Cut-Up Method in Gus Van Sant's "Elephant"

While reading William Burrough’s The Future of the Novel I tried to think of examples of novels I am familiar with that use either the “cut-up method” or the “fold-in method,” he describes. The cut-up method is likened to collage-style painting, while he explains the fold-in method as being, “A page of text—my own or someone else’s—is folded down the middle and placed on another page—The composite text is then read across half one text and half the other,” (Burroughs 305). Burroughs is interested in telling stories in a non-linear fashion, because “…with time and space shifts we see events from different viewpoints and realize that so seen they are literally not the same events, and that the old concepts of time and reality are no longer valid,” (305). I want to say that Burroughs is interested in playing with the context of events, but it seems that that is not quite accurate for what he is describing.

I am having difficulty thinking of a novel I have read that uses the cut-up or fold-in method, but the film Elephant by Gus Van Sant immediately came to my mind. The film is about a high school shooting, and is told from multiple perspectives. While multiple perspectives in a narrative is nothing new, what I found to be novel about this particular narrative was that the same scene would be shot literally from different character’s perspectives. The film will follow one character for several scenes, and then will change and follow a different character. What is significant about this is that if Character 1 and Character 2 are in the same scene, regardless of if they interact with one another or not, Van Sant will show that scene twice, with camera angles suggesting the change in perspective.

While at some points this style made the film tedious for me, thinking about it helps me to understand what Burroughs is saying when he says that seeing events from different viewpoints lets us see that they are not the same events at all. In a scene with Character 1 standing at his locker while Character 2 has an intense interaction with another student a few lockers down, showing this from both perspectives lets the audience see that any moment can have much or no significance to an individual. It caused an unsettling feeling in me as a viewer, because the interactions from the shooters perspective was suspenseful and upsetting, while repeating the same shot from another character’s perspective made the interaction seem nonchalant or even boring. While it is hard for me to find the vocabulary to describe what non-linear narratives do for an audience, I can say for sure that they cause an awareness in the reader that traditional narratives often do not achieve.