BOOK REVIEWS
Critical Narratology at Work
(Sasha Vojkovic, 2001, Subjectivity in the New Hollywood Cinema, Amsterdam: ASCA press)
In the beginning of the book Sasha Vojkovic’s
proclaims that the basis of her methodology are the narratological
insights of Mieke Bal. However, narratology is used here
as a tool for cultural analysis, a project that is influenced
to a great extent by the diverse traditions of Marxism,
psychoanalysis, deconstruction and feminism. Blending of
such different approaches in the study of culture is quite
in agreement with Bal’s notion of narratology as a tool
for cultural analysis, but it is hardly in accordance with
Vojkovic’s implementation of Bal’s cleverly conceived analytical
tools. Films discussed (mostly made by the likes of Steven
Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis and George Lucas) are probably
good material for understanding Bal’s concepts of external
and internal focalisation, but Vojkovic practically equates
the point-of-view shot (subjektivni kadar in Croatian
terminology) with internal focalisation.
Equating looking
with focalising, she fails to grasp various possibilities
for character-based focalisation in shots that show the
character — focalisor. Vojkovic’s notion of the levels
of narration is also somewhat unclear; especially when
she claims that shots focalised externally are in fact
on a higher narrative level than point-of-view shots. In
addition to that, although allegedly strongly influenced
by psychoanalysis and deconstruction, Vojkovic operates
with a strangely strict selection of significant concepts
from these traditions, at the same time equating suture
with focalisation and insisting on différence merely
as on a convenient tool of a rather traditional semantic
analysis.
It is in her narratological attempts, however,
that Vojkovic inflicts the greatest damage to her analytical
effort. Some of her conclusions could actually serve as
(quite obvious but nevertheless intriguing) starting points
for an analysis (i. e. the loss and the traces of father
in E. T.), whereas others would have hardly been
possible had her narratological muscle been more strongly
flexed (such conclusion is the one about the inclusion
of the concerns of contemporary epistemology influenced
by feminism and postmodernism in the banal Back
to the Future). Since some of Vojkovic’s insights
on the relation of story versus history, the crisis
of male subjectivity and Hollywoods attempt to rescue
and repair the patriarchal law-of-the-father are in
fact quite clever (and revealing of the author’s erudition),
it is a pity she has chosen narratology for her starting
point.
Nikica Gilić |
