Four adventure chronotopes:
- Greek Romantic Adventure - Abstract, formal system of space and adventure time; link to time & space is more mechanistic than organic; speed up time to overcome spatial distance & alien worlds; adventure time in systemicity is a large space with diverse countries, but without ties to place or history. Example: the systemicity of McDonald's is well known, as is the romantic adventure telling of Ray Kroc's founding of the franchise expansion, and his succession to the McDonald brothers who invented the system of fast food Taylorism. McDonald's operates in global space of diverse countries, avoiding local historical ties when possible, adapting the menu when it must. Heroes in Greek Romantic adventures have Aristotle's "energia": which means their dramatic personae does not change, traits are merely discovered; energia is consistent with Kroc's autobiography (see auto biographical chronotope).
- Everyday Adventure - Mix of adventure-time with everyday time; hero’s life sheathed in context of metamorphosis of human identity; course of hero’s life corresponds to travel & wandering the world; type of metamorphosis is mythological cycle of crisis, so person becomes other than what she or he was by chance & accident. Example: McDonald's hero's wander the world, such as Charlie Bell, Jam Cantalupo's successor (after his fast-food heart attack). McDonald's everyday adventure story has been overcome by suddenlys, by CEO death, by the release of Spurlock's Supersize Me documentary; the Strategic Story of McDonald's has had to adapt (since Cantalupo's heroic turn around of the company's failing stocks and sliding same store sales record), and the sudden entry of "McJob" into many dictionaries. McDonald's has a lot of suddenlys when you include the McLibel trial of Helen Steel and Dave Morris, and the ones thereafter.
- Chivalric Adventure - Hyperbolization of time with other-worldly verticality (descent); this is strange mix of (1) Greek Romance & (2) Adventure novel of everyday life; testing of heroes’ fidelity to love or faith in chivalric code; fairy tale motifs linked to identity & enchantment; chance (# 2) of gods, fate rupture time of normal life with series of suddenlys, making the systemicity of Greek romance fragment Example: look at the Quality, Service, Cleanliness code of McDonald's, or the supposedly ethical code of Nike; "notable is the debut of Nike, Inc. (No. 31), the footwear company once plagued by the sweatshop controversy, which has since reinvigorated its commitment" to business ethics (source). Portraying one's corporation as chivalric (or ethical in its code) is a story strategy. Corporations like Nike, McDonald's, and Wal-Mart have war rooms to track their story lines, to spin more favorable press, and hire many story consultants to run focus groups, author and direct story behaviors of the corporations.
- (Auto) Biographical - The interrelation of hi-story biographical with lo-story untellables. Formally: Biographical time in metamorphosis of seeking true knowledge of the self; conversion stories of biographical time that dissolves into abstract time of ideal era; not the time-space of internal chronotope, but laying one’s life bare, illuminating it on public square in theatre of self-glorification, a masked identity completely on the surface, an exteriority (energia & bios). Early biographies in ancient times had energia personalities, not the kind of personality that transforms in reply to growth experiences. Energia is Aristotle's more ideal time-space. The struggle is with the public square, where the non-hero, the invisible servant or slave may come forward and deconstruct the lionizing story told by (auto) biographers. Example: McDonald's official (auto) biographies is plagued by counter-story biographers, who tell the other side of the story. See Kroc (1977) and Westman (1980) for official story biographies; Counter-story writing began with Boas & Chain (1976), was replicated by Schlosser (2001); and Ritzer's (2002) McDonaldization thesis (of systemicity see chronotope Greek Romantic) was countered by Watson (1997), etc. Image that follows, courtesy of Boje & Cia's work.
Five folkloric types
- Reversal of Historical Realism - Reversal of here-and-now time/space. An inversion to folkloric fullness of here-and-now reality, and material world (folkloric realism) becomes transformed by mythic thought into either epic past or ephemeral future (given more concreteness by the appropriation); the here-and-now of systems becomes exceeded by the historical inversion. Examples: the six McDonaldland videos produced by Klasky-Cuspo studios (makers of Rugrats, Wild Thornbirds, & The Simpsons). McDonaldland was strategy enacted by Ray Kroc to imitate his war buddy, Walt Disney's success with Disneyland; there is now an on line version of McDonaldland. For more including story papers on McDonaldland story strategy see http://peaceaware.com/McD
- Clown-Rogue-Fool - Out of depths of folklore pre-class structure are three medieval masks; mix of (5 to 9) folkloric & (2) everyday adventure & (6) public share theatrics & (3) chivalric romance and other adventures; the right to be in the world and see falseness of every situation; metamorphosis of being in life, but not a part of it, making public the non-public sphere, & laying bare conventionality of feudal & institutional hypocritical in a theatrical space (public square). Example: Ronald McDonald is the clown; Hamburglar the thief; Grimace the fool; ironic isn't it that world's no#1 fast food corporation has the Bakhtinian Clown-Rogue-Fool chronotope perfected, and all its grotesque humor.
- Rabelaisian Purge - Contains elements of previous chronotopes: (1) Greek romance of military or global-corporate campaigns, (2) adventure journeys to various countries; (4) biography of humor; (7) purging false official ideology & (3) false chivalric code/epic/religious/feudal using (6) Rabelaisian laughter of the 3 masks & grotesque realism, to (5) reverse the folkloric appropriation by modernity. The point is as storytelling progresses through the ages, the chronotopes become multiple, embedded in a given telling are the earlier types. While the (# 1) systemicity- romantic and (# 5) reversal, etc. chronotopes are salutatory, Pollyanna, all very positive portrayals of the official (facade/transparency) storytelling strategy, this one purges all that positivity. Examples: The purge begins with #2 the suddenlys of a Supersize Me documentary or a McLibel or a José Bové trial; it continues with # 4 when those servants and slaves begin to express counter-stories to the official corporate vernacular; but here at the Rabelaisian Purge - it is grotesque humor that is used by the activists to poke fun at the McDonald's icons, and at their spiritualization, such as McSupper, and others listed at http://peaceaware.com/McD
- Folkloric Basis for Rabelaisian. In short, the grotesque. Time is collective and part of productive growth, measured by labor events; generative time is pregnant time and concrete here-and-now, a time sunk deeply in the earth, profoundly spatial and concrete, implanted in earth & ripening in it (metamorphosis); pre-class consciousness. Example: the slow food movement, its focus on slow time to eat, on using organic foods, on avoiding the fast and furious; an antidote to McDonaldization by home cook festivalism, visiting the non-chain, local restaurants, where people take their time.
- Idyllic - Idyllic localism (organically) that fragments modernity. Idyllic folkloric time, is agricultural and craft labor, it is family organically grafted to time events and spatiality (place), living organically in familiar territory, in unity of place; rhythm of live linked to nature & cyclic repetition that is separated from progress myth; not a stage of development; a rebirth. Examples: Growing your own food, taking time to be rooted in a community, its non-fast food places. It would be a form of labor where workers own their tools, apply their trades, learn in apprenticeship. McDonald's apes the idyllic by invoking a family trope in its McDonaldland stories, complete with McNugget aunts and uncles, McFry kids, a sort of gay marraige of Ronald the Father, and Grimace the Mother; parenting of sister and brother, Hamburglar and Birdie. See http://peaceaware.com/McD for more on this one.
Figure 2 - Photo of Boje and Rita Durant in the Panoptic Pews of Lincoln Castle
10th Chronotope (from 1973, Problems in Dostoevsky's Poetics):
- Castle Room - refers
to time/space of trope of being in a Gothic
"Castle" or “Salon” that affects the sense of
temporality and spatiality in the storying going on there.
In such Gothic, as compared to more modern and postmodern
meeting spots, there is a change in the discourse, in the
atmosphere, in temporality and spatiality. A medieval
castle carries a premodern temporal resonance,
of feudal oppression and irrationality (Bakhtin, 1981: 246
for castle/see pp. 97-98 for meeting as device).[1]
In Lincoln there is a castle converted to a prison in 18th
century, where prisoners attended church, seated in an
arrangement (see figure 1., where they could see and be seen
by the speaker at the podium, but could not see other
prisoners. One could argue that various kinds of meeting places in
modern corporations afford have an historic way of orienting
our discourse, such as the Mahogany board room, a Playplace at McDonald’s where
plasticity of play is different from play in the forest, or
meeting in a McDonald’s without a Playplace is different
from one with.
[1] See www.literaturecompass.com/images/store/LICO/chapters/784.pdf and http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb00-2/keunen00.html