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Unreliable Narrator: Difference between revisions
M*A*S*H pothole
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (M*A*S*H pothole) |
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[[File:UnreliableNarrator-dc.jpg|right]]
{{quote|''"You just show that your first-person narrator was actually in an insane asylum and then OH MY GOD, did it actually happen? Who can say? Here, I can say. It didn't happen because your narrator was just no good. Listen. Never lend an unreliable narrator money."''
|''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'', "[http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001195.html Literary techniques comics: Unreliable Narrator]" [[Alt Text]]}}
In most narratives, there's an element of trust that the [[Narrator|person telling you the story]] is telling the truth, at least as far as they know it. This trope occurs when that convention is discarded. The narrator's facts contradict each other. If you ask them to go back a bit and retell it, the events come out a little differently. It can be like dealing with a [[Honest John's Dealership|used-car salesman]]—there's a real story in there somewhere, but you're left to piece it together through all the lies, half-truths, and mistruths.
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** In the more recent [[Doctor Who]] story, ''The Unicorn And The Wasp'', Agatha Christie questions the attendees at an outdoor party regarding a recent murder. As the suspects each give their story, we see the events that they describe, but as they really happened. Example, one young man claimed to be wandering alone, but in the flashback scene it's shown that he was flirting with another man. His father lies not only about what he was doing but also what he was reminiscing about at the time, leading to a flashback-within-a-flashback.
** The episode ''Love & Monsters'' is framed as a story being told to the camera by Elton Pope. {{spoiler|It's explicitly shown that his memory of how the band sounded, and how they actually sounded are rather different, which calls into question a lot of his interpretation of events}}.
* In the fourth-season ''[[
** Speaking of ''M*A*S*H'', the series finale segment in which Hawkeye - via flashback - describes the bus ride with the chicken to Sidney, is a powerful example; made powerful due to the frighteningly awesome reveal later on.
* BBC sitcom ''[[Coupling]]'' had numerous examples of unreliable narrators, notably pretty much anything said by either Jeff or Jane. But the greatest example of was in the third season episode ''Remember This'', where Patrick and Sally's individual recollections of how they met match in many, but not all details, to great comedic effect. {{spoiler|In particular, the print of Munch's ''The Scream'' that the exceedingly drunk Sally remembers is revealed to be a mirror in Patrick's memories.}}
* ''[[The X-Files]]''. In "The Unnatural" an alcoholic ex-cop tells Mulder how he encountered an alien posing as a famous Negro baseball player in [[Roswell That Ends Well|1947 Roswell]]; a story that even Mulder finds hard to believe. When Mulder tries fitting these facts into what he knows about the [[Government Conspiracy]], the cop basically tells him to just shut up and enjoy the tale.
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