The Narrative Gaze - a study of storytelling in Teen Wolf - or why Stiles is telling the story
The more I delve into Teen Wolf the less convinced I am that it’s not a TV show at heart. It doesn’t behave like one, it bucks the trend and conventions and laughs at expectations - which I love about it, however that is often viewed negatively because it’s not what the viewer expects
lets face it we wanted a cheesy show about werewolves where they got their shirts off and what we got was closer to game of thrones where teenage werewolves take their shirts off
One aspect that I did notice, and it actually took a bit of convincing myself to realise seemed to be right was that Teen Wolf has a narrator.
Now typically a narrator sits in the corner and tells the story, they are writing the book, like Elena in The Vampire Diaries with her “dear diary” inserts. We know through that the story is filtered through them and we should expect a certain amount of narratorial bias. But Teen Wolf doesn’t have those scenes, but I’d still argue it has a narrator
and that narrator is Stiles.
Why? I hear you ask.
Now a narrator can be part of the story but is not necessarily the protagonist, often (in fantasy novels) they are the sidekick, or the tag-along. For example Pete Postlethwaite’s character in DragonHeart, he accompanies Sir Bowen to get the story. Dandelion in the Witcher is the same, they are friends but he wants the stories. Their value in the narrative is often eclipsed by their voice in the narrative. Now sometimes, as in the cases I cited, they are characters outside their narration, but in others they are blatantly the voice of the story.
However it is not always obvious whether there is or is not a narrator. A narrator can be the character through which the story is viewed. So in that way Bilbo is the narrator of the Hobbit.
Stiles is our Bilbo.
Let me tell you why?
In my last meta I explained about the ordinary world and the hook, the concept of everything is okay until something happens that starts the hero on his journey, like a dragon strike, or nuclear war, or zombies. Something, to paraphrase David Eddings, happened to stop the character growing turnips. He has a reason to go on the journey.
In Scott’s case that reason (and to an extent Derek’s as well) is Laura’s murder, the search for Laura’s body is what gets Scott out of bed on the night before school goes back and bitten. And who took him there? Stiles.
This scene is really good for showing why Stiles is the narrator. We never really see Peter, Scott tells Stiles the next morning that something bit him but we never see what, if we were watching as it happened, as it were, we would have seen it. We never see the actual bite. This happens a lot. The scenes we are shown are often ones that we can see where Stiles has been made privy to.
For example Jackson’s narrative and solo scenes in Season 2 end when he’s in the wagon, after he has spent a morning with Stiles, where he could have told him everything.
Derek’s scenes without Scott or Stiles exist in season 2 as well, where Isaac could have told him. The same with Isaac. It is only in season 3 where canon interactions show a level of comfort between Stiles and Derek that Derek gets scenes that Stiles might otherwise not be privy to, in other words, Derek tells him.
Notice how the only scenes we see of Jennifer and the Darach are ones to which other characters are privy.
Now a lot of the story is told by Scott, so it might be that Allison and Isaac confided in Scott who told Stiles. And you’re asking why Stiles and not Scott is the narrator, because Stiles keeps secrets from Scott and they’re scenes we’ve seen. For example, does Scott know that Peter offered him the bite? does Scott know that Stiles stood up for Lydia at the dance to save Derek? does Scott know about Gerard beating him?
If Scott was the narrator we would see scenes that Stiles was not privy to, but we don’t.
We know about Scott’s private time with Allison because he told Stiles. We know about the meeting with the alphas because he told Stiles who was not present.
This leads to narratorial bias. Now narratorial bias is not the same as an unreliable narrator. Peter is an unreliable narrator, he is not to be trusted, he tells his stories with an agenda in mind. Stiles does not, instead he has a bias.
Or he is lied to, or perhaps lied is to strong a word, exaggerated is better.
At first this is evident with Derek, in Season 1 when the hunters come in - this is a rare scene that Stiles has little to no explanation for knowing, except it’s blatant fan service, it’s Derek shirtless and working out. This can be read as inference, Stiles knew hunters had confronted him and filled in the blanks, and he didn’t know much about Derek except that he had a rocking body - which he knew from 1x04, so he had him shirtless when it happened.
Perhaps the best way to see it is in his interactions with Scott. How many of Scott’s moments of absolute heroism are ones where Stiles is absent, where there is just Scott and either his mother or Allison? How many times have we seen him be an absolute sweetie pie when no one is around to see it? This doesn’t mean he wasn’t, however it is worth noting. When we see him react to Allison around other people he has his head in the clouds, he is smitten hard, and spends most of his time daydreaming, but at the same time when he is with her he is eloquent, he says exactly the right thing - often it’s the only time he does.
Now it is not a pejorative character feature if Scott does do this, it’s a sixteen year old boy talking to his best friend about experiences he found wonderful, they are sugar coated in his memory so they’re sugar coated when he tells them. This is narrative bias.
He remembers them as wonderful so when he tells them they are wonderful- even if they necessarily are not.
It also explains the view of Jackson and Lydia’s relationship as abusive and why Lydia’s reaction to that was positive, because it was Stiles viewing it through jealousy, he only saw the worst of it.
How many time were scenes that showed characters isolated out of character, for example outside the video library Lydia is shown taking selfies - which there is nothing wrong with - but she never does it again, in fact in later episodes if Lydia’s hands are free she’s reading books on theoretical physics. So why was she taking selfies then, unless it’s how Stiles imagines her.
Why is her relationship with Jackson, which is abrasive because they both have personalities like that, shown to be abusive when scenes where they’re in groups are not? Because Stiles is biased and that colours our views of the scene.
In Lydia’s hallucinations of young!peter she is shown as in control, slowly being seduced by him, but ultimately in charge as she pushes him away, and threatens him when he pushes - but this is in contrast to the rest of the visions of adult and burned Peter, so could it be that when she told the story to Stiles that she gave herself that power?
A narrative bias is normal, we all experience it, but it means we have to look closer. I said in the recent storm over the Jennifer/Derek sex scene that it looked like someone’s idea of a manly seduction straight out of an eighties movie, and that makes more sense to be the imagination of a sixteen year old boy than a woman in her mid twenties. It is literally the dark apartment lit by the moon from the window as the sexily scuffed up man dominates his woman as a single saxophone plays - lethal weapon cringed at that scene even without it’s questionable consent issues.
But yet how many sixteen year old boys watch romantic movies as opposed to Lethal Weapon, and would he place Derek as the hero of a Nicholas Sparks movie or Mel Gibson? It’s one of the most telling scenes, and it’s also one of the scenes which is least favourable to Miss Blake, like her or loathe her that scene is really iffy. She is vastly inappropriate with a stranger and that is something else that makes more sense in a lethal weapon montage where their close encounters have given them a bond - but one Jennifer does not share (because she hadn’t had the close encounter) with Derek. It is an idealisation and a naive one at that.
If we look at the three flashbacks in 3x08 they are pictured by Stiles, because I do not doubt Scott came straight back to Stiles and told him what Gerard said- which might be why Allison was so manipulative in that scene when she has never been before because Scott has rose coloured lenses when it comes to her- so we see characters as they are, except Peter and Derek who are both idealised forms of their past selves because that’s how Stiles sees them. Even Derek’s mother looks like him, and that could explain the bizarre age discrepancy with Peter, why in Jackson’s reported flashbacks he looked like normal Peter, but in Cora’s which was a year or two before he looked like he did in Lydia’s, and Lydia would have shown him the photo.
The scenes make a lot more sense if we realise that we are looking at them through Stiles’ narratorial lens. He has become our eyes into that world, and Stiles own inability to see his own worth sees him underestimate his own abilities, we see him fail to convince Scott of most things, but yet in Motel California we see him triumphant almost despite himself, yet he does not consider what he did to be heroic, just normal, and maybe even a little desperate.
so yeah
TLDR
Stiles is the narrator and he is told the other character’s viewpoints which explains why we get the narratives we do, and a lot of the holes too, they are simply narratives Stiles was not privy to, it also means we should be wary of narratives that he is not personally present for as he is subject both to the unreliable nature of the narrator in question (ie Peter is likely to lie) or even simple bias - and his own fanciful imagination.