Quoting myself

[womzilla]

From July 2007. Footnotes new tonight.

To borrow terms from Bakhtin (whom I'm probably misusing), there are two levels of a story. There are the events of the story (the sjuzet), and there is the telling of the story (the fabula). The sjuzet of Watchmen is extremely good and it is, to me, almost conceivable that a brilliant filmmaker could create a film which captures some of the dramatic effect of Watchmen on that level*. However, the fabula of Watchmen is one of the most striking works ever created in comics, and is inseparable from the comics medium. No film could capture the panel-by-panel comicness of Watchmen--the juxtapositions, the background detail, the panel-by-panel and whole-issue structure of "Fearful Symmetry".

I'm not saying there couldn't be a film that is as good a film as Watchmen is a comic. I'm pretty sure there are some out there**. What I'm saying is that what makes Watchmensuch an accomplishment is inherent in the fact that it is a comic book. Trying to make a film of Watchmen is like trying to make a painting of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" or a short story of M. C. Escher's "Relativity". You can make a good short story about a world which violates the rules of perspective, but you can't make a short story which is "Relativity".

The fabula of Watchmen reinforces the sjuzet, and the sjuzet reinforces the fabula. Separating them might still leave you with a good film***, but it won't be Watchmen, and, more importantly, it can't capture why Watchmen is the landmark that it is.

*In this case, some, but not much.

**This really isn't one of them.

***I liked it more than I feared and much less than I hoped.

ETA: In comments, crowleycrow points out that I haven't used the terms completely accurately--sjuzet is a more precise term than "story" and "fabula" is something more than "telling". Read his comment--I'd just end up repeating it. I think my basic point can stand, even if my terminology is a bit naff.

Comments

sjuzet fabula

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

Its a point CS Lewis made inhis own terms in An Experiment in Criticism no idea if this is a case of independay invention -not that I care much.
Basicallly to change form you need to take the original apart into very small pieces and put it back again YOUR WAY. & your not gonna satisfy fans of the original- I'm sure fans of the italian Romance Shakespeare got Romeo and Juliet from thought S. piece was a pastiche.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry I apparently missed this when you first posted it, because Bakhtin's distinction, assuming your usage of it is correct, is very useful. The people who praise the "faithfulness" of the adaptation in Jackson's LOTR are looking entirely at the sjuzet (and not closely at that), and seem to be blind to the fact that the fabula is utterly and completely different.

[crowleycrow.livejournal.com]

Actually you're not using them quite correctly, or rather they are more interesting than your formulation allows. The Russian formalist thinkers who devised them (not Bakhtin, though they promoted his thought)used sjuzet to mean "the events and persons of the story as they would appear or be understood, if they were occurring in reality rather than fiction." (The quotes don't indicate an actual quotation, the formula's mine.) The fabula, then is the way the events and persons are created and operate in a work of fiction. The value of it was in understanding what fiction is and does: for instance, in the sjuzet, every person has an equally valid but partial point of view. In the fabula not so: some people have points of view, some not. In the sjuzet, time can only proceed one way: from past to future, at the rate of one minute per minute. In the fabula, time can go backward as well as forward, and some minutes (or days or years) can be shorter or longer than others. So you're right that the fabula can vary -- the sjuzet can be treated in any number of ways.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Thanks--I've edited the post to indicate my misuse.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Which was the review website that had the review of the movie that you mentioned at NYRSF?

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

MightyGodKing's review, "It's Bad" (http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2009/03/06/its-bad/).