"Stranger than Fiction" proposed a lot of really interesting questions to me as we discuss literary theorists. I was really interested by the idea of the narrator. It seems in the film that the supposed author, Karen Eiffel of Harold Crick's life, well her voice narrates everything he does. The assumption Crick is under, however, is that the mysterious voice is not making these things occur, she's simply narrating what does occur. So in this instance, I find myself seeing the narrative frame as flexible. It has a narrator, but one dependent upon the actions of Crick, or the actual "text." So what does that mean then? Does the text give the narrator their voice? Does the text create the narrative frame instead of the other way around?
So all the while I have this assumption about this non-meddling narrator, who simply responds to Crick's behaviors/actions. Then, the end of the film comes about, and we see everything Eiffel is typing (or narrating) begin happen after she's inserted her punctuation. It seems then, that the whole narration is already predetermined and characters act out only what she writes. I find this a little contradictory, but maybe the film writers wanted to present two ideas about narratives in the film?
I'm not sure which sort of narration I would prefer, but I think more evidence is given in the film for the second, the predetermined narrative. Consider the whole segment with Dustin Hoffman and Will Ferrell, as they tried to determine what genre Crick was living, whether it be tragedy or comedy. I find their approach to that whole issue really interesting, because they act as though it's so fixed. But that's because genre is basically pretty fixed. So therefore, Hoffman's point was that once the genre has been decided, the proceedings of the plot have been predetermined. Eiffel now need only type to make it become "reality." Of course, she ends up changing her mind, and the genre is no longer tragic, so they can all live happily ever after with Eiffel's rather mediocre novel.
2 comments:
I was thinking about the omniscience of the narrator as well. I thought it was interesting in the movie when the Harold interacted with the voice. For example, when he uses the answer the voice gives for the math problem, it's hard to tell whether the answer actually belonged to the voice or to Harold. After Harold provides the correct answer after hearing the voice fix his mistake, what might the narration in the book read, "Then, Harold heard a narrating voice and corrected his previously mistaken answer"? Then, suddenly, the implied narrator of her book would become a visible character in the book, who Harold can interact directly with.
I think this, too, demonstrates how Harold and Karen share agency. There are moments when he reacts to the voice, such as the one above, which are not recorded by the narrator. Is the narrator omitting them in order to tell the story, or are these actions somehow obscured from the voice? This implies that the narrator may not be omniscient after all.
Furthermore, it's not until Harold gives Karen his approval to continue with the book that the bus accident can actually happen. He goes back to his damaged apartment with the purpose of living out Karen's end. What Karen can write thus becomes determined by Harold's choices. I see the story being a hypertext in that Harold and Karen's voices are co-constructing the story through a dialogue. Harold responds to Karen's book, and that response allows her to write the ending. Karen's knowledge of Harold causes her to change the ending.
I suppose I don't really see the story being predetermined. That would imply Harold has no choice and neither does Karen (they're both characters). I think by the end of the movie it becomes clear that the story is a product being written with in itself through dialogue of its characters--Harold and Karen.
Another interesting contradiction in the narration, though, is that the entire conflict of the film comes from Harold hearing the narrator say that he is going to die. Harold Crick's "imminent death" is the catalyst that allows him to change his routine and advance Karen Eiffel's story. I find it interesting that Eiffel won't narrate certain things that are outside of the plot like all of Crick's visits to Professor Hilbert's. She does, however, narrate other things that are in direct response Crick's reaction of her narration. There is no real dialogue in this instance.
If you think about Eiffel's novel on its own without the context of the rest of the film then it becomes completely ridiculous. Her narration would be disjointed and her character would develop in spite of her narration. I'm not even sure you could call this a metatext.
The weird way that Crick and Eiffel interact (or don't) makes it hard for me to view the individual stories in the movie separately from the movie as a whole. This may seem overly reductive but the because of the paradoxical way the Crick's and Eiffel's stories are intertwined I think that their story is entirely predetermined but only but the writers of the film itself.
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