@inbook {709, title = {Fictionality as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Mockumentary Films: The Interplay of Fictionality and Factuality in C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America}, booktitle = {Truth Claims Across Media}, year = {2023}, publisher = {Palgrave Macmillan}, organization = {Palgrave Macmillan}, chapter = {7}, abstract = {

How can a mockumentary film like Kevin Willmott{\textquoteright}s\ C.S.A.: The\ Confederate States of America\ argue effectively and authenticate its important message about the presence of racism and discrimination in contemporary American society with a narrative that is obviously fictional? Doesn{\textquoteright}t this method of presenting an alternative history of the nation create mistrust and suspicion in the audience, instead of giving them profound insight into the actual states of things? The ambiguity of such mockumentaries stems from the simultaneous application of two major types of rhetorical frames: They always utilize some style or variant of the documentary genre (Juhasz et al.,\ F Is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth{\textquoteright}s Undoing. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2006, 7) (evoking a factual discourse), but{\textemdash}to a differing degree{\textemdash}also undermining, suspending, or putting it between quotation marks (evoking a fictional discourse). In this paper, I want to argue that with the innovative utilization of fictionality and factuality as communicational tools and rhetorical resources, a politically charged fake documentary such as Willmott{\textquoteright}s film can explore problematic dimensions of social reality and shed light on its subject matter from a novel perspective.

}, keywords = {factuality, fictionality, mockumentaries, political satire}, issn = {9783031420641}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-42064-1_7}, url = {https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-42064-1_7}, author = {Cs{\"o}nge, Tam{\'a}s} } @article {471, title = {Narrative representation and fictionality in performative media}, journal = {Frontiers of Narrative Studies}, volume = {4}, year = {2018}, month = {2018///}, pages = {s5 - s23}, abstract = {The transmedial discussion in this article shows that the terms narrative mediation and representation should be carefully distinguished from fiction or fictionality. The constitutive use of {\textquoteleft}real{\textquoteright} (or factual) artifacts in performative media (i. e. media which present embodied events, such as theater or film) provides a good example for the necessity of this distinction. Frequently these artifacts serve the purpose of a fictional discourse and certain definitions of fictionality (cf. Walton 1990) can be said to be fulfilled. However, a real-world artifact can by no means become itself fictive, but is rather used to represent a fictive entity. By focusing on representation and mediation instead, it becomes possible to compare theater with other performative media in terms of narrative representation: even though it is sense-physiologically unmediated, the functions of narrative mediation (i. e. selecting, ordering, presenting, commenting; cf. e. g. Chatman 1990) apply. The article establishes a dynamic system of representation that can be used for the analysis of all kinds of multichannel narrative media and thus rests the ongoing scholarly discussions of transmedial narrative representation on a much sounder theoretical basis. It distinguishes representation clearly from fictionality, and highlights the significance of theater in this discussion.}, keywords = {fictionality, mediation, narrative representation, performative media, transmedial narratology}, isbn = {2509-4882}, url = {https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/fns.2018.4.issue-s1/fns-2018-0030/fns-2018-0030.xml?format=INT}, author = {Horstmann, Jan} }