Getting to the bottom of it
Question: if a play, musical, movie, book, uses the device of the hostile (or at least ambiguous-towards-the-central-character) narrator - Evita, Elisabeth, Jesus Christ Superstar, Hamilton - do you believe the audience is meant to share the narrator's judgment? (Amadeus is a somewhat different case from those I mean, because Mozart isn't the central character, Salieri is, as well as being the - actually somewhat unreliable - narrator.) Because now that my days with the Mouse are coming to an end, it did strike me that while in, say, Evita, I definitely have the impression that Che's accusations against Eva are meant as valid and to be shared by the audience, the fact that Hamilton in its very last scene switches its narrator from Burr to Eliza also could be read as a statement re: how it sees its central character, because the way musical!Alexander is presented is the way Eliza sees him. And while Burr is presented with great sympathy, the one valid point the musical lets him make is, ironic enough, in his early judgment on duels. (What I mean: when Angelica comes back post Reynolds Pamphlet, I have the impression the narrative is with what she says to Alexander. Whereas whenever Burr says something, from his initial "talk less, smile more" advice onwards, the story shows him to be wrong.
(Novel-wise, btw, the one that immediately comes to my mind when I think "hostile or highly ambiguous narrator to central character" is Wuthering Heights, which additionally pulls off several narrators, and the very first one is immediately shown to get everyone's relationships and characters wrong in his initial assumptions.)
Unrelatedly, have a fun link: The Guardian's choice of Top Ten Bottoms in Art, with illustrations, of course. This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1402456.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
(Novel-wise, btw, the one that immediately comes to my mind when I think "hostile or highly ambiguous narrator to central character" is Wuthering Heights, which additionally pulls off several narrators, and the very first one is immediately shown to get everyone's relationships and characters wrong in his initial assumptions.)
Unrelatedly, have a fun link: The Guardian's choice of Top Ten Bottoms in Art, with illustrations, of course. This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1402456.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.