On Filmic Narrative and Fictional Narrators
Narration is a concept that applies across media and genre. Whether it’s Ron Howard in Arrested Development, the Stage Manager in Our Town, or Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, narration and narrative devices are easily found and identified across many works of literature, film, and theater. Film, especially, approaches the topic differently than other works may; it simply doesn’t always work to have a spoken narrator throughout. In this case, is there still a narrator? George Wilson certainly thinks so, and writes as such in Le Grand Imagier. In fact, he goes so far as to say that, within film, there’s “always” a narrator. Andrew Kania stands in opposition to Wilson, and argues against the ubiquity of narrators in film. In this essay I side with Wilson, and find that Kania’s argument isn’t compelling enough to warrant dismissal of Wilson’s theories on film narration.
To discuss this properly, we first need to understand what exactly Wilson is proclaiming when he states that all films have a narrator. Specifically, Wilson is not stating that all films have a heard, voice-over narrator à la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Big Lebowski. Instead, Wilson is talking about an implicit narrator. Rather than physically voicing a narration, an implicit narrator is a fictional, omniscient character that controls what we are allowed to see within a film. Though we neither see nor hear them, they are there all the same. They are allowed character: some are unreliable, providing stories with a surprise or twist (American Psycho, for example). It is easiest, perhaps, to relate them to narrators in literature. Just as a narrator in a novel is a voice to whom the reader listens, a narrator in film is one who shows the viewer what they are seeing. That is, it is through their eyes that the viewer is watching.
Let’s continue the literature analogy. Within literature, even though the author is the one who puts words upon the page, and it is their words that we are reading, our narrator is often not the author. You might call them an implied author, or a persona, but they, too, are fictional characters situated in the same plane of reality as the happenings of the novel. Film, Wilson argues, is no different. When we look at the implied narrator of, say, Rashoman (1950), we are looking towards a fictional character put into action by real people: namely, the director and film crew. Even though the cinematographer may have framed the shots, and the editor may have edited them into a cohesive story, they are not the narrators. In creating a film, they have created the narrator of that film as well. It is important that we maintain this distinction so that we may fully understand the argument that Wilson is making.
Andrew Kania, in his Against the Ubiquity of Fictional Narrators, argues against Wilson. Kania’s argument takes two main points regarding agency and fictionality. Agency, Kania argues, is difficult to establish regarding a narrator. For Wilson’s argument to be true, we need a non-human narrator; otherwise, our viewpoint would be severely limited, and our narrator would cease to be omniscient. Due to this, Kania rejects the idea of a naturally occurring image-maker (narrator), as we don’t know well enough what one is. I reject this point. Our inability to fully know an idea, concept, or physical thing doesn’t make it exist any less. We may refer to fictional narrators in a fictional world; by definition, they don’t exist in reality. But it is through an active suspension of disbelief (of which we are aware) that we are allowed to enjoy film in the first place. To throw out Wilson’s theory because we can’t fully know what a narrator looks like is silly and inconsequential.
Kania’s second point takes issue with Wilson’s declaration of two planes of existence: reality and fiction, and that all narrators are fictional. For Kania, this is far too difficult to create a sound and valid argument of. If we were to claim, “narrative is something with a narrator,” then there’s no issue: he finds this argument to be wholly sound and valid. But, in stating that narrative must have a narrator, a weaker argument is made than the one that Wilson posits. Ultimately, Kania concludes that it is simply too difficult to state that there’s a fictional “show-er” who stands between the author of a work and the viewer/reader who digests it. He claims that, if we come to know a fictional world through the voice/eyes of the person who created it (the author), then it is they who are the narrators. If this is the case, then the narrator is not a fictional character, but one based in reality.
While Kania raises a good point here, I still disagree. In order for us to maintain our immersion and suspension of disbelief, there is a need for a fictional narrator. Let’s take, for example, Dreamcatcher by Stephen King. The novel is narrated through the viewpoints of several fictional characters, all written by King. However, if we were to say that “King narrates…,” it would be a false statement. King creates characters and allows them to narrate his world. If it were narrated simply by King, then there is a further step of distance between the characters in the novel and the reader. Film is no different. Reservoir Dogs is a good example to use; it makes use of flashbacks and allows the viewer to piece the story together as it occurs. If our narrator were directly Quentin Tarantino, then the film would be different than it stands today, even though (as an auteur) he leaves his mark on the film in many other ways. If we are not allowed a fictional narrator, then our work must maintain one foot in reality: we aren’t allowed flashbacks, we aren’t allowed shots that would otherwise be unattainable. By providing an abstract layer between the filmmaker and the viewer, our immersion remains undisturbed and the film is conveyed in a more cohesive manner. When we watch Reservoir Dogs, we do not do so through the eyes of the director, but of the narrator.
Wilson’s main point is that narrative is a separate entity from the film itself. If we think of a film as a loose series of events that occur on a fictional plane of reality separate from our own, this becomes clear. In evoking narrative, we create a specter that follows and documents a specific series of goings-on within this fictional world. To say that this is the same as the director, the creator of the world, just doesn’t make much sense. Kania raises good points, but I find them to be insufficient to discredit Wilson’s theory of film narrative.