Yes, there are of course many subtle distinctions among different types of
narrative truths and one can formulate and categorize and try to establish
some control over these slippery designations.  One finds in the process
though that there might be many many different types of unreliabilities and
that unreliability is itself difficult to define. Is Leni Riefenstahl's
"Triumph of the Will" reliable narration? The narrator apotheosizes Hitler
and his regime. The German audience might have taken all this to be "true,"
an "accurate" representation of German history, but the whole thing is a
lie. Who then determines whether the narrator is reliable?  The narrator of
this documentary is assumed to be telling the truth. So, now we might say,
well, propaganda is a different kind of unreliable narration, so that each
film problematizes the issue in a different way until we have thousands of
categories and subcategories of unreliabilities trying to hold each one in a
neat container while it is slipping out.  "Citizen Kane" raises this issue
in its own way, providing different perspectives on the same scene. When the
camera moves up to show to workmen commening on Susan Alexander's singing,
we get a new version of events and thus renders the original view of this
scene unreliable.    I think unreliability is a much more complex issue than
simply determining whether the narrator was telling the truth or not.  I am
not trying to render the distinctions between reliable and unreliable to
uselessness, but rather to explore some of the problems inherent in this
complex aesthetic issue.    Poe's "The Black Cat" is a perfect example of an
unreliable narrator in fiction--but there are no facts that counter his
point of view. We can determine that the narrator is unreliable by the
syntax of his language and by the way he responds to events. But what about
the unreliable spectator or the unreliable reader?  Can the spectator be
relied upon to dot the right lines and come to the right conlcusions?


From: "Warren Buckland" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2003 4:46 PM
Subject: It's all unreliable narration?


> In an attempt to work his way out of the contradiction he created, Ron T
> has reduced the concept of 'unreliable narration' to a completely
> useless level. This is evident in his final comment:
>
> >It seems that there is really no way of assessing the reliability
> >of a shot, image or sequence. Reliability is a very unreliable concept.
>
> There is no way to assess the unreliability of a shot only if you
> confuse, as he does, restricted and unreliable narration. If your
> argument begins with a category mistake, as Ron T.'s does, then you will
> inevitably end up making such comments. One way to identify a fallacious
> argument is to see what untenable conclusions it leads to. Ron T.'s
> conclusions lead to the untenable statement that 'there is really no way
> of assessing the reliability of a shot'.
>
> He also writes that:
>
> >The choice of any shot, which then leaves out alternative shots or
> angles, renders the
> >image unreliable. The choice of shots, close-ups,  camera movements,
> are all made by
> >an external controling narrator, one  that wants us to see the story in
> a particular way,
> >that shapes our  understanding of events, that moves the camera or
> skips across time.  It
> >seems then that all narration is essentially, by its very nature, by
> the very fact that some
> >facts are included while others are not, all facts are unreliable.
>
> Every shot is unreliable? Is the lying flashback in Stage Fright the
> same as any other shot in the film? Are we misguided if we try to make a
> distinction between the lying flashback and any other shot? Ron T. takes
> a concept that has a long history and tradition in literary theory and
> narratology, and stretched it until it becomes unrecognizable.
>
> Jim Phelan and Mike Frank are, like me, attempting to identify the
> subtle differences in a film's narration. Ron T. simply states that it's
> all unreliable, which implies that any attempt to make distinctions is
> just someone's individual, arbitrary interpretation, another completely
> untenable and misguided assumption (however fashionable it may be at the
> moment).
>
> Warren Buckland
> Associate Professor, Film Studies
> Chapman University
> School of Film and Television
> One University Drive
> Orange
> CA 92866
> USA.
> phone: (714) 744 7018
> fax: (714)  997 6700
> Editor, "New Review of Film and Television Studies":
> http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17400309.asp