FIGHT CLUBS, AMERICAN PSYCHOS AND MEMENTOS
2005; Routledge; Volume: 3; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17400300500213461
ISSN1740-7923
Autores Tópico(s)Narrative Theory and Analysis
ResumoAbstract The present paper critically examines recent contributions to the concept of the unreliable narrator in film narrative theory. It takes issue with the latest tendency to unnecessarily widen the scope of the unreliable narrator. Instead, it is argued that only films in the classical Hollywood tradition that feature character‐narrators who 'take over' their narratives fulfil the precondition for unreliable narration. Only in such instances will viewers attribute textual incongruities and referential difficulties to character‐narrators who can be given sufficient authority over their narratives and thus the blame for their unreliable reporting, interpreting or evaluating. When facing textual inconsistencies and referential problems in storytelling situations other than that, we already have an adequate set of recuperation strategies at hand in order to resolve such difficulties, and concepts such as the tradition of the art film, the notion of the uncanny or the genre of the fantasy film will lead to more satisfactory readings. Notes 1. Thanks go to Yvonne Wolf who kindly allowed me access to the articles in the new volume on unreliable narration in literature and film well before publication. See Fludernik (2005 Fludernik, M. 2005. "'Unreliability vs. discordance: Kritische Betrachtungen zum literaturwissenschaftlichen Konzept der erzählerischen Unzuverlässigkeit'". In Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, Edited by: Liptay, F and Wolf, Y. 39–59. München: edition text + kritik. [Google Scholar]), Helbig (2005 Helbig, J. 2005. "'Follow the white rabbit: Signale erzählerischer Unzuverlässigkeit im zeitgenössischen Spielfilm'". In Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, Edited by: Liptay, F and Wolf, Y. 131–146. München: edition text + kritik. [Google Scholar]), Koebner (2005 Koebner, T. 2005. "'Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen im Film'". In Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, Edited by: Liptay, F and Wolf, Y. 19–38. München: edition text + kritik. [Google Scholar]), Liptay (2005 Liptay, F. 2005. "'Auf Abwegen, oder wohin führen die Erzählstraßen in den road movies von David Lynch'". In Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, Edited by: Liptay, F and Wolf, Y. 307–323. München: edition text + kritik. [Google Scholar]), Liptay and Wolf (2005a Liptay, F. and Wolf, Y. (eds). 2005a. Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, edition text + kritik, Mü [Google Scholar], b Liptay, F. and Wolf, Y. 2005b. "'Einleitung. Film und Literatur im Dialog'". In Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, Edited by: Liptay, F and Wolf, Y. 12–18. München: edition text + kritik. [Google Scholar]) and Meder (2005 Meder, T. 2005. "'Erzählungen mit schwarzen Löchern'". In Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, Edited by: Liptay, F and Wolf, Y. 175–187. München: edition text + kritik. [Google Scholar]). 2. Booth's original definition went like this: 'I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say the implied author's norms), unreliable when he does not' (Booth 1961 Booth, W. C. 1961. The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 158–159). But since several writers found the norms of the implied author 'notoriously difficult to arrive at' (Rimmon‐Kenan 1983 Rimmon‐Kenan, S. 1983. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, London: Methuen. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 101), or were generally unhappy with the concept of the implied author (Nünning 1997 Nünning, A. 1997. 'Deconstructing and reconceptualizing the implied author: the resurrection of an anthropomorphized passepartout or the obituary of a critical phantom?'. Anglistik, 8: 95–116. [Google Scholar]), there has been an intense debate about how to approach the topic in general. 3. See Olson (2003 Olson, G. 2003. 'Reconsidering unreliability: fallible and untrustworthy narrators'. Narrative, 11(1): 93–109. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Nünning (2005 Nünning, A. 2005. "'Reconceptualizing unreliable narration: synthesizing cognitive and rhetorical strategies'". In A Companion to Narrative Theory, Edited by: Phelan, J and Rabinowitz, P. J. Oxford: Blackwell. (in press)[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and especially Fludernik (2005 Fludernik, M. 2005. "'Unreliability vs. discordance: Kritische Betrachtungen zum literaturwissenschaftlichen Konzept der erzählerischen Unzuverlässigkeit'". In Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, Edited by: Liptay, F and Wolf, Y. 39–59. München: edition text + kritik. [Google Scholar]) who all survey recent works on the unreliable narrator in literary narrative theory. Although both Olson and Fludernik leave open whether third‐person narrators can also be appropriately called unreliable, neither denies that it is predominantly first‐person narrators that are deemed to be prototypical unreliable narrators. See Fludernik (1999 Fludernik, M. 1999. "'Defining (in)sanity: the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and the question of unreliability'". In Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context, Edited by: Grünzweig, W and Solbach, A. 75–95. Tübingen: Narr. [Google Scholar]) and Phelan and Martin (1999 Phelan, J. and Martin, M. P. 1999. "'The lessons of "Weymouth": homodiegesis, unreliability, ethics, and The Remains of the Day'". In Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, Edited by: Herman, D. 88–109. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. [Google Scholar]) on the different types of narratorial unreliability. 4. See Chatman (1990 Chatman, S. 1990. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 136–137), Fludernik (1999 Fludernik, M. 1999. "'Defining (in)sanity: the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and the question of unreliability'". In Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context, Edited by: Grünzweig, W and Solbach, A. 75–95. Tübingen: Narr. [Google Scholar], p. 75), Zerweck (2001 Zerweck, B. 2001. 'Historicizing unreliable narration: unreliability and cultural discourse in narrative fiction'. Style, 35(1): 151–178. [Google Scholar], p. 156) and Olson (2003 Olson, G. 2003. 'Reconsidering unreliability: fallible and untrustworthy narrators'. Narrative, 11(1): 93–109. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 99) on the human‐likeness of the narrator as a precondition for applying the unreliability judgement. As Fludernik sums up: 'It is because the reader's construction of the events and the reader's interpretation of them are contradicted by the narrator's presentation and evaluation of the story and because the reader's opinions are in conflict with the narrator's views that the reader constructs the narrator as a scapegoat responsible for that incompatibility' (Fludernik 1999 Fludernik, M. 1999. "'Defining (in)sanity: the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and the question of unreliability'". In Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context, Edited by: Grünzweig, W and Solbach, A. 75–95. Tübingen: Narr. [Google Scholar], p. 75; my emphasis). 5. Richard Neupert (1995 Neupert, R. 1995. The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 26) adequately characterises the cinematic narrator as 'the controlling voice constructed by the spectator out of organizational cues from the narrative'. I am well aware that the notion of the cinematic narrator is a convenient anthropomorphism only. On this issue, see Bordwell (1986 Bordwell, D. 1986. Narration in the Fiction Film, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], pp. 61–62) and Fleishman (1992 Fleishman, A. 1992. Narrated Films: Storytelling Situations in Cinema History, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 1–8) who are against positing a cinematic narrator for every film, Branigan (1992 Branigan, E. 1992. Narrative Comprehension and Film, London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], pp. 107–110) who is unsure whether such a move isn't more of an accident of speaking about narratives, and Gaudreault (1987 Gaudreault, A. 1987. 'Narration and monstration in the cinema'. Journal of Film and Video, 39(2): 29–36. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Burgoyne (1990 Burgoyne, R. 1990. 'The cinematic narrator: the logic and pragmatics of impersonal narration'. Journal of Film and Video, 42(1): 3–16. [Google Scholar]), Chatman (1990 Chatman, S. 1990. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 124–138), Bal (1997 Bal, M. 1997. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd edn, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 20–21) and Gunning (1999 Gunning, T. 1999. "'Narrative discourse and the narrator system'". In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, Edited by: Braudy, L and Cohen, M. 461–472. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) who are all in favour of positing one. 6. One might argue that any of these principles can be applied to any film that displays some sort of textual and/or referential difficulties. Although only in a few cases can distinctions be made clear and definite, this objection can be weakened by stating that very often the generic principle will have some influence on the perspectival principle and vice versa. Additionally, we frequently find one of these principles dominating the entirety of a film, and then it surely makes sense to keep these categories distinct. 7. Those who conceptualise the art film as a genre might even argue that since there are certain rules at work in a genre, the art film has to adhere to the notion of 'free indirect subjectivity', which is arguably the main characteristic of that body of work. Within film studies, the term 'free indirect subjectivity', as redefined by Pasolini in 1965, usually means to describe filmic instances in which subjective and objective narration merge into one without the viewers having the chance of disentangling them (see Orr 1998 Orr, J. 1998. Contemporary Cinema, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [Google Scholar]). 8. See Buckland (2002 Buckland, W. 2002. "'Cognitive theories of narration'". In Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis, Edited by: Elsaesser, T and Buckland, W. 168–194. London: Arnold. [Google Scholar]), Romao (2002 Romao, T. 2002. 'Beyond the threshold of legibility: the Lynchian aesthetic, characterisation and Lost Highway'. Film Studies, 3: 59–72. [Google Scholar]) and Coffeen (2003 Coffeen, D. 2003. 'This is cinema: the pleated plenitude of the cinematic sign in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive'. Film‐Philosophy Journal, 7(7) March. Available at: http://www.film‐philosophy.com/vol7‐2003/n7coffeen [accessed 20 May 2003] [Google Scholar]) on Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. In Lost Highway, Romao representatively argues, 'the viewer is unable to ascertain the appropriate conceptual backdrop by which to comprehend a shot or sequence since multiple, and possibly conflicting, interpretations can be attached to it. […] Lost Highway precisely gains its power by generating this kind of interpretive confusion' (Romao 2002 Romao, T. 2002. 'Beyond the threshold of legibility: the Lynchian aesthetic, characterisation and Lost Highway'. Film Studies, 3: 59–72. [Google Scholar], pp. 66, 70). In other words, Lost Highway gains its power from the production of the uncanny. Discussing the oeuvre of Lynch, one critic writes that unreliability begins where viewers are unable to distinguish between dream and reality and where the transition between internal and external becomes blurred (Liptay 2005 Liptay, F. 2005. "'Auf Abwegen, oder wohin führen die Erzählstraßen in den road movies von David Lynch'". In Was stimmt denn jetzt? Unzuverlässiges Erzählen in Literatur und Film, Edited by: Liptay, F and Wolf, Y. 307–323. München: edition text + kritik. [Google Scholar]). From a narratological perspective, the opposite is true. In unreliable narration, we will eventually be able to distinguish between subjectivity and objectivity. Whether we get a complete, objective version of the fictional world is quite another question. What Liptay seems to have in mind is the notion of the uncanny, yet she incorrectly labels it unreliability. 9. Note that the characteristic shift from an alleged impersonal narration into a personal perspective in these films without the means of 'fair play' is usually rooted in the notion of the supernatural. It is a 'convenient device' because bizarre events can be explained as being caused by the main character's subjectivity and his failure to understand his situation (Lacey 2000 Lacey, N. 2000. Narrative and Genre: Key Concepts in Media Studies, London: Palgrave. [Google Scholar], p. 112). As David Bordwell has shown, one convention of the detective fiction has been the rule of fair play, 'in which the reader has as good a chance to discover the solution as the detective does' (Bordwell 1986 Bordwell, D. 1986. Narration in the Fiction Film, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], p. 67). Unreliable narration will inevitably require a very similar 'detective framework', in that the viewer tries to put the pieces of the narrator's puzzle together (Fludernik 1999 Fludernik, M. 1999. "'Defining (in)sanity: the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and the question of unreliability'". In Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context, Edited by: Grünzweig, W and Solbach, A. 75–95. Tübingen: Narr. [Google Scholar], p. 78). However, the films mentioned above do not engage in this characteristic fair play because they apply frames of reference that are strange to us. That is, we can play detective as long as we want in these films, but we will find it difficult to make sense of any of those fictional worlds for the simple reason that they are so alien to us. 10. See also Edward Branigan's very similar distinction between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge (Branigan 1992 Branigan, E. 1992. Narrative Comprehension and Film, London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], pp. 116–117). 11. Without approving of Burgoyne's overall theory, Seymour Chatman comes to a very similar conclusion: 'There remains a final question about unreliability: does it make any sense to call narrators "unreliable" who are without personality or, as I have called them, "covert"? (This class includes virtually all cinematic narrators and many heterodiegetic narrators of novels and short stories.) It is hard to think of any reason for doing so. Unreliability depends on some clearly discernible discrepancy between the narrator's account and the larger implied meaning of the narrative as a whole. But that discrepancy would seem to depend pretty much on personality: there has to be some reason for us to distrust the narrator's account, and the only possible reason would be something in his character. Where there is no character—and hence no motive for giving a questionable account of the story—how can we even recognize that the account is unreliable?' (Chatman 1990 Chatman, S. 1990. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 136–137). See also Sarah Kozloff's conclusion in her Invisible Storytellers (Kozloff 1988 Kozloff, S. 1988. Invisible Storytellers, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], p. 126). 12. As Chatman (1999 Chatman, S. 1999. "'New directions in voice‐narrated cinema'". In Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, Edited by: Herman, D. 315–339. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 32) observes: '[I]n films, the [heterodiegetic] narrator's presence is only salient at the moment he or she speaks. […] seeing and hearing "the events themselves" in their total immediacy makes us forget that some external voice has told us about those events.'
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