View source for Engineering:Slice of life

{{short description|Depiction of everyday experience in art and entertainment}}

'''Slice of life''' is a depiction of mundane experiences in [[Art|art]] and [[Philosophy:Entertainment|entertainment]].<ref>{{cite news|title=Slice of Life|work=The New Oxford American Dictionary|edition=First|editor1=Jewell, Elizabeth J. |editor2=Abate, Frank R. |date=September 2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0-19-511227-X|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/newoxfordamerica0000unse}}</ref> In theater, slice of life refers to naturalism, while in literary parlance it is a [[Social:Narrative|narrative]] technique in which a seemingly arbitrary sequence of events in a character's life is presented, often lacking plot development, [[Social:Conflict (narrative)|conflict]] and exposition, as well as often having an open ending.

==Film and theater==
In theatrical parlance, the term ''slice of life'' refers to a naturalistic representation of [[Real life|real life]], sometimes used as an adjective, as in "a play with 'slice of life' dialogues".  The term originated between 1890 and 1895 as a [[Social:Calque|calque]] from the French phrase ''tranche de vie'', credited to the French playwright Jean Jullien (1854–1919).<ref>{{cite news|title=Slice of life|work=Random House Unabridged Dictionary|date=2006}}</ref>

Jullien introduced the term not long after a staging of his play ''The Serenade'', as noted by Wayne S. Turney in his [[Social:Essay|essay]] "Notes on Naturalism in the Theatre":
<blockquote>''The Serenade'' was introduced by the Théâtre Libre in 1887. It is a prime example of ''rosserie'', that is, plays dealing with corrupt, morally bankrupt characters who seem to be respectable, "smiling, smiling, damned villains..." Jullien gave us the famous apothegm defining naturalism in his ''The Living Theatre'' (1892): "A play is a slice of life put onstage with art." He goes on to say that "...our purpose is not to create laughter, but thought." He felt that the story of a play does not end with the curtain, which is "only an arbitrary interruption of the action which leaves the spectator free to speculate about what goes on beyond your expectation..."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wayneturney.20m.com/naturalism.htm|author=Turney, Wayne S.|title=Notes on Naturalism in the Theatre|website=wayneturney.20m.com|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514174112/http://www.wayneturney.20m.com/naturalism.htm|archive-date=2008-05-14}}</ref></blockquote>

During the 1950s, the phrase was commonly used in critical reviews of live television dramas, notably [[Engineering:Teleplay|teleplay]]s by JP&nbsp;Miller, Paddy Chayefsky<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=g3uY59k0XNUC&dq=chayefsky+%22slice+of+life%22&pg=PA171 Gottfried, Martin. ''All His Jazz'', Da Capo, 2003.]</ref> and Reginald Rose.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/R/htmlR/rosereginal/rosereginal.htm |title=Dowler, Kevin. "Reginald Rose". Museum of Broadcast Communications. |access-date=2008-06-20 |archive-date=2006-04-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060423082112/http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/R/htmlR/rosereginal/rosereginal.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> At that time, it was sometimes used synonymously with the term "kitchen sink realism", adopted from British films and theatre.

In 2017, screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identified slice-of-life films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy, claiming that all feature-length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres. The other ten super-genres are: action, crime, fantasy, horror, [[Social:Romance film|romance]], science fiction, sports, thriller, war and western.<ref>Williams, Eric R. (2017). ''The screenwriters taxonomy : a roadmap to collaborative storytelling''. New York, NY: Routledge Studies in Media Theory and Practice. {{ISBN|978-1-315-10864-3}}. {{OCLC|993983488}}. P. 21</ref> Williams identifies the following films as some examples of films in the slice-of-life super-genre: ''The Station Agent'', ''Boyhood'', ''Captain Fantastic'', ''Fences'', ''Moonlight'' and ''Waitress''.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book|last=Williams, Eric R.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/993983488|title=The screenwriters taxonomy : a roadmap to collaborative storytelling|publisher=Routledge Studies in Media Theory and Practice|year=2017|isbn=978-1-315-10864-3|location=New York, NY|oclc=993983488}}</ref> According to his taxonomy, drama and comedy are identified as film "types", not super-genres.<ref name=":5" />

==Literature==
In literary parlance, the term "slice of life" refers to a [[Social:Narrative|storytelling]] technique that presents a seemingly arbitrary sample of a [[Social:Character (arts)|character's]] life, which often lacks a coherent plot, conflict, or ending.<ref>{{cite book|author=Stuart Eddy Baker|publisher=University Press of Florida|year=2002|pages=83–84|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PaEvtL-dX3kC&pg=PA83|title=Bernard Shaw's remarkable religion: a faith that fits the facts|isbn=978-0-8130-2432-5}}</ref> The story may have little plot progress and often has no exposition, conflict, or dénouement, but rather has an open ending. A work that focuses on a minute and faithful reproduction of some bit of reality, without selection, organization, or judgment, and where every small detail is presented with scientific fidelity, is an example of the "slice of life" novel.<ref>{{Cite book|title=American Literary Naturalism, a Divided Stream|last=Walcutt|first=Charles|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=1966|isbn=978-0-8166-5885-5|location=St. Paul, Minnesota|pages=21}}</ref> This is demonstrated in the case of Guy de Maupassant's novel ''A Woman's Life'', which told the story of a woman who transformed an unrequited love for her husband into a [[Biology:Pathology|pathological]] affection towards her son.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Realism and Naturalism: The Novel in an Age of Transition|last=Lehan|first=Richard|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|year=2005|isbn=0-299-20870-2|location=Madison|pages=193}}</ref>

In the United States, slice of life stories were given particular emphasis by the Chicago school at the end of the 19th century, a period when the novel and social sciences became different systems of discourse.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research|url=https://archive.org/details/sagehandbookqual00denz_660|url-access=limited|last1=Denzin|first1=Norman|last2=Lincoln|first2=Yvonna|publisher=SAGE|year=2005|isbn=0-7619-2757-3|location=Thousand Oaks, CA|pages=[https://archive.org/details/sagehandbookqual00denz_660/page/n725 16]}}</ref> These produced literary texts by researcher-authors that were written to represent the subject's stories and sentiment-free social realism using the language of ordinary people.<ref name=":0" /> It formed part of the late 19th- and early 20th-century naturalism movement in literature, which was inspired by the adaptation of principles and methods of social sciences such as the Darwinian view of nature.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=American Literature from the 1850s to 1945|last=Augustyn|first=Adam|publisher=Britannica Educational Publishing|year=2010|isbn=978-1-61530-234-5|location=New York|pages=71}}</ref> The movement was an extension of realism, presenting the faithful representation of reality without moral judgment.<ref name=":1" /> Some authors, particularly playwrights, used it by focusing on the "underbelly of life" to expose [[Social:Social issue|social ills]] and repressive social codes with the aim of shocking the audience and motivating them towards social reform.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Art of Theatre: Then and Now|last1=Downs|first1=William|last2=Wright|first2=Lou Anne|last3=Ramsey|first3=Erik|publisher=Cengage Learning|year=2016|isbn=978-1-305-95470-0|location=Boston, MA|pages=372}}</ref>

==Anime and manga==
{{see|List of slice of life anime}}
Slice of life anime and manga are narratives "without fantastical aspects, which [take] place in a recognisable, everyday setting, such as a suburban [[Social:Secondary school|high school]], and which [focus] on human relationships that are often romantic in nature."<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Rivera Rusca|first=Renato|url=https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/30562|title=Manga vision : cultural and communicative perspectives|year=2016|publisher=Monash University Publishing|isbn=978-1-925377-07-1|editor-last=Pasfield-Neofitou|editor-first=Sarah E.|location=Clayton, Vic.|pages=61–62|chapter=The Changing Role of Manga and Anime Magazines in the Japanese Animation Industry|oclc=953459173|editor-last2=Sell|editor-first2=Cathy}}</ref> The genre favors "the creation of emotional ties with the characters."<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Hernández-rogelio |first1=Manuel generenze |last2=scot |date=December 2019 |title=Otaku Tourists Out of Japan: Fictionality , Shared Memories, and the Role of National Branding in the Japanese Pilgrimages of Anime Fans in the United Kingdom |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpcu.12871 |journal=The Journal of Popular Culture |language=en |volume=52 |issue=6 |pages=1524 |doi=10.1111/jpcu.12871 |issn=0022-3840 |s2cid=213535272}}</ref> The popularity of slice of life anime started to increase in the mid-1980s.<ref name=":3" /> Masayuki Nishida writes that slice of life anime and manga can still involve elements of fantasy or a fantastical world: "Fantasy is sometimes used as a means to express the “reality” of human beings under certain possible conditions."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Nishida|first=Masayuki|date=2016-06-06|title=Locality in Japanese Animation: Transboundary Interactions between the Animation Tamayura and Takehara City in Hiroshima, Japan|url=https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/jsn/article/view/52818|journal=JSN Journal|language=en|volume=6|issue=1|pages=29|issn=2586-937X}}</ref> Robin E. Brenner's 2007 book ''Understanding Manga and Anime'' holds that in anime and manga, "slice of life" is a genre that is more akin to melodrama than drama, bordering on absurd due to the large numbers of dramatic and comedic events in very short spans. The author compares it to teen dramas such as ''Dawson's Creek'' or ''The O.C.'' This genre claims a large section of the Japanese manga market and usually focuses on school and [[Social:Interpersonal relationship|interpersonal relationship]]s.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Understanding Manga and Anime|last=Brenner|first=Robin|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|year=2007|isbn=978-1-59158-332-5|location=Westport, CT|pages=112}}</ref>

One subgenre of slice of life in anime and manga is {{Nihongo|2=空気系|3=kūki-kei|4="air type"}}, also called {{Nihongo|2=日常系|3=nichijō-kei|4="everyday type"}}. In this genre, "descriptions of deep personal relationships or fully fledged romantic relationships are deliberately eliminated from the story in order to tell a light, non-serious story that focuses on the everyday lives and conversations of the ''bishōjo'' characters."<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal|last=Yamamura|first=Takayoshi|date=2015-01-02|title=Contents tourism and local community response: Lucky star and collaborative anime-induced tourism in Washimiya|journal=Japan Forum|volume=27|issue=1|pages=60–61|doi=10.1080/09555803.2014.962567|s2cid=143690685|issn=0955-5803|doi-access=free}}</ref> This relies on a "specificity of place," as well as a "peaceful, heartwarming sense of daily life."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Clyde|first=Deirdre|date=2020-01-02|title=Pilgrimage and prestige: American anime fans and their travels to Japan|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14766825.2020.1707464|journal=Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change|language=en|volume=18|issue=1|pages=63|doi=10.1080/14766825.2020.1707464|s2cid=213737486|issn=1476-6825}}</ref> The ''nichijō-kei'' genre developed from ''yonkoma'' manga, and includes works like ''Azumanga Daioh'', ''[[Software:K-On!|K-On!]]'', and ''Hidamari Sketch''.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Tanaka|first=Motoko|date=29 July 2014|title=Trends of Fiction in 2000s Japanese Pop Culture|url=https://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol14/iss2/tanaka.html|journal=Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies|volume=14|issue=2}}</ref> Takayoshi Yamamura argues that the rise in popularity of this subgenre in the mid-2000s enabled the increasing popularity of media tourism to locations featured in anime.<ref name=":4" />

Stevie Suan writes that slice of life anime such as ''Azumanga Daioh'' often involve exaggerated versions of the "conventionalized expressions" of the medium, such as "white circles for eyes in times of trouble, shining, vibrant big eyes to depict overflowing emotion, sweat drops, animal teeth, and simplistic human rendering."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Suan|first=Stevie|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/844939529|title=The anime paradox : patterns and practices through the lens of traditional Japanese theater|year=2013|publisher=Global Oriental|isbn=978-90-04-22215-1|location=Leiden|pages=252|oclc=844939529}}</ref>

==See also==
*Iyashikei
*[[Philosophy:Mimesis|Mimesis]]
*Mumblecore
*Vignette (literature)
*''American Splendor''
*''Costumbrismo''
*''[[Social:In medias res|In medias res]]''
*''Seinfeld''
*''King of the Hill''
*''Joe Pera Talks With You''

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5DC1030F930A35751C1A96F948260 "Film View; Mining the Eloquence of Ordinary People" by Vincent Canby. ''The New York Times'', December 3, 1989]


[[Category:Film and video terminology]]
[[Category:Television terminology]]

{{Sourceattribution|Slice of life}}