> but it also no coincidence that unreliable narration can suddenly
> be found quite often in films from the 1990s (I know 13 films from
> the 80s that I would consider as unreliable, while I've found 52
> from the 90s). The rising disbelief in images is probably one
> reason, the emergence of VCR- and DVD-technology that encourages
> multiple vieweings of the same film may be another.
> I'm not familiar with the development of the unreliability in
> literature, so I'm not sure if there is a similar development at the
> same time that would point to a reason that can be found on a more
> general cultural level.
>
> Best regards
> Bernd
Certain films can start a production trend. The comeback of the
flashback and of non-linear narration in a big way seems traceable to
Tarantino, especially Pulp Fiction (1994), while the trend in
unreliability got a major boost from two films in particular: The
Usual Suspects (1995) and The Sixth Sense (1999). Shyamalan ran with
it, as a consequence.
Since our era has often been called an age of insecurity (on many
levels), it does seem that recent cinematic unreliability seems more
relevant here than the literary precursors, which emerged in a big way
in the later 18th and especially 19th centuries, but can be traced to
the middle ages. I think we're dealing with something more current here.
Fundamentally, unreliability needs realism as a backdrop against which
it can emerge. Written or filmic texts which bypass this contract with
the recipient are strictly speaking not reliable. There is also the
paradox that when unreliability becomes a genre in its own right, as
with mockumentaries - The Blair Witch Project was mentioned -,
unreliability becomes highly reliable, and therefore the term uses its
usefulness. OTOH, minor instances of unreliability - e.g. someone has
a dream and then wakes up, and we realize in hindsight that it was a
dream - are extremely frequent in all kinds of films, so that here,
too, we don't tend to use the term.
Henry
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