From a Certain Point of View: Unreliable Narrators

05/17/21 • 97 min

In this week’s episode of Star Wars English Class, Julia teaches Fern about unreliable narrators! But to learn about unreliable narrators, we must first learn about story, plot, and narration (spoiler alert: that’s not the only list of three things in this week’s episode). How can the same story be told in different ways by different narrators? What are the different kinds of unreliable narrators? How does the language of film convey unreliability? And how can we determine the “facts” of a story? This week, we’ll discuss Kanan Jarrus, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, and Kylo Ren as we endeavor to uncover the truth about unreliable narrators in Star Wars.On the Syllabus Today:

"Aftermath," The Bad Batch: S01EP01 (2021)
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
H. Porter Abbot, "Story, Plot, and Narration" (2007)
Abbott, H. Porter. “Story, Plot, and Narration.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, 1st ed., Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 39–51.
Anderson, Emily R. “Telling Stories: Unreliable Discourse, Fight Club, and the Cinematic Narrator.” Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 40, no. 1, 2010, pp. 80–107.
Shen, Dan. “The Living Handbook of Narratology.” Unreliability | the Living Handbook of Narratology, University of Hamburg, 31 Dec. 2013, www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/66.html.
"Who Can You Trust? Unreliable Narrators (Feat. Lindsay Ellis)." YouTube, uploaded by PBS Voices, 17 December 2018. https://youtu.be/AM7pALSwH_I
Zerweck, Bruno. “Historicizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability and Cultural Discourse in Narrative Fiction.” Style, vol. 35, no. 1, 2001, pp. 151–76.

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"Aftermath," The Bad Batch: S01EP01 (2021)
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
H. Porter Abbot, "Story, Plot, and Narration" (2007)
Abbott, H. Porter. “Story, Plot, and Narration.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, 1st ed., Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 39–51.
Anderson, Emily R. “Telling Stories: Unreliable Discourse, Fight Club, and the Cinematic Narrator.” Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 40, no. 1, 2010, pp. 80–107.
Shen, Dan. “The Living Handbook of Narratology.” Unreliability | the Living Handbook of Narratology, University of Hamburg, 31 Dec. 2013, www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/node/66.html.
"Who Can You Trust? Unreliable Narrators (Feat. Lindsay Ellis)." YouTube, uploaded by PBS Voices, 17 December 2018. https://youtu.be/AM7pALSwH_I
Zerweck, Bruno. “Historicizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability and Cultural Discourse in Narrative Fiction.” Style, vol. 35, no. 1, 2001, pp. 151–76.

Previous Episode

Somehow, Palpatine Returned: Reading Star Wars as Camp

In this episode, Fern teaches Julia about Camp! Camp is a mode of aestheticism that focuses on exaggeration, artifice, and playfulness. It is, according to Susan Sontag, “the good taste of bad taste,” a way of looking at a text that encourages readers to be “serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.” Is Star Wars, with all its focus on visuals and aesthetics, its exaggerated characters, its juxtaposition of sci-fi glamour and dirt, Camp? What do we gain if we choose to read it as Camp? Does its overtly political themes and messaging negate a Camp reading of the text? And is “Somehow, Palpatine returned” the Campiest line in contemporary cinema?

On the Syllabus:

Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” (1964)
Franziska Bergmann, Ingrid Hotz-Davies, Georg Vogt, The Dark Side of Camp Aesthetics: Queer Economies of Dirt, Dust, and Patina (2017)
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Next Episode

Freytag, Sith Holocrons, and Other Pyramids

This week, Fern and Julia go back to the basics as Fern teaches the class about story structure! We discuss Freytagian story structure (Freytag's Pyramid: Barely a TriangleTM️), traditional vs. experimental structures, and linear and modular storytelling. When does a story benefit from a non-linear structure? What is the value of experimental storytelling? How does the structure of A New Hope differ from the structure of The Clone Wars? And what's up with the pacing of The Bad Batch?
On the Syllabus Today:

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2020)
The Bad Batch (2021)
Alice LePlante, Method and Madness: The Making of a Story
Bailey, Tom, editor. On Writing Short Stories. 2000. Oxford University Press, 2011.
LePlant, Alice. Method and Madness: The Making of a Story. 2007. W. W. Norton and Company, 2007.