On Framing – A Review

Context is everything, and everything is context.

We buy our cereal because of the packaging. Our houses because of the neighborhood. Collectors spends thousands of dollars on frames for their art. We wrap gifts neatly (or we try to), we present ourselves in ironed clothes, layered with ties and bows and little pocket squares because the outside matters. Because framing matters.

In a literary sense, the word “frame” generally serves to explain a story that surrounds another story. Forest Gump is a frame story, because the bulk of the film is the story Forest is retelling. The Princess Bride, the new (and original) Aladdin, and to an extent, anthology stories like Decameron and Canterbury Tales are all framed, bookended with smaller stories that support the big one(s) in the middle.

Authors use frames for different reasons, often they help set up themes early, like in The Turn of the Screw, where, at a house party, different guests are telling spooky stories. Frames can set up dramatic twists, irony, and tension. But all in all, it comes back to set up. The frame lightens the load so the story can just be the story.

The same is true for frames and packaging in real life. If you’re about to meet someone for the first time, your appearance tells the first story that your “audience” is going to hear that is by you.

 You might be thinking: “Okay, we get it.” But I’m rehammering this home for an important reason. Frames matter. Frames can’t not matter.

So. What’s my important reason?

Well, I’m arguing with me. More directly, I’m arguing with anxiety. The part of my brain that denies context. The part of my brain that focuses on the loose thread and not the surrounding fabulous purple sweater.

My brain will tell me that because some inane small thing happened, that the worst possible reason for that thing happening is true. And that’s bonkers. Like a curveball thrown to left field. Like, why would you throw to left field, and who’s throwing a curveball? The short stop? What’s she doing, that’s not how baseball works.

*Ahem*

Details matter. But the concepts and ideas surrounding those details matter even more.

As it’s often said: one can lose the forest in the trees. And I often find myself losing the whole tree to a stray leaf. I only make this mistake in myself; it comes in retellings and moments that come after the facts have passed me by and the context is gone.  

That puts me too deep in my own head. I become unable to escape from a life lived between the lines.

So, I have to remember that frames are important. That context matters. That while everything means something, something does not mean everything.

I have to remind myself that there’s a whole forest, heck a whole world outside of this one rogue leaf.

Stay frosty out there. Have a great week!

And as always, thanks for reading.