Metadata of the chapter that will be visualized online Chapter Title Silly Questions and Arguments for the Implicit, Cinematic Narrator Copyright Year 2019 Copyright Holder The Author(s) Corresponding Author Family Name Curran Particle Given Name Angela Suffix Division Organization/University Kansas State University Address Manhattan, KS, USA Abstract This chapter aims to advance the debate on a problem often raised by philosophers of film who are skeptical of implied narrators in movies. This is the concern that positing such implied narrators leads to absurd imaginings. Indeed, the debate over the cinematic narrator has been at a stalemate most centrally because there seems to be no resolution as to whether it is or is not legitimate to "fill in" the implications of the implied narrator's presence in the story world. I examine how the "absurd imaginings" problem arises for all the central arguments for the elusive cinematic narrator and discuss why it is legitimate to fill in the implications of the implied narrator's presence in the world of the fiction film. Keywords (separated by " - ") Cinematic narration Implied narrator Absurd imaginings Fiction © The Author(s) 2019 N. Carroll et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19601-1_5 CHAPTER 5 Silly Questions and Arguments for the Implicit, Cinematic Narrator Angela Curran Chapter Overview Fiction films tell a story, with images and sound, and in doing so invite the audience to imagine that specific events have happened, as they are reported and shown in the image and soundtrack of the movie (Carroll 1990, 1996, 2006; Currie 1990; Walton 1990: 39; Lamarque and Olsen 1994).1 But how more precisely does movie narration work on the viewer so that she comprehends the story? Here there is a tremendous and fascinating debate regarding the nature of cinematic narration, or how a movie conveys the story events to the audience. This chapter concerns these disagreements. The focus is on the view that there are ubiquitous, implicit narrators in fiction films. Such a narrator is the agent that is tacitly understood to be carrying out a showing of the story events to the audience from the world of the film fiction. My chapter aims to advance the debate on a problem often raised by philosophers who are skeptical of implied narrators in movies. This is the concern that positing such elusive narrators gives rise to absurd imaginings (Gaut 2004: 242; Carroll 2006: 179–180, 2016). The worry arises because critics maintain that the "Realistic Heuristic" governs our imaginings about fiction. The Realistic Heuristic involves the claim that when we engage with a work of fiction, we "fill in" and draw 1 For an influential discussion of make-believe and the mimetic arts, see Kendall Walton (1990). For recent discussions of fiction and imagination, see Matravers (2014) and Stock (2017). For an accessible overview of some key debates about fiction and imagination, see Stock (2013). AU1 AU2 A. Curran (*) Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 implications from what is explicitly true in the fiction based on how things work in real life, unless it is explicitly stipulated to be otherwise. The problem, critics allege, is that when we "fill in" the implications of the implied cinematic narrator's presence in the story world, absurd imaginings follow. For instance, how is it possible for an implied narrator to convey the story of the Battle of Dunkirk from the scene of the action without getting shot or having to duck bullets? George Wilson, a supporter of some kind of implicit, "narrating agency" in fiction films, maintains that the indeterminate nature of what is true in the story world means that questions about how the implied narrating agency is able to carry out its mission are "silly" ones to ask (Wilson 2011, 2013). The debate between friends and foes of the cinematic narrator has been at a stalemate most centrally because there seems to be no resolution as to whether the questions critics raise about the implied narrator in movies are legitimate ones to ask. In this chapter, I examine how the "absurd imaginings" problem arises for all the central arguments for the elusive cinematic narrator and discuss why the questions critics pose about this narrator are legitimate ones to ask. In Part I, I introduce some terminology relevant to understanding the debate about cinematic narrators. In Parts II, III, and IV, three central arguments-The Narration Implies a Narrator Argument, The Ontological Gap Argument, and the Imagined Seeing Thesis-are considered and assessed. In Part V, we focus on the arguments for and against the claim that positing the implied narrator in movies gives rise to absurd imaginings. In my concluding comments, I briefly discuss directions of research that further inquires into cinematic narration might take. Part I: Narration and Narrators We should clarify some terminology. Fiction films convey a story, which is about something, what we call its fictional content. The story is concerned with giving an account of imagined characters and situations. A film has a plot, an underlying sequence of events as they occur in the story, and narration, the telling or relating of these fictional events to the audience.2 Cinematic narration is the way in which the film tells a story.3 Some of the ways in which we talk about narration in cinema has its origins in literary theory.4 Someone creates or makes a work of literary fiction: this is the actual flesh-and-blood author. The author is something external to the film, its cause or creator. So, for example, Conan Doyle is the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. An author also sometimes creates a narrator, an internal component of the work that is the fictional voice that recounts the 2 See Wilson 2003 and Livingston 2005 for a survey of some of the points in contention about narrative, in general. For skepticism about the usefulness of talking about cinematic narration, see Pye (2013: 136). 3 For an introduction to the basic principles of cinematic narration, see Bordwell (1985: 48–61) and Carroll (2008: 116–146). 4 See Gaut (2004) and Thomson-Jones (2007). A. CURRAN 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 happenings and situations that take place in the story. For example, in the Sherlock Holmes stories, it is Sherlock's trusty sidekick, Doctor Watson, who is a character in and the narrator of the Holmes stories. Similarly, someone creates a film: this is the flesh-and-blood filmmaker, the actual person who is the cause or creator of a film. Where it is reasonable to think that one individual exercises the most significant control over the movie, we can speak of the filmmaker as the counterpart of the author (Livingston 1997). Alternatively, when it makes sense to think of the movie as the creative product of a group of individuals, such as the director, the screenwriter, the cinematographer, and so on, we can say the movie is the collaborative project of multiple filmmakers (Gaut 2010: 128–132). When literary theorists talk about how works of fiction convey points of view on the events in the story, they often use the concept of the "implied author." This is a hypothetical construct whose viewpoint on what happens in the story world makes itself clear in the text (Booth 1961: 70–71; Nehamas 1981). Likewise, some use the term "implied filmmaker" for the hypothetical agent who is responsible for the sensibility and attitudes manifest in the film's narration.5 We said that a narrator is a fictional character that recounts the goings on in the story. Some novels have explicit character-narrators, such as Doctor Watson in the Sherlock Holmes novels or the character of Esch, who tells her story in the first-person in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones. In these novels, it is fictional that the characters are telling the story. However, some hold that in every literary fiction, there are implicit narrators-fictional beings who recount the story events as real to the reader. These narrators are implicit, not explicitly introduced, and they have no interaction with the other fictional characters in the story. The actual author cannot tell the story because she does not believe the events in her story happened. Instead, there must be a narrator who is part of the story world and who believes the characters and events exist and reports them as fact to the reader. The debate over cinematic narration concerns whether we should make the same move and say that there are implicit narrators in movies by whose actions we come to know about the depicted events in the world of the film. One central point of contention is whether the same reasons that some say there are implicit narrators in literary fictions carry over to support the claim that movies standardly have implicit narrators as well. A second is how best to describe the specific imaginative experience of the audience who watches a movie. We can understand this point of contention as a question about what the audience at the movies is "mandated" to imagine. 5 See Wilson's discussion of the implied filmmaker of Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) in Wilson (1986: 134–9). Some, such as David Bordwell, reject the notion of an "implied filmmaker" and, instead, prefers to talk about how the "narration itself" cues the viewer to be surprised, sympathetic, and so on (Bordwell 1985: 62). Greg Currie (1995a, b) uses the concept of an "implied filmmaker" to address unreliable narration in fiction films. 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 The idea is that a fiction film "mandates" or requires that the viewer imagine various things as part of their correct comprehension and appreciation of the movie's narrative. The second point of contention is then: are viewers at the movies "mandated" to imagine just the fictional contents of the story? Alternatively, are they also required to imagine how it is that they come to learn of the story events? If so, is it standard for viewers to learn about the world of the story through an implicit, fictional narrator? If the answer to this last question is "yes," then we say that the implicit narrator "mediates" our access to the story events and the narrator presents those events to us "indirectly" (Walton 1990: 357). Now, to illustrate, some fiction films mediate our access to the story by using characters from the story that the film explicitly introduces as the tellers of the tale, as happens in Shawshank Redemption (Drabont, 1994) or Murder My Sweet (Dmytryk, 1944). Films also tell the story by using omniscient narrators such as the voice-over narrator in The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001). In this case, the narrator belongs to the fictional world and reports the events as if they happened, but is not involved in any of the story events. But what does the audience imagine when they watch a fiction film where the story is not told either by a character-narrator or by an omniscient, thirdperson narrator, as is the case with The Wizard of Oz? Some claim that every fiction film has an implicit, fictional narrator who is responsible for conveying the story, as a whole, to the audience. Call this the "Ubiquity Thesis" (see Kania 2005: 47). We now turn to examine arguments for this thesis. Part II: Narration Implies a Narrator Chatman's Argument Why should we think that there are ubiquitous fictional narrators in movies? Seymour Chatman has argued for the implied cinematic narrator, simply by considering what is implicit in the concept of narration (Chatman 1990: 128; see also Levinson 1996: 252). Thus, Chatman's argument is known as the Analytic or A Priori Argument.6 His argument is that the meaning of the concept of "narration" logically implies there must be a narrator. The Narration Implies a Narrator Argument: Stage One (Chatman 1990: 113–15) 1. Every narrative is an activity, the act of telling or showing a story. 2. Activities must have agents. 3. The agent of a narration is its narrator. 4. Therefore, necessarily, for every act of storytelling, there is a narrator. 6 Gaut (2004: 235–236) calls it the former; Kania (2005: 47–48), calls it the latter. AU3 A. CURRAN 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 Stage Two (Chatman 1990: 133–4) 5. Fictional films contain narratives. 6. Therefore, necessarily, for every fiction film there is a fictional narrator. Chatman responds to David Bordwell, who proposes that narration is a process or activity of selecting, arranging, and rendering story material (Bordwell 1985: xi). Chatman counters by saying that activities require agents; there is no doing without a doer (Stage One above). In the case of cinematic narration, the agent carries out the showing of the story to the audience. The narrator is not an actual human being (see Stage Two above), so this means the narrator cannot be the actual filmmaker who creates the film. Also, Chatman argues the narrator cannot be the implied filmmaker. Narration, the act of telling a story, involves communication between a sender and a receiver, whereas the implied filmmaker (hypothetically) invents the narrative, but does not communicate it to the audience, says Chatman (1990: 130). Narration implies someone or something that narrates: therefore, in literary works and fiction films, there is a narrator, distinct from the actual filmmaker, who uses the soundtrack and the series of edited photographic images to convey the story. Questions About Chatman's Argument Some question the claim that narration logically implies a narrator. For example, David Bordwell's view is that every property attributed to a narrating agent can instead be ascribed to the film's "narration itself" (Bordwell 1985: xi). Critics say in reply that this involves an inappropriate personification of the filming process, or it is a shorthand device for saying there is a narrating agency doing the narration, which does not get rid of an intentional agency doing the storytelling (Gaut 2010: 200; see also Currie 1995a, b: 247–9).7 So many are inclined to accept that narration implies a narrator. The central problem with Chatman's argument is that it fails to establish that narration requires a fictional narrator. For even if we restrict the argument to fictional narratives, and we suppose that the claim that (a) there is a telling or narration of a fictional story, entails the claim that (b) there is someone who tells the story, it does not follow without some further argument that (c) there is fictional narrator or teller of the story. For it could be the author who is the one who tells the story.8 7 For the same reason, some who accept the idea that storytelling or narration is an intentional activity reject Kendall Walton's suggestion that there could be a "naturally occurring" and nonintentionally produced story, for instance, cracks in wood that seem to tell a story, provided the audience standardly decided to use such things as "props" in their game of make-believe (Walton 1990: 52). 8 See Kania (2005: 48), Köppe and Stürhring (2011), Gaut (2004: 235–237), and Wilson (1997: 299–300). AU4 AU5 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 Indeed, some maintain that given that narratives are artifacts that are made to communicate a story, the clear choice for the person who tells the story is the actual author or filmmaker. For the narrator is the person whose intentions have to be understood if the story is to be correctly appreciated and that would be the actual person who created the story (Currie 2010: 66). If this line of criticism is successful, the intentional nature of a film, as a work designed to communicate a story, leads back to the actual author as the storyteller, not toward an implied cinematic narrator. And the attempt to say that logic requires there are implicit fictional narrators in every film fails. Finally, when we think of explicit narrators, we normally suppose it is appropriate to ask things such as, how does the narrator know about these things? And, what is its point of view? (Currie 2010: 66). But there are no answers to these questions about an implicit narrator, who is not explicitly introduced as the agent giving us access to the story. Chatman tries to maintain that questions about how the narrator works are "non-questions" not in need of an answer (Chatman 1990: 130). But as we will see, such queries about the implicit narrator are not disposed of so easily. Part III: The Ontological Gap Argument Can the Actual Filmmaker Tell Her Fictional Story? The argument we will discuss in this section aims to make up for the deficits in Chatman's argument. It does not try to reason, a priori, from the concept of narration to the existence of a fictional narrator. Rather, the argument is that implicit cinematic narrators are needed to explain the nature of our engagement with fiction films. The argument, presented by Jerrold Levinson in a rich discussion of film music and narrative agency (and recently defended in Wilson 2011 and Matravers 2014), has come to be known as the "Ontological Gap Argument."9 Ontological Gap Argument: 1. Reason demands an answer to the question of what makes possible our knowledge of the story events. 2. Only fictional beings can have access to events in the world of the fiction. 3. Therefore, only a fictional narrator can convey to us the knowledge of the events in the world of the fiction. 4. We do have knowledge of the story events in film fiction. 5. Therefore, there is a fictional being, an implicit, cinematic narrator who is responsible for conveying the knowledge of the events in the story.10 9 See Levinson (1996: 252–256); so-named by Andrew Kania in (2005). 10 Levinson describes the cinematic narrator as an agent who provides access to the story world. But in a note, he also endorses another role for the cinematic narrator: the cinematic narrator is A. CURRAN 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 Note that the conclusion of the argument, (5) above, applies to all fictional movies. Thus, if the Ontological Gap Argument is correct, the Ubiquity Thesis is established. Implicit fictional narrators are ubiquitous; they are standard in all fiction films. Such implied narrators are "the best default assumption available for how we make sense of narrative fiction film" (Levinson 1996: 252). But does the argument stand up? If this is the correct way to formulate Levinson's argument, then several problems arise. One worry is that the argument is undermined by its assumptions (Kania 2005: 48–49). Premise (2) says that only fictional beings can have access to the world of fiction. But the cinematic narrator, Levinson supposes, is part of the story world. It follows that the audience cannot have access to the fictional narrator and its fictional narration since this occurs in the world of the story. So implied fictional narrators do not help with the worry about how we "access" the story world. Also, Noël Carroll raises a Platonic Third-Man style objection. The Ontological Gap Argument maintains that we need a fictional being to access items in the fiction. Since the cinematic narrator is part of the story world (even if it does not interact with the other denizens in the world), then we are off on an infinite regress, and we will need another cinematic narrator to access the first cinematic narrator, and so on! (Carroll 2006: 179). Another point of contention is the claim that only a fictional being can show the story events to the audience (premise 3). It follows that the actual or implied filmmaker cannot show or narrate the goings on in the story. The filmmaker, either actual or implied, can show us images, for instance, shots of the sets on the lot of Universal Studio, which are filmed to represent Frankenstein's castle. However, the filmmaker cannot show the audience the fictional goings on in Frankenstein's castle, for they stand apart from it, in the outside (actual) world (Carroll 2016: 117). Carroll challenges the Ontological Gap Argument by testing our intuitions about scenes in which movie directors appear as themselves, a not uncommon practice in cinema (Carroll 2016: 121). Carroll discusses the case of Bergman's Persona (1966), where toward the end, we see documentary-style scenes of Bergman and the camera crew (Carroll 2016: 121). What are we supposed is going on in this scene? It is natural to suppose that the filmmaker, Bergman, is appearing in the story, not some fictional stand-in. For, if contrary to fact, Bergman was to have a heart attack in the scene, who would we say died? Carroll maintains that our intuition tells us that it would be the actual director, Bergman, not some fictional doppelganger, Carroll maintains. These and similar examples (for instance, Hitchcock making a cameo appearance in his films) give us reason to question the sharp dichotomy between the fictional world and the actual filmmaker on which the Ontological Gap Argument rests. also responsible for crafting the plot, the underlying sequences of events in the story (see Levinson 1996: 280, footnote 21). 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 Defending the Ontological Gap Argument In reply, Levinson is likely to say the above formulation of his argument misses his central point. Viewers at the movies imagine that they are receiving visual information from the story world. The actual filmmaker cannot convey visual information from the fictional world. Only a narrator operating from within the world of the fiction, for whom the events are "real and reportable" can give the viewer the sort of perceptual access that she imagines herself to have (Levinson 1996: 255). Indeed, Derek Matravers recently argues that Levinson's point involves the "standard view" that to "imagine a story" involves something like, "to imagine it is a report of actual events" (Matravers 2014: 123). However, it is far from clear that this is the consensus view on what is involved when viewers imagine a story, by either reading a literary fiction or watching a fiction film. Critics insist that an important point is being begged in describing what the viewer imagines that she is seeing is a "report" of events, if this is taken to imply the viewer imagines she is seeing a visual recounting of actual events (Carroll 2016: 126). Instead, other explanations of how a movie works on the viewer so she understands what is going on or true in the story are available. Noël Carroll proposes the view, for example, that what is so in fiction is whatever the maker or makers of the fiction intended the audience to imagine (Carroll 2016: 122). Call this the Imagination Account of Fiction. If the actual filmmakers of An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981), for example, mandate that the audience imagines that American college student, David Kessler, is bitten by a werewolf and turns into one, then it is true in the fiction that this is so. If Carroll is right, there is no need to posit a fictional narrator, reporting the story events as if they are real, to explain how a viewer understands what goes on in the story. Narrative comprehension comes about through the "fictive intent" of the work's creator (Carroll 2006: 176). Derek Matravers, however, insists that the Imagination Account of Fiction is mistaken (Matravers 2010: Chapters 3 and 7). He firmly rejects the idea that fiction can be defined by the creator's mandate to imagine the story contents. For fictions mandate that we imagine, as well as believe, various things are so in the story world. For example, a viewer of Nowhere in Africa (2002, Caroline Link) is mandated to imagine various things, such as that Walter and Jettel Redlick are a Jewish couple that is forced to relocate from Nazi Germany in 1938 to a farm in Kenya. However, the director intends that we also believe various things, for instance, that Kenya is in Africa. Is it possible for the Imagination Account of Fiction to account for the fact that there are truths in fiction we are mandated to believe as well as imagine? In a very recent book-length treatment of imagination and fiction, Kathleen Stock suggests that it can. She defends what she calls "extreme intentionalism," the view that the fictional content of a work is what the author intended the reader to imagine (Stock 2017). In response to Matravers, she argues that the total content of a fiction is stored in the mind of the reader and then marked as "imagining." When the author intends the reader to believe various things are A. CURRAN 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 so in the story, the reader indexes these truths as beliefs. Thus, Stock responds that the Imagination Account can acknowledge that an author intends that some of a work's contents are to be believed and not just imagined (Stock 2017: 168). Noël Carroll explains how this type of mental compartmentalization might work. The default assumption is that what is true in the fiction is what the filmmaker mandates that the viewer imagine. However, as we work to comprehend the story's narrative, depending on the film, we might then "suspend" the mandate to imagine various things as so in favor of a mandate to believe these things instead (Carroll 2016: 124). For example, as we comprehend the story in Gone With the Wind (1939, Fleming), we imagine the author mandates us to believe that certain things are so in the life of Scarlett O'Hara, but then come to understand that we need to believe various things (for instance, that Atlanta is in Georgia) (Carroll 2016: 124). We might say that in Carroll's view, as we engage with a work of fiction, we go through a process of "reflective equilibrium" in which we measure hypotheses about what goes in the story against the evidence that is presented in the story figure out what we are mandated to imagine versus what we are mandated to believe. To be sure, more could be said about how this happens, as Carroll acknowledges. But in principle, we see how a response to Matraver's objection to the Imagination Account of Fiction works. Carroll's reply to Matravers also has implications for another point that often comes up in the discussion of the Ontological Gap Argument. For in defending the argument, Levinson seems to make use of what is known as the Assertion Argument.11 According to this view, movie narration works the way in which some think that narration in literary fiction works. Literary works employ declarative sentences to report the goings on of characters and events in the story, as does the first sentence of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets "Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four Privet Drive." Declarative sentences make utterances or assertions, and it is natural, the argument goes, for the reader to imagine that where there is an assertion, there is an asserter, the implicit narrator of the story.12 George Wilson builds on the Assertion Argument to argue that we need implicit narrators in literature for the reader to understand what is true in the fiction versus what is just supposition (Wilson 2007: 82–83). If, to use a version of Wilson's example, "Katie loves Hubble. Many people thought this was true. But was is so?" there is a question if we are supposed to take "Katie loves Hubble" as something we imagine is true in the story versus something we are just supposed to consider as a possibility. Wilson's idea is that to figure out that "Katie loves Hubble" is true in the story, we need to determine whether we should imagine a fictional, implicit narrator is "asserting" that this is so. 11 Carroll (2006: 197), Thomson-Jones (2009: 299); see also Matravers (2014: 123). 12 Walton (1990: 265), Matravers (2014: 122). AU6 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 However, we can see how Carroll and others might reply that no such imagining of a fictional narrator is necessary. The reader faces a choice of taking "Katie loves Hubble" as true in the fiction versus something she is simply supposed to wonder about or entertain as a possibility. Her task then is to determine whether the author mandates her to imagine that "Katie loves Hubble" is true in the story or whether "Katie loves Hubble" is something she should just consider as a possibility in the story. To determine the author's intentions, she asks which hypothesis makes the most sense of the narrative as a whole. No fictional narrator is needed. Wilson replies that while it is possible to figure out what is true in the story without imagining a narrator asserting it to be so, it is "extremely strained and artificial" to not have an implied narrator be the way one ascertains the truth in a fiction (Wilson 2011: 120). Conclusion: Where Do Things Then Stand with the Ontological Gap Argument? To accept it, we must make several assumptions about viewer's experience at the movies. First, viewers at the movies imagine they are receiving a report from inside the story world; second, that to comprehend what is true in the fiction, we need to imagine a fictional presenter asserting or reporting that things are so in the story world. Implicit narrator skeptics call both these assumptions into question. Instead, they propose the Imagination Account of Fiction: that we can comprehend what is true in the story by what the author mandates us to imagine. The Imagination Account faces some challenges, specifically the fact that sometimes we are mandated to not imagine things are so in the story world, but also believe them. This is a challenge that proponents of the Imagination Account acknowledge they have to meet. But they maintain that there is ample motivation to do so. There is simply no evidence that the "plain viewer" at the movies imagines herself to access the story events through the mediation of a fictional narrator (Carroll 2016: 126). As noted, in Part I, some suggest that the reasons for thinking there are implicit narrators in literature also support narrators in movies. However, novels convey a story with words, while the use of images is central to storytelling in films. In the next section, we look at George Wilson's formidable argument, which takes into account the nature of cinematic narration as visual storytelling. Part IV: The Imagined Seeing Thesis Imagined Seeing at the Movies Like Levinson, Wilson is interested in how audiences at the cinema say that, in some sense, they "see" or make perceptual contact with the fictional events and characters in the drama.13 Wilson acknowledges that the audience does not 13 Wilson (2011: 7). Wilson is inspired by a fascinating discussion of visualization at the theater and at the movies in Williams (1976). A. CURRAN 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 literally see the characters in the narrative story, yet he wants to take seriously their talk of "seeing" the characters in the story. To do so, Wilson argues for a distinctive thesis regarding movie narration: the Imagined Seeing Thesis, the view that movie narratives work on viewers by prompting them to imagine that they see the characters and events in the story, or "imagine seeing" for short. There are many questions that philosophers raise about the Imagined Seeing Thesis. One basic question is: just what is imagined seeing? Is it just a manner of speaking? Should the phenomenon Wilson calls "imagined seeing" be analyzed or reduced to other sorts of imagining? For instance, perceptual imagining, which is counterfactually dependent on perception (Currie 1990: 181–185) or "seeing-in," where one imagines one thing (a photographic image of Cary Grant) as another (an image of Roger Thornhill).14 Is the Imagined Seeing Thesis an empirical claim about how viewers, in fact, engage, with movies? (Stecker 2013: 153). If so, what is the empirical evidence in support of it? Imagined seeing is often differentiated from impersonal imagining, or imagining that certain things are so in the fiction, for example, that Harry Potter is a student at Hogwarts, the school for wizards.15 In contrast, imagined seeing is a form of personal imagining, for I place myself into the content of what I imagine, for instance, I imagine that I see Dorothy and Toto arriving in the land of Oz.16 Imagined seeing is thought to be a kind of experiential imagining because when a visual representation induces imagined seeing in the viewer, it is said to induce an experience one thinks of as "as if" one were actually seeing the events and characters in the fiction (Wilson 2011: 73, 2013: 167). Talk of imagined seeing gives Wilson a distinctive way to argue for his version of the implicit cinematic narrator, a "minimal narrating agency" (Wilson 2011: 112). This minimal narrating agency has no personal characteristics; its only function is to show the story events to the audience. Thus, Noël Carroll has dubbed this argument the "Seeing/Showing" Argument for the implicit cinematic narrator (Carroll 2016). The Seeing/Showing Argument: 1. Movie narration works on the audience by standardly prompting them to imagine that they see the story events from the fictional world. 2. If (1), then standardly, in all fiction films, there must be a fictional presenter, an implicit, minimal narrating agency that shows the audience the events from the world of the fiction. 14 For discussions of seeing in, see Wolheim (1998: 217–238), Hopkins (2008, 2016), and Stecker (2013). For a response to Wolheim that imagined seeing should not be understood in terms of seeing in, see Walton (2002). 15 Some philosophers, such as Noël Carroll, Colin McGinn, and Greg Currie maintain that imagining at the movies is standardly impersonal imagining. See Carroll (1995: 98–99, 2006, 2016), Currie (1991, 1995a, b), and McGinn (2005) and Gaut (1998: 333–334, 2010: 217). 16 For personal versus impersonal imaginings, see Currie (1990: 181–185). AU7 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 3. Therefore, standardly, in all fiction films, there is a minimal narrating agency that shows the audience the events from the world of the fiction. 4. If the Seeing/Showing Argument is correct, then, standardly, in every fiction film there are implicit "narrating agencies" that mediate our access to the story worlds and the claim that every fiction film has an implicit narrator is confirmed. But how sound is the argument? The Imagined Seeing Thesis: How to Formulate It? The Imagined Seeing Thesis needs to be refined, as Wilson recognizes, because there are some puzzling questions that arise when we try to take seriously viewers talk that they imagine seeing the events and characters from the fiction. The problem with imagined seeing arises from the following claims: if the audience imagines that they are seeing the story events, then they imagine seeing them from a series of definite visual perspectives. If they imagine seeing from a visual perspective, then they also imagine that they see from a vantage point that is within the story world. This would be the account of the IST that George Wilson calls "Face-to-Face-Imagined Seeing": Face-to-Face Imagined Seeing Thesis: When the audience watches a fiction film, they are prompted to imagine that they are seeing the story events by standing face-to-face with them (Wilson 2011: 36). But Face-to-Face Imagined Seeing gives rise to a host of perplexing questions. Is it plausible to think that as we watch Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017), for example, we are mandated to imagine that we are there on the beach at Dunkirk as bullets fly and the Allied Forces are rained down with bullets?17 What do we then imagine about how we are able to dodge bullets? And when we imagine seeing a murder in the story that is stipulated to be unseen, doesn't that involve us in engaging in contradictory imaginings, that (a) we imagine that it is true that the murder is unseen and (b) we imagine seeing the murder (Currie 1995a, b; Carroll 1995, 2005, 2016; Gaut 2010)? Wilson rejects Face-to-Face Imagined Seeing because he does not think it is true to the viewer's experience. It is not part of our engagement with a movie that we imagine ourselves located within the story space, at the viewpoint implied by the vantage point of the motion picture shot. So Wilson instead favors this version of imagined seeing: Mediated Imagined Seeing: The audience imagines that they see a recording of the events in the story world that has been photographically derived in some undetermined way (Wilson 2011: 89). 17 But see Thomson-Jones (2012), who argues that some films prompt the audience to imagine that they are moving within the world of the film. A. CURRAN 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 According to Mediated Imagined Seeing, the audience imagines that they see the story events, indirectly, through seeing a motion-picture-like recording of them. Just how this recording is obtained is not part of what the audience needs to imagine (Wilson 2011: 89–91). Wilson has a battery of arguments in favor of Mediated Imagined Seeing. His most central point is that Mediated Imagined Seeing is the best way to explain the way that aspects of cinematic construction such as color, grain, focus, camera angle, and editing mediate the audience's imagined seeing of the characters and action. For example, when the viewer sees the action jump quickly from one time and place to the next, as happens in the final shots of North By Northwest, what does the viewer imagine is going on? According to Mediated Imagined Seeing, she does not explain this as the actual filmmaker's decision to move the action by having a rapid cut. Instead, the viewer imagines that there is some editing going on at the level of the fiction, through the action of the implicit, minimal narrating agency. One worry is that, like its cousin, Mediated Imagined Seeing, is open to the objection that it gives rise to absurd imaginings (Gaut 2004: 242; Carroll 2006: 179–180). For if the viewer imagines she is watching motion picture shots of actual events, then she will need to imagine the implications of this, and embarrassing questions follow such as how is the fictional narrator able to record the incidents and go unnoticed? How can there be a recording of a story, such as The Ten Commandments (Demille, 1956) that takes place in B.C.E., before the invention of the camera? Wilson is aware of these objections and says that we may imagine that we are watching segments of the story world via "naturally iconic shots," shots that are causally dependent on the scene but need not be produced by a camera. So, imagining the presence of a camera or other recording device need not be part of what it is that the audience imagines (Wilson 1997: 113, 2011: 48). Thus, the burden of Wilson's reply to the concern about absurd imagining is that viewers can imagine things without having to imagine the implications of what they are imagining (Wilson 2013: 161). Wilson supports this claim he derives from some work by Kendall Walton (Walton 1990: 174–182). Walton's idea is that there are questions about fictions whose answers are not specified and so these questions are "silly," pointless, and inappropriate to ask. Wilson takes up Walton's idea and illustrates it with the example from Flash Gordon in the old black and white science fiction serials (1936). In the story, we suppose that Flash Gordon has a viewing machine that enables him to see anywhere in the universe, but such a device violates the laws of physics, as we know them. Wilson maintains that it is a silly question for the viewer to imagine how such a device works, for this is indeterminate or not specified in the Flash Gordon stories (Wilson 1997: 314–315). The same is true if viewers had to imagine the implications of imagining they are watching a recording of actual events. With this move, Wilson tries to fend off the absurd imaginings objection by saying that questions about how the recording of events comes about are silly ones to ask. 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486 487 488 In reply, critics such as Berys Gaut and Noël Carroll insist that what is known as the "Realistic Heuristic" governs our imaginings about fiction. Their idea is that when we engage with a work of fiction, we "fill in" and draw implications from what is explicitly true in the fiction based on how things are in the real world, unless it is explicitly stipulated to be otherwise.18In the Flash Gordon serials, the story makes explicit that the screening devices work as shown. So, we go along with this feature of Flash's screen, just as we go along with the idea, in other stories, that there are wizards that can perform magic, there are zombies that are dead and alive, and so on (Carroll 2006: 181). In short, critics charge that Wilson's defense rests on a misleading analogy (Carroll 2006: 181). Because Flash's screening device is explicitly introduced to work as represented, we do not take issue with it. We suspend "default realism" and do not expend energy worrying about it. However, no one clues us into the implicit narrator: it is, after all, an implicit feature of the narration, not explicit. So, we cannot fend off worries about how the cinematic operator with the thought "just accept the filmmaker says this is how things work" (Carroll 2006: 125). Because there is not, in other words, an exceptions clause for the cinematic narrator, the Realistic Heuristic licenses us to imaginatively fill in the implications of its presence in the story world (Carroll 2006: 181). Thus, the debate between Wilson and his critics concerns whether the questions that critics ask about the operation of Wilson's version of the implicit cinematic narrator are "silly" ones to ask. This is the question we examine in the next section. Part V: Reconsidering the Objection from Absurd Imaginings To review, by far, the most serious objection that friends of the implicit cinematic narrator face is the concern about absurd imaginings. This question dogs all versions of the cinematic narrator we have discussed. In response to this problem, Chatman maintained that questions about how the narrator comes to have its knowledge are "non-questions" (Chatman 1990: 130). Levinson had to fend off Kania's concern that it is not possible to say a fictional narrator is our guide to the story's sights and sounds without embarrassing questions about the narrator following. Also, Wilson faces the objection that his Mediating Imagined Seeing thesis cannot avoid the sort of absurdities that have plagued other formulations of imagined seeing. The question we must now, then, try to sort out is whether the critics' questions about the cinematic narrator are legitimate ones to ask. Concerns about improbabilities in works of fiction go back to Aristotle's Poetics, where he said that ideally there should be no improbabilities in the plot (Poetics 1460b27). Drama is an imitation of human action and life. Dramas that have improbable incidents, especially in the plot, undermine the sense that goings on in the drama work as they do in real life. For things in real life obey 18 Gaut (2004: 245), Carroll (2006: 181, 2016: 120). A. CURRAN 489 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497 498 499 500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508 509 510 511 512 513 514 515 516 517 518 519 520 521 522 523 524 525 526 527 528 529 cause and effect, and the audience's emotional response to the story depends on their making a connection between the fiction and everyday life. Thus, plays that build to a narrative resolution by having a deus ex machina solution, such as Medea improbably spirited away in a chariot at the last minute, are to be avoided, unless there is some overriding reason to include them (Poetics 15.1454a37). Also, when the poet must include them, to achieve a certain effect, the artist should find ways to de-emphasize them, for instance, by including them in the "backstory" of the larger story world from which the play draws, and not as part of the events that are dramatized in front of the audience on the stage (Poetics 15.1454b5-7). Kendall Walton voices similar ideas when he advances the "Reality Principle" (Walton 1990:144–151). To comprehend and appreciate the story, we must "fill in: a great deal of information that is not explicitly represented.19 The Reality Principle directs an appreciator of fiction to "fill in" or infer from what is explicitly presented in the fiction, based on the idea that the fictional world operates as the real world does. So, for example, to appreciate the Harry Potter stories and movies, we have to infer things that the novel does not explicitly introduce: even though Harry is a wizard and can perform magic, in every other relevant respect, Harry is like ordinary "muggles"-he is not immortal, has parents, and so on. Thus, Walton's "Reality Principle" is very much like Carroll and Gaut's "Realistic Heuristic." One might say that, in general, the Realistic Heuristic, the idea that we fill what is true in the fiction according to how things work in real life, is sound. For an important, if not universally accepted, way of thinking about fiction is that it is capable of affecting a change in the audience's view of themselves and the world.20 To do so, works of fiction must present representations of human action that are broadly realistic and true to life, unless things are specified otherwise in the story (for instance, Flash Gordon's viewing screen or magic in the world of Harry Potter). Further, there is an important practical reason for assuming that the Reality Principle holds. It is just not possible for an author or filmmaker to fill out everything that is true in the story world she creates for the reader or viewer. To do so would run the risk of distracting from the appreciation of what is essential and relevant to know and what is not. Instead, with the Reality Principle, the creator of the fiction can leave certain fictional truths implicit, and we use how things work in the real world to fill in information about the story world. When the story world departs from the real world, this exception can be explicitly introduced. So, the Reality Principle provides a practical way for the appreciator of a fictional work to "fill out" the story world, without leaving the contents of the story world mostly unspecified (Gaut 2004: 245). 19 The problem of just what an appreciator of fiction "fills in" as she comprehends a story is a subject of great debate. See, for example, Lewis (1978), Beardsley (1981: 242–247), Walton (1990: 144–161), Lamarque (1990), and Lorand (2001). 20 Catherine Wilson (2004), Elisabeth Schellenkens (2007). AU8 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 530 531 532 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547 548 549 550 551 552 553 554 555 556 557 558 559 560 561 562 563 564 565 566 567 568 569 In response, Wilson is likely to insist that there are paradoxes and inconsistencies at the base of many fictional narratives. A prime example that Wilson gives comes from the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is fictional that Huck, a barely literate young man who goes stir crazy when he sits for too long, wrote the 300-page memoir about his adventures (Wilson 1997: 309). If we ask how this could be, we would get tangled up in imagining absurd scenarios that distract from our proper appreciation of the story. Wilson suggests we are just not meant to imagine the implications of how such a narrative feat is possible, and so the Realistic Heuristic is blocked. We need not imagine all the implications of how Huck could have crafted the tale. In other words, we should not expend energy worrying about the embarrassing questions about the cinematic narrator/fictional shower because they have no answer within the world of the story, and so they are silly questions to ask (Wilson 1997: 308–9; Wilson 2011: 48). It might appear that we have arrived at a stalemate or impasse between philosophers on both sides of the debate. However, we might make headway by looking more closely at some of the examples that are often given of silly questions to ask. If these paradigm examples are like, in relevant respects, questions one might ask about the cinematic narrator, then Wilson's argument might be plausible. On the other hand, if the agreed upon examples are not sufficiently like asking questions about the cinematic narrator, then we might have some reason for thinking that Wilson's response to his critics is not plausible. Centrally, the silly questions that Walton considers to be inappropriate are so because it is wrong to seek an answer in the world of the fiction. Instead, we find the answer outside the story world, by considering the generic conventions that govern the art form in question. For example, the audience at the opera does not ask why it is that the characters in opera often spend their last moments singing, while they are passing away in excruciating pain! (Walton 1990: 177). Only someone who was ignorant of the conventions of opera, as a particular art form, would ask this question. Further, it is fictional in the play, The Belle of Amherst, that the character, Emily Dickinson, is shy and retiring, a person of few words. However, the actor who impersonates Dickinson has many lines and commands the attention of the audience (Walton 1990: 176). It is silly or inappropriate to ask why a quiet person is talking so much and expect the answer to be found within the terms of the story. The conventions and nature of a play of this sort require that the character talk a lot to convey the poet's thoughts and feelings. In these types of cases, as Greg Currie notes, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the features of the representation, for instance, of Othello and the features that Othello has in the story world (Currie 2010: 59). That is, a well-informed spectator of theater understands that the poetic speeches that Othello offers, for example, do not reflect a quality in the character of Othello, but are there instead to stir the emotions with the beauty and eloquence of the quality of the language. As Currie puts it, "While the words uttered by the actor constitute great poetry, they are not represented as representing great poetry in the mouth of the character" (Currie 2010: 60). A. CURRAN 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577 578 579 580 581 582 583 584 585 586 587 588 589 590 591 592 593 594 595 596 597 598 599 600 601 602 603 604 605 606 607 608 609 610 611 612 613 614 Generalizing from these examples, we can explain why the questions one could raise in these cases are inappropriate ones to ask. A question is a silly one, in these cases, to ask, provided the answer is not found within the terms of the fiction but instead is explained by the nature of the genre of the artwork and its associated conventions. We can also see how accepting that these cases involve silly questions is compatible with holding our imaginings about fiction are, in general, governed by the Realistic Heuristic. It is not given as true in the fiction that Othello is a fine poet or speechmaker: this is a feature of how Othello is represented due to the artistic requirements of Shakespeare's plays. As such, we are not mandated to imagine the implications for what is true in the story world when Othello makes a beautiful speech. Similarly, we are not required to infer what follows from imagining that barely literate Huck Finn authors a 300-page memoir. We understand it is Mark Twain's words that are the source of the fictional memoir, not Huck Finn's, because fictional narratives have to be crafted by actual authors. So, we understand that we do not need to infer what follows for the story world if we imagine that we are reading a lengthy fictional memoir that Huck pens. Now what follows for the debate between Wilson and his critics over the absurd imaginings? Recall that on Wilson's Mediated Imagined Seeing thesis, when we watch a movie, we are to imagine that we are watching a recording of the story events taken from within the fictional world. Critics ask, how was such a recording made? How could there be a recording of events if the story is set in a time before the camera was invented? And, further, if we suppose that some naturally occurring camera is the source of the shots we are seeing, what are we to imagine about point-of-view shots? How can naturally occurring cameras get inside people's heads? Are the questions that his critics pose silly ones to ask? Recall that according to Wilson's Mediated Imagined Seeing, we are to imagine that it is true in the story world that such a recording was made. For recalling the Ontological Gap Argument, the narrator or narrating device has to be imagined to be part of the fictional world in order for us to imagine that what we are seeing is a recording taking place from within the story world. The objection then is that once we imagine a recording takes place in the world of the fiction, we must imagine what follows from this, in accordance with the Realistic Heuristic. But when imagine what follows from the presence of a recording of the story events, absurd imaginings follow. Wilson insists that to seek answers to these questions is inappropriate. But our examination of some central cases of silly question pertaining to fiction suggests that the questions about how the recording comes about are legitimate ones to ask. For we said that there is no reason to think that it is true in the fiction that Huck is a literate or capable of sitting still long enough to write a 300-page memoir. And there is no reason to think it is true in the fiction that Othello, a brash man of action, makes beautiful speeches, and so on with the other examples we looked at. But Wilson would have us imagine that it is true AU9 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623 624 625 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639 640 641 642 643 644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 in the fiction that there is a recording of the story events or fictional facts. This means, as Wilson's critics charge, that once we suppose that the implicit narrator (or minimal narrating agency) is part of the fictional world, it is reasonable to fill in the implications of its presence there. And when we do, we get tangled up in the embarrassing questions about the cinematic narrator that we have rehearsed in this section.21 Conclusion: Further Issues for Cinematic Narration If we are skeptics about imagined seeing as the way movies work on us as viewers, is there another way to explain the phenomena to which Wilson's work draws our attention? For Wilson is insistent that any account of how movie narratives engage our imagination will need to address the way in which viewers at the movies describe their experiences as that it is "as if " they are seeing segments of the story world. A concern with explaining the impression that we are making perceptual contact with the story world also clearly motivates Levinson's Ontological Gap Argument. But explaining our engagement with movies in terms of imagined perceptual relations faces problems, as we have seen. How might we undertake to explain how film as a distinctively visual form of storytelling works on us, the viewers? Greg Currie proposes that we distinguish visual fictions from nonvisual fiction by how film narration determines or conveys the story content. Currie uses the term "perceptual imagining" to mark out the distinctive kind of imagining movies prompt in viewers (Currie 1991: 140, 1995a, b: Chapter 6). When a viewer watches a movie, it is the viewer's actual perception of a visual image that prompts her imagining the story's contents. In visual fictions, the viewer's imagining of story events is then counterfactually dependent on looking at images.22 Noël Carroll discusses the distinct perceptual and cognitive faculties that movie narration engages, as a form of pictorial comprehension (Carroll 2008: 108–115). Movies present familiar scenes and characters even if they are ones the filmmaker makes up. Thus, movies mobilize the same capacity for object recognition that we employ in everyday life. Therefore, one might say that the "Recognition Prompt" view can explain why viewers report that their experience is "as if" they see the characters in real life, without positing they stand in an imagined perceptual relation to them. What they are reporting is a sense of recognition of something previously encountered in perception, not an imagined seeing of them. A further possibility is to hold that the notion that viewers at the movies look at the moving pictures on the screen and "see in" to them the characters 21 See also Curran (2016: 103–106). 22 Wilson remains open to the possibility that what he means by "imagined seeing" at the movies is what Currie means by perceptual imagining. See Wilson (2011: 75–76). Currie revisits his views about imagined seeing at the movies in Currie (2018). A. CURRAN 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 and situations that the image depicts (Wollhein 2008: 217–238; Hopkins 2008, 2016). Seeing in is not an imagined seeing of characters but a seeing in which one thing (a movie shot of Ingrid Bergman) is taken as a representation of another (Ilsa Lund). The virtue of "seeing-in" is that it can account for the role that perception plays in imagining story content, while also being able to explain how the viewer can appreciate the properties of the moving shot as an image or representation (Stecker 2013: 153–4).23 COnClusiOn Cinematic narration is the way in which movies tell their stories to an audience. The overall question we have looked at here is how do movies work on us so that we come to imagine the story events? There are two broad areas of contention. The first concerns whether to comprehend what is true in the story- we need to imagine a fictional presenter who reports or shows that things are so in the story. Alternatively, is the Imagination Account of Fiction right that we comprehend the story in virtue of the actual filmmaker's mandate to imagine things are thus and so in the story? The second concerns whether audiences at the movies standardly imagine seeing the characters and story events. Or do we instead imagine that certain things are so in the story world, without imagining we are seeing these incidents? We have seen that the issue of how we imaginatively "fill in" the implications of what is explicitly the case in the fiction is central to resolving both issues. An exciting line of further inquiry is whether the Imagination Account of Fiction can offer a complete answer to how viewers comprehend a story. If the argument in this chapter is correct, there is sufficient reason to hope it can do so. BiBliOgraphy Beardsley, M. 1981. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. Indianapolis: Hackett. Bordwell, D. 1985. Narration and the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Carroll, N. 1990. Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart. London: Routledge. ---. 1995. Review: Mimesis as Make-Believe. The Philosophical Quarterly 45 (178): 93–99. ---. 2006. Introduction to Part IV: Film Narrative/Narration. In N. Carroll and J. Choi (2004), 175–184. ---. 2008. The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ---. 2016. Motion Picture Narration. In K. Thomson-Jones, ed. (2016). Carroll, N., and J. Choi. 2004. Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Chatman, S. 1990. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 23 For Wilson's view on imagined seeing as "seeing in" look at Wilson (2013: 167–168). AU10 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 698 699 700 701 702 703 704 705 706 707 708 709 710 711 712 713 714 715 716 717 718 719 720 721 722 723 724 725 726 727 728 729 730 731 732 733 734 735 736 Curran, A. 2016. Fictional Indeterminacy, Imagined Seeing, and Cinematic Narration. In K. Thomson-Jones, ed. (2016). Currie, G. 1995a. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ---. 1995b. Unreliability Refigured: Narrative in Literature and Film. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1): 19–29. ---. 2010. Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davies, David. 2010. Eluding Wilson's "Elusive Narrators". Philosophical Studies 147: 387–394. Gaut, B. (1997). Film Authorship and Collaboration. In R. Allen and M. Smith, ed. (1997), 149–172. ---. 1998. Imagination, Interpretation and Film. Philosophical Studies 89: 331–341. ---. 2004. The Philosophy of the Movies: Cinematic Narration. In P. Kivy, ed. (2004), 230–253. ---. 2010. A Philosophy of Cinematic Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, R. 2008. What Do We See in Film? The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 66 (2): 149–159. ---. 2016. Realism in Film and Other Representations. In K. Thomson-Jones, ed. (2016). Kania, A. 2005. Against the Ubiquity of Fictional Narrators. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63: 47–54. Kivy, P., ed. 2004. The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics. 1st ed. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Köppe, T., and J. Stürhring. 2011. Against Pan-Narrator Theories. Journal of Literary Semantics 40: 59–80. Lamarque, P. 1990. Reasoning What Is True in Fiction. Argumentation 4: 333–346. Lamarque, P., and S.H. Olsen. 1994. Truth, Fiction, and Literature. A Philosophical Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levinson, J. 1993. Seeing, Imaginarily, at the Movies. The Philosophical Quarterly 43: 70–78. ---. 1996. Film Music and Narrative Agency. In D. Bordwell and N. Carroll (1996), 248–282. Lewis, D. 1978. Truth in Fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1): 37–46. Livingston, P. 1997. Cinematic Authorship. In R. Allen and M. Smith (1997), 132–148. ---. 2013. The Imagined Seeing Thesis. Projections 7: 139–146. Lorand, R. 2001. Telling a Story or Telling a World. British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (4): 425–443. Matravers, D. Fiction and Narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGinn, C. 2005. The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact. New York: Pantheon. Pye, D. 2013. Seeing Fictions in Film. Projections 7: 131–138. Stecker, R. 2013. Film Narration, Imaginative Seeing and Seeing-In. Projections 7: 147–154. Stock, K. 2013. Imagining and Fiction: Some Issues. Philosophy Compass 8 (10): 887–896. ---. 2017. Only Imagine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomson-Jones, K. 2009. Cinematic Narrators. Philosophy Compass 4 (2): 296–311. ---. 2012. Narration in Motion. British Journal of Aesthetics 52: 33–43. ---., ed. 2016. Current Controversies in the Philosophy of Film. New York/London: Routledge. AU11 AU12 AU13 AU14 AU15 A. CURRAN 737 738 739 740 741 742 743 744 745 746 747 748 749 750 751 752 753 754 755 756 757 758 759 760 761 762 763 764 765 766 767 768 769 770 771 772 773 774 775 776 777 778 779 780 781 782 783 784 785 Walton, K. 1990. Mimesis and Make-Believe. On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ---. 2002. Depiction, Perception, and Imagination: A Response to Richard Wollheim. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. ---. 2008. Marvelous Images: On Values and the Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, B. Imagination and the Self. In Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, G. 1986. Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ---. 1997. Le Grand Imagier Steps Out: The Primitive Basis of Film Narration. Philosophical Topics 25: 295–318. Wilson, C. 2004. Literature and Knowledge. In Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings, ed. E. John and D. Lopes. London: Blackwell. Wilson, G. 2007. Elusive Narrators in Literature and Film. Philosophical Studies 135: 73–88. ---. 2011. Seeing Fictions in Film: The Epistemology of Movies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ---. 2013. Seeing Through the Imagination in the Cinema. Projections 7: 155–171. Wolheim, R. 1998. On Pictorial Representation. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56: 217–233. AU16 AU17 5 SILLY QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS FOR THE IMPLICIT, CINEMATIC NARRATOR 786 787 788 789 790 791 792 793 794 795 796 797 798 799 800 801 802 803 804 805 806 Author Queries Chapter No.: 5 0004388390 Queries Details Required Author's Response AU1 Please check the hierarchy of the section headings and confirm if correct. AU2 Carroll (1996, 2005), Currie (1990, 1991), Booth (1961), Nehamas (1981), Matravers (2014, 2010), Wilson (1936, 2003), Wollhein (2008), Livingston (2005), Beardsley (1980), Elisabeth Schellenkens (2007), Currie (2018), Thomson-Jones (2007), Williams (1976), Currie (2018) were mentioned in text but not in the reference list. Please provide its bibliographic information. AU3 Please check if the below list paragraphs were aligned correctly. AU4 List numbers under 'Stage Two (Chatman 1990: 133–4)' were renumbered to maintain sequential order. Please confirm. AU5 We have changed "Currie 1995" to "Currie 1995a, b" as per the reference list. Please check if this is fine or please specify "1995a" or "1995b" here and in other occurrences. AU6 In the sentence "But in principle, we see how..." should the name Matraver be changed to Matravers? AU7 Please check the edit to the sentence "For instance, perceptual imagining..." AU8 The citation "Beardsley 1981" has been changed to "Beardsley 1981" to match the author name/date in the reference list. Please check if the change is fine. AU9 Please check sentence "But when...imaginings follow" for clarity. AU10 Please check if edit to sentence "The overall...story events?" is okay. AU11 Only editor names are provided in reference "Gaut (1997)". Please provide appropriate book title and publisher details to the reference. AU12 Only editor names are provided in reference "Levinson (1996)". Please provide appropriate book title and publisher details to the reference. AU13 Only editor names are provided in reference "Livingston (1997)". Please provide appropriate book title and publisher details to the reference. AU14 Please provide published year for reference "Matravers". AU15 Published year has been retained from text citation to respective references "Pye (2013), Lamarque (1990), Lorand (2001), Lewis (1978), McGinn (2005)". Please confirm. AU16 Please provide volume number and page range for reference Walton (2002). AU17 Please provide published year and editor details for reference Williams.