Through the lens.

[lil_shepherd]

A digression on the "unreliable narrator" in film and video in the middle of writing Primeval meta.

This sprang from some really interesting comments by louisedennis on this thread

Comments

[louisedennis]

I have a number of thoughts about this which I'm probably not going to put in a particularly sensible order.

Yes, unreliable narrator, is probably a bad term. However the use of the word "unreliable" does not necessarily mean "mendacious" - its not clear that the narrator in The Remains of the Day for instance is deliberately lying (very often, anyway) but he is clearly unreliable: he gets details wrong; interprets people incorrectly; and attaches import to the wrong parts of an event. I think this sort of unreliability is much more amenable (though not very common) to visual media.

I agree that since we accept that a lot of illusion is involved with TV it is dangerous to then suggest that the viewpoint is deliberately deceitful within the fiction. However, I think it is possible to do precisely this: wrong emphasis/misinterpretation type unreliability - especially, as you point out, in anything presented as a flashback.

However, in the example chosen, clearly Stephen's viewpoint; clearly drugged viewpoint, I think (if the

[louisedennis]

Of course, I post this and only then do I google "unreliable narrator" - apparently Lost is full of them, but I've only seen one episode of Lost so I can't really comment. Apparently also I should be drawing a distinction between unreliable narrators (who deliberately lie) and biased narrators (I'm very much thinking of biased ones).

There was a Moonlighting episode filmed in black-and-white in which Bruce Willis's character and Cybil Sheppard's each presented an account of a murder (attributed to a man and woman) Willis from the man's POV and Shepperd from the woman's. I remember when I first saw this that I initially assumed it was the same events from different POVs though it is eventually made clear that Willis and Shepperd are, in fact, making up entirely different stories. Wikipedia lists a few examples, of which the He said, she said song from Grease is the most obvious example of the same events filtered through different viewpoints (though it is also explicitly narrated). But it actually does appear to be surprisingly

[lil_shepherd]

Lost is, indeed, full of unreliable narrators, but all done in flashback - which is where it is, as I said, normal practice. The third person present is not, in those I episodes I have seen - first season - unreliable.

[lil_shepherd]

At the moment I'm collecting every thing that has been said or done for and about Helen in series, in order, to make it a bit clearer about how they have - or have not - developed her character, and that is the place for that discussion.

However, I have to say that, before that moment in the tunnel, there is no evidence of any bias against Helen from either Nick or Stephen in anything they say or do. Au contraire: "My wife was a serious scientist," "She was right," "I have to find what happened to my wife," "She would have told you [about the anomalies.]"

[john_booth]

It would appear to me that the camera is often an unreliable narrator in film and television. Any episode of Scooby Doo will illustrate the point. Scenes are often shot to lead you to one conclusion which leads you to believe something which did not happen.

From Hustle to Holby City via Eastenders the camera deliberately misleads. I think I have a Hitchcock film or two where Malkin explains how Hitchcock does it and why.

So the camera deliberately misleads all the time. This does not mean that what you see is not what happens, the lies are by omission. The shot that doesn't come from the gun you see and so on.

Perhaps the truth is that the eye is an unreliable narrator and film makers use it to their advantage. After all, we all know how unreliable eye witness accounts are in real life.

[lil_shepherd]

Misleading by omission is not unreliable narration. Unreliable narration occurs when the storyteller - in this case, the camera - shows something that did not happen as if it were fact - see louisedennisabove.

I do love it when someone else does the research and it turns out to pretty much support my contention.

[john_booth]

The metaphor that links audio/visual communication to the written word is quite weak in some areas. My contention was that if written down as filmed, the narration in a book would be described as unreliable narration.

The observer of a film/television program becomes the narrator, influenced by the cleverness and sometimes planned deceit of the camerman. One film trick I find very annoying is to only present a narrow window into the world and then to widen it out when the solution is shown. Very few humans have tunnel vision and even then they can and would move their head.

Naturally this is all a matter of definition,