Skip to main content

Not an individual, but a type

By Anonymous
I had never thought about who my favorite narrator is. It's simply not a question one gets asked in everyday life. However, as I thought about some of my favorite narratives, I realized that several of them had a unique narrative circumstance that made them stick out: multiple narrators.

These are often stories within stories, where everyone is fighting over what really happened. This happens a lot when a group of people are trying to tell a story to a single person, such as at a mixed gathering of friends. The 1950 Japanese movie Rashomon gave a name to this effect, due to the movie’s usage of the concept in telling their tale.

In fiction, we may be treated to blatantly unreliable narrators, usually to comedic effect. My favorite example of this is in the show Leverage, specifically the aptly named episode "The Rashomon Job." The episode centers on each member of the team of thieves telling their version of what happened during a heist that happened before they met, which they were apparently all present for. The highlight of the storytelling was the gradual degradation of Sophie Devereaux's British accent, from proper to Cockney to Scottish to nonsense, which prompts an exasperated reaction from Sophie.

Image credit here

It also shows up in the Supernatural episode "Tall Tales," in which brothers Sam and Dean Winchester are fighting and determined to show each other in a bad light to their father figure, Bobby. (Please ignore the vid's thumbnail.)



This isn't a single narrator, but the fact is, I'm a sucker for the Rashomon effect in fiction. I tend to get into media because I love the characters, so why wouldn't I want each of them to have a turn leading the story?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"You don't look like your dad!" Tales of Legal Adoption

By Anonymous
"You don't look like your dad. You must be the spitting image of your mother!" or "Your brothers look just like your dad! I bet you take after your momma." I heard these statements a lot growing up. And it's true. I don't look like my dad. And for a while, I didn't really look like my mom. I do now, but that isn't the point. You see, my dad adopted me when I was around six or seven years old. He had been a part of my life, for, well, all of it. When my mother and biological father (sometimes I refer to him as my sperm donor, because I think it's funny, but his name is Chris), got divorced, my dad, Kenny, married my mom resulting in a blended family of me, who was biologically my mom's, and my two brothers, who were biologically his. Suddenly I went from being the only child to being the middle child in a family dynamic that takes a lot of explaining to do. They say divorce and the things I supposedly went through in my early childhood...
Post a Comment
Read more

I'm adopted and I have trust issues. Here's why:

By
I grew up knowing that I was adopted. I’m a fair-skinned freckled brunette who never grew past 4’10” so I fit in photographs just fine with my brunette mother and blonde father who adopted me at birth. When I was little, they told me stories about how God had sent me to their arms, how they had chosen me, how special I was because I was adopted. The story of Moses was especially prominent, as was Tarzan. I grew up in middle America where everybody still goes to church on Sundays and Wednesdays like clockwork and trusts Disney to raise their children during TV time. My mother was (and still is with my daughter now) a firm believer in keeping children innocent as long as possible. She adores small children and works with them exclusively at the church where she directs the children’s choir and runs the after-school program. My father always had a nonchalant attitude towards these things. He wouldn’t go out of his way to introduce us to things that might be a tad inappropriate, but he...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Calling, No Problem

By
I have no calling in a world where we all wonder what we're meant to do, who we're supposed to be. My mom called me the other day to tell me one of my childhood friends would be moving to my hometown soon because her husband had accepted a job with the Baptist church next door to her Methodist church. I don’t know why she thinks I give a shit about small town gossip or any news that concerns the church seeing as how she’s very aware of how I feel about organized religion. Nevertheless, she has nothing else to tell me because her world is much smaller than mine. “He used to be an airplane pilot,” she says. “Then why is he going to be a youth minister? How will they survive? Where will the money come from?” I ask, appalled. I know from my instagram that his wife is a stay-at-home mom of three. “It doesn’t matter, they’ll figure it out,” she brushes it off. “He has a calling to work for the Lord.” A calling. A goddamn calling. Half of my life, I waited for some fucking ca...
Post a Comment
Read more