allow them to map them onto the narratives. These can be considered individual configurations because they relate to specific individuals. Although every configuration is personal in the sense that it occurs within the imagination of a person, many configurations express virtual experiences that match the experiences of members of a culture precisely because they define the culture in terms of its best and worst practices. Quest narratives are cultural configurations that express a pattern of self-actualization characteristic of European culture. On the other hand, the extent to which a particular individual’s life expresses a pattern that some individual wishes to imitate is a personal matter. A devoted son may find his father’s life a configuration of his own but it is unlikely that it will also provide a configuration for persons who are not members of his family.

configurations and story worlds

Although transposition is the defining element of a configuration, it depends on a dramatic situation that evolves into a story. Stories require “story worlds.” For a self-figure to be “in a situation” he or she has to be in a particular place at a particular time. The spatial and temporal parameters that the story world creates form an axis that outlines the virtual world of the story in which the figures are positioned. They provide guidelines for mapping the audiences past experiences onto the situation portrayed.

The spatial context sets up the perspective necessary for the transposition. The identification with a self-figure marks the perspective taken. For example, it is not uncommon for women watching the same film as men to take the point of view of a woman in the film and for the man to take the male’s point of view. Whereas critics are usually concerned with the work as it is constructed, audiences readily identify with their chosen self-figures and often bracket out parts of the work with which they do not wish to identify. In the hey day of the film noir, women in the audience often identified with strong, forceful women and bracketed out of their purview the scenes in which these women committed murders or other crimes. Personal configurations can be highly selective, choosing only those situations with which the persons can match their desires.

On another level, the “setting” frames certain situations. It is difficult to identify with a cowboy who lives in a city when projecting the configuration associated with the American western heroes played by John Wayne, Randolph Scott, or Jimmy Stewart. Grace Kelly’s costume designs would not fit well into a film with a rural setting in Appalachia. Watching a film like Rear Window, women would be likely to identify with Grace Kelly propelled by a desire for glamour, sophistication, and determination. Her arrival in Stewart’s apartment in the clothes she wears in the film requires an urban setting. The plot of the film does not require Stewart’s “girl friend” to be configured as Grace Kelly is. At the same time, Grace Kelly’s aura was a special sort of configuration for women viewers at the time. A woman identifying with Grace Kelly might pay little attention to the actual plot since it proposes a quite different and very separable configuration. Sometimes, the subplot of a film is more significant to viewers than the main plot because of a particular actor or actresses’ aura, the feelings aroused by the way they are configured.

The temporal context has two dimensions, the time period and the chronology of events. The period in which the story is set and which frames situations for viewers by providing a virtual world onto which past experiences can be mapped. The temporal setting dictates the content of the narrative—dress, weaponry, architecture, vehicles, and so on. As Vladimir Propp pointed out in his Morphology of the Folktale, the function of the action taken (loving, killing, healing) is more significant to the story than the content through which it is expressed. Wanting the hero to win, whether he kills his enemy with a sword or a gun matters less than that he kills him and not the other way around.

The chronology of events has more significance in a configuration than the time period. The reason is that motives propel figures through the time of the story. Desires are motives, especially the desire to overcome challenges to your quest. Motives anticipate or predict future events. In the English language change has a temporal dimension and stories express change. The trilogy: beginning, middle, and end are critical aspects of any story. The initial situation that is expressed in terms of conflicted desires is only a story if it has an ending that tells whether the desire is fulfilled or the conflict resolved. Before the change can take place, some event must precipitate it, hence the middle of the story tells about the event that changed the initial situation. The chronological dimension of configurations delineate changes in the virtual world relative to the figures in it.

Cultural configurations portray the practices that constitute the culture. Legends, folk tales, myths are all potential configurations. They are repeated in the culture as long as persons identify with the figures in them and thereby re-enact the pattern of their behavior. Some stories that had configurative power in the past lose their capacity for audience identification. Westerns, for example, lost their audiences for reasons that are not entirely clear. One explanation is that the western configuration morphed into a scifi configuration in stories like Star Trek. When stories are told over and over again, it is an index of their configurative power.

Stories whose chronologies are formulaic—as is the case with may TV shows—are watched over and over again because they reinforce beliefs their audiences wish to maintain. My favorite example is Perry Mason, a series that aired in the 60s and a half century later is still in reruns as I write. The lawyer Mason never loses a case. The plots are quite formulaic. How can such a series satisfy audiences for so many years? Like other cultural tales, it reinforces the world in which its audiences wish to believe is possible—a just world in which the innocent are proven innocent and the guilty are punished.

Configurations and Beliefs

Configurations are bound up with belief systems. Since stories involve changes from initial states of affairs to a changed state of affairs, often the inverse, configurations affirm the possibility or impossibility of changing an unwanted state of affairs.

Unwanted state of affairs	Pivotal action	Desired state of affairs
LACK	journey	fulfillment
LACK	unsuccessful journey	status quo

Consider the love potion scene in Tristan and Iseult. As Bedier recounts the episode, Tristan was returning from Ireland where he had gone to escort King Mark’s bride, Iseult, back to Cornwall.

In the narrative, Iseult hated Tristan because he had killed her uncle and was taking her away from home to a strange land. Tristan had no interest in Isuelt because he was doing his Lord’s bidding. So, neither of them wanted to be with the other. Then, they accidentally drank the love potion. As a result they could not bear to be apart.

The story of Tristan and Iseult is a tragic story, hence one that ends in their deaths. In the initial stage, Tristan and Iseult do not want to be together. Unfortunately, without willing it, they engage each other passionately and commit adultery. As a result, their unwanted state of affairs (not to be together) is preserved as the status quo and brings to them acute suffering.

As the narrative is interpreted in Western culture, it becomes a story of passionate love and the states of affairs reflect changing beliefs:

LACK	Pivotal action	Desired state of affairs
of intimacy	falling “in love”	Intimacy

The Tristan Legend is an especially interesting cultural artifact because the literal configuration the story presents is rejected by the readers in favor of a change of circumstances they seek. Instead of configuring a situation which is sinful, adultery, the story configures passionate love as a desirable state of affairs. In the Medieval climate of belief, marriage was not a personal choice motivated by being “in love,” it was a arrangement made for social welfare. As a result, falling “in love” often occurred outside of marriage and was construed as a sin, adultery. This configuration of belief was displaced by the desire to fall “in love,” a wanted state of affairs the lack of which was unwelcome.

If the initial state is the sense of a lack, it is accompanied by a desire for a changed state of affairs. A configuration posits a pivotal action that results in the desired change. In Kenneth Burke’s terms, configurations are “equipment for living.” They instruct us how to behave in unwelcome situations. The Tristan Legend instructs us that falling “in love” is not a rational decision but an accident of fate over which we have no control but which is desirable no matter what the consequences.

Configurations express beliefs in possible worlds. They provide a new perspective on the situations we encounter because the identification with the self-figure evoked by sharing his or her “lack” places us in their position and we assume their point of view on the situation. What they do to change their unwanted situation then serves for us as an instruction on how to deal with the analogous situation in our own lives. It reveals the path of “heroism” in overcoming obstacles and difficulties. On the other hand, configurations can serve to confirm our belief that change is not possible no matter what we do because we are not in control of the situation. Whether you construe the love potion as a positive or negative, the configuration confirms the belief that we are not in control of falling “in love.” Passion is irrational.

The Cultural Impact of Configurations

Lacks, by definition, imply null experiences. Even in instances where one desires something that one has experienced before, say a particular wine such as a Jordan Cabernet, the new bottle will not provide the same experience as the previous one had for a variety of reasons one of them being that it was made from a different crop of grapes. Thus, it is an experience you have not yet had. The “lacks” that motivate the figures in most configurations, however, are closer in kind to the “love Potion” lack. In that narrative, the figure “lacks” sexual passion which is provided by the potion. If a reader identifies with Tristan or with Iseult, that person is likely to have felt that lack in his or her past experiences. Feeling the lack of sexual passion can occasion the identification in numerous ways. A reader may have once felt passionate about a lover but at the time of the reading is no longer “in love” and wishes to be in that state. On the other hand, a reader may never have had a passionate love affair but wants to. Or, the reader may be presently “in love” but not immediately sexually involved with his or her lover and thus the narrative may confirm their desire to remain “in love” and re-ignite their passion. In each case, albeit to different degrees, what is lacking counts as a null experience that one wishes to have.

I bring up the fact that “null experiences” as “lacks” are an element of configurations because the narrative structure then provides a parallel virtual experience to remedy the lack. Thus configurations teach one how to learn to cope with null experiences.

jjs

Notes:

. [As a viewer or listener or reader, you perceive the self figure as possessed of an inner life essentially like your own. Of course the emotions you feel are not as powerful as the ones depicted in the story, but they are resonant with them..] ...

. [Blending is apparent because the source (analog) is not easily mapped to the target (analogatum) and blending has to occur. The application is the act of configuring. It’s not the invention of the “metaphor” or “narrative” but the act of using it as an instruction on how to behave. It is script like. However, unlike a script, it involves transposition and empathy. So the restaurant script is NOT a configuration because the perspective remains the one belonging to past experiences and thus is the one a person actually takes. Without transpositions, new perspectives are not made available.] ...

. [Critics might be confounded by the circumstance that drinking the love potion can be construed as either a good or bad event and may insist that, after all, if the lovers die, it can’t be a good event. As I noted earlier, configurations are not wedded to their texts. The “love potion” configuration, culturally speaking, has been lifted out of the context of its original texts and has an independent existence that does not link the episode to the death of the lovers. ] ...

. [I hesitate to attempt to cover all the possibilities in reading or viewing the Tristan configuration. However, one might object that some readers who are presently in love would not feel a lack. In this case, it seems likely that they would not configure their experience in accordance with the story structure, believing instead that they are in control of the situation. In this case, the story would cease to be a configuration for them and would have to be replaced by a different one if only in their fantasizing.] ...

. [Usually, the null experience is filled in partially by the initial configuring of a story, but persons often return again and again to configurations as a way of reassuring themselves that a way of life that they desire is possible.] ...