The Definition of Distinctively Visual Speech

Distinctively Visual Speech

Distinctively visual is language that shows visually the similarities and differences between characters. We may also perceive a distinct visual image from setting and characters. The language used in the text will provide visual examples of setting, characters and time. Short stories create meaning within texts, about others and the surrounding world. This is shown in Henry Lawson’s short stories “The Drover’s Wife” and ”In the dry season” as well as the poem “Nesting time” by Douglas Stewart and the German film Run Lola Run directed by Tom Tykwer.

“Nesting Time”, a poem by Douglas Stewart combines an anecdote of his and his daughters experience in nature, with description of the appearance and behavior of the honey-eater, and his typical philosophical reflection in the relationship of nature and man. The poem is thus personal, objective and universal in its several dimensions. This is a charming poem that appears to comment on Stewart’s personal experience. He is pleasantly surprised by the behavior and appearance of this remarkable bird, which makes him forget the ‘hard world’, focus on its tiny beauty and cause him to reflect on humankind and nature. The opening is impassioned in its generalizing quality: ‘Oh never in this hard world’. It is apparent from this judgment that Stewart, in regarding our human life as a difficult and unconsoling affair, finds profound solace in nature and her creatures. The reader notices the contrast between his heartfelt “Oh” and absolute indictment of ‘never’, and the cluster of adjectives, with internal rhyme, which introduces the bird: ‘absurd/Charming utterly disarming little bird’. His love for it grows from an initial acknowledgment of its silliness and, then, praise of its captivating behavior to, finally, and adoring diminutive in ‘little’. It is Stewart’s descriptive language that brings the scene to visual life. The bird’s actions and purpose are highly visual through the often explicit and crystal-clear descriptions made.

The major visualization used in this text is the representation of the Natural world, which Douglas Stewart explores, in great depth. To visualize the bird and its behavior the reader are told that it is ‘mossy green’ and ‘darts from scribbly-gum to banksia tree’. The setting there is precisely defined in Australian terms and the first stanza, which opened so broadly, closes in an anecdotal and personal record: ‘And lights upon the head of my small daughter”. An affectionate identity is established, visually, between the smallness of his daughter and the little bird.

Descriptive language allows that reader to visualize the bird’s actions. ‘Its prickly black feet run’ allows us to imagine what it would feel like to have that bird run up and down our necks. The composers choice of ‘feet’ over ‘claws’ in his description communicates his positive delight at the bird. The simile ‘loud like wind it whirrs’ is multi-sensory as it effectively communicates both the sound and the visual and the visuals action of the bird flying and darting, reinforced by the compound choice of ‘wing-feathers’.

This poem can be linked to “In a Dry Season” by Henry Lawson, which invites the reader to draw a picture of the Australian bush in the dry season. The dialogue in the story also contributes to the visual images created. Douglas Stewart’s poem portrays the beauty of nature, but Henry Lawson, through his personal experience just like Douglas Stewart, has a personal dislike of the bush, best captured in paradoxical comment, “Death is about the only cheerful thing in the bush”.

Run Lola Run is an 1998 German Film directed by Tom Tykwer, is an intense, fast paced action film with a rather simplistic plot and unexpectedly deeper philosophical implications about fate, chance, time, choice, and consequence. Not a second in this movie is boring, as it is as high paced as the title implies, both physically and mentally straining.

Time and chance are the main ideas in Run Lola Run. Lola has a short time to get to her boyfriend, Manni, and stop him from committing a crime, but chance is against her. Life is depicted as a game that we play to which we return time and time again. This idea of repetition is foregrounded at the start with the epigram. Two quotations, one from TS Eliot (“We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time”) and the other from German football player and manager, Sepp Herbergern (“After the game is before the game”) gives us a clue that the film will deal with some big ideas about the circularity of life, showing that we come back to the beginning all the time. The words on the black background of the opening are then followed by a screen filled with hazy images of people, with occasional sharp focus on the characters we encounter in the film. We hear a voiceover telling us that the mystery of mankind is that we always ask questions and give answers, but the question and answer remain the same because life is a game. From there the starts like a game with a ball thrown up in the air. Throughout the film, tracking shots, dolly shots, fast editing, spinning shots and close ups are used with saturated color and a divided screen to create a sense of urgency and movement. The occasional animation reminds us that this is really not reality.

Lola is the main character that we follow through the streets in three versions of the same story. When she gets to the end of each story we have a flashback to an intimate moment with Manni, when Lola asks her first question about his love. The red filter represents both their passion for each other and the blood that is draining out of her dead body over this scene. A close up on Lola’s dying face allows the audience to shares Lola’s horror at her death when suddenly the story starts again.

Through the different visual effects of the film, Tykwer is conveying a strong message about fate, circumstance, choice and the relationships between people. There is a sense that we are linked to everyone else and that every encounter we have has the possibility of changing lives.

There is a sense of loss in Run Lola Run (“She presses to her face/its fine sharp scent of loss”) and desire to do more (“If only there were time”), which can be paralleled to Henry Lawson’s short story “The Drovers Wife”. The drover’s wife experiences a sense of loss where she experiences the death of one of her children. “One of the Children died while she was her alone. She rode nineteen miles for assistance, carrying the dead child. You can visualize this particular scene in great detail, portraying the harshness of the bush. It is lonely, stressful and dehumanizing. The reader visualizes the bush as parched and barren through images like “dried-up looking children” and the wife who is described as a “gaunt, sun-browned looking woman”. The experience of the bush wife reflects the harsh and unpleasant nature of the bush.

Even more than short stories, film is a visual form with its own rules and conventions. In Run Lola Run, the audience knows that the brief black and white episodes are memories of Lola’s family. We know that the clock with its hands moving symbolizes the passing of time. We know that quick changes from one shot to another speed up film. We also know that the camera angles have a specific purpose. The overhead shot of the square she runs through gives us a sense of the places and distance that Lola has run. The tracking shots under the columns of the train bridge extend the distance she has to run. The divided screen in the last moments of each story tells that two events are operating at the same time, We read that visual in specific ways that help us to understand the meaning.

Nesting Time and Run Lola Run are two great pieces of text that creates meaning through the use of being distinctively visual. These two texts are linked to Henry Lawson’s “The Drovers Wife” and “In a Dry Season” in their own ways. It is through the visual that we can share the trials and tribulations of people and the experiences that make up their lives.