Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 23:58:11
-0400
To: [log in to unmask],[log in to unmask]
From: Jim Phelan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: restricted vs. unreliable narration
Mike,
Thanks for forwarding this exchange to the Narrative list. I'll try
replying to both lists and see if that works.
Am I right to understand that in this discussion on the film-philosophy
list restricted narration refers to any narration from a character in a
film? And, thus, it has two main subsets, reliable restricted narration
and unreliable restricted narration?
If that's right, then, Mike, I think the answer to your first
question--does an honest but misleading narration from a character belong
to the subset of reliable or unreliable narration--depends on the
activity of the audience in response to the narration. If, as you
suggest, the audience is clued in to the misleading nature of the
narration, then I'd be inclined to call it unreliable because the
audience still has to do what it would do if the narrator were
deliberately deceiving the narratee: reject the narrator's statements and
posit an alternative. We could, however, distinguish between the
moral character of the mistaken but honest narrator and the lying
narrator.
As for the second question--how do we talk about the honest but
misleading narration that we are not clued in to as it occurs? (I assume
we figure out later that it's misleading)--I think that again we have to
regard the narration as unreliable for the same reason as above, but that
the heart of the question is about whether we should say that the film
itself is unreliable, since it intends to deceive. And here, I
think, the answer is "it depends." Not disclosing the
unreliablity to the audience until later can be a very positive move if
two conditions (at minimum) are met: (a) the audience recognizes that the
narrative contained clues to what it was concealing; and (b) the
disclosure adds to the quality of the narrative by adding something
significant to the audience's engagement with it. If neither of
these conditions are met, then the audience will feel cheated and will
regard the narrative as itself unreliable.
The Usual Suspects is a good example of the first general type (though of
course Kevin Spacey's character is deliberately deceiving Chazz
Palminteri's character). BTW, David Richter has written some good stuff
about this film as well as about some others with major disclosures at
the end, including The Sixth Sense. If you're reading this, David,
perhaps you'll want to jump in.
Erich Segal's Oliver's Story--the novel and perhaps the film--is a good
example of the second general type. In this sequel to Love Story, we
learn that Oliver Barrett has been honestly mistaken about his father:
rather than being a selfish, narrow-minded WASP, he's a good-hearted,
enlightened, and generous man. But the trouble is that Segal has
given us no clues that Oliver is wrong about his father and that many of
the emotional effects of both Love Story and the first half of Oliver's
Story depend on Oliver being right about his father. The disclosure,
then, actually undercuts the experience offered by the previous
narrative; or, in other words, the reconfiguration the disclosure
requires detracts from rather than adds to our overall experience of the
narrative (some would say that's a good thing, but that conclusion is
part of another kind of discussion).
Hope there's something useful here. If not, then perhaps I can be useful
by posting the instructions to subscribe to the narrative list:
Send email to
[log in to unmask]
Include the following line in the body of your
message:
- subscribe narrative
Best,
Jim
At 05:34 PM 9/16/2003 -0400, you wrote:
-----
Forwarded by Michael Frank/Faculty/Bentley on 09/16/2003 05:30 PM
-----
Mike Frank
<[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: Film-Philosophy Salon
<[log in to unmask]>
09/16/2003 05:25 PM
Please respond to Film-Philosophy
Salon
To:
[log in to unmask]
cc: (bcc: Michael
Frank/Faculty/Bentley)
Subject: restricted vs.
unreliable narration
>"The unreliability of a narrative does not have to be a trick,
it can
>also be derived from the fact that the narrative only gave us a
limited
>picture of events and that we learn more, perhaps from another
>perspective, as in "Pulp Fiction," or "Go," where
we move from points of
>view to open up perspectives on the narrative that were missing
before."
>
>But this is called restricted narration, not unreliable
narration.
>'Unreliable narration' is a subset of 'restricted narration', one
that
>involves deception. If Ron T used the term 'restricted' rather
than
>'unreliable' in his post, then he would be correct. But as it stands
he
>is substituting a subset (unreliable narration) for the whole
set
>(restricted narration).
hmmmm . . . this is getting VERY interesting, and making
me
revisit issues i hadn't thought about for a while . . . while
i
absolutely agree with warren's important point i wonder
how we would classify a narration that misleads the
audience
because it comes from the restricted p.o.v. of a
character
. . . would that count as unreliable narration, or would
we
have to posit an intention to mislead in order for the
results
to count as truly unreliable??
and [to turn the screw a touch more] if a film gives us
the
honest but restricted and thus mistaken view of a
character,
without cluing us that the view is mistaken, do we classify
it
as [merely] restricted because the character intended
no
deception, or do we classify it as unreliable because the
film
itself did [it seems] intend to deceive??
need to come up with some example to help anchor the
questions
mike
PS-- i'm going to forward this memo to the
"NARRATIVE"
list-serv, for this kind of thing is their stock in
trade
********************************************************
Jim Phelan, Professor and Editor, Narrative
Department of English
Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210-1370
614-292-6669
FAX 614-292-7816
[log in to unmask]
********************************************************
Jim Phelan, Professor and Editor, Narrative
Department of English
Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210-1370
614-292-6669
FAX 614-292-7816
[log in to unmask]
