@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 {672, title = {Nonlinearity and focalisation in Attila Janisch{\textquoteright}s M{\'a}snap}, journal = {Frontiers of Narrative Studies}, volume = {4}, year = {2018}, month = {07/2018}, chapter = {96}, abstract = {The essay{\textquoteright}s aim is to examine the relationship between perspective andnonlinear temporal structure in Attila Janisch{\textquoteright}s 2004 film,M{\'a}snap, which isloosely based on Alain Robbe-Grillet{\textquoteright}sLe Voyeur(1955). My analysis revolvesaround the understanding of two important narratological distinctions, thatbetween a nonlinear presentation of events and a paradoxical plot, and thatbetween narrative focalizalization and textual focalization. According to DavidBordwell, the most widespread definition of linearity is when the successiveevents of A, B and C are presented in the narrative in their chronological order.Any other form of their presentation results in a nonlinear narrative. ButM{\'a}snapis a special type of narrative, which highlights the limitation of such traditionaldichotomies, because a consistent order of events cannot be reconstructed. Manycritics tried to grasp the core of the film{\textquoteright}s narrative by trying to put together theoriginal timeline of events, relying on false indicators of logic and coherence,while they failed to recognize the narrative{\textquoteright}s real rhetorical purpose in preventinga consistent and unambiguous plot to be established. The narrative{\textquoteright}s complexitylies in the fact that both assumptions{\textendash}that it depicts asubjective experience oftimeanda storyworld with strange temporality{\textendash}are necessary to explain the film{\textquoteright}sunusual, fragmented structure and interpret its events. I point out how the filmrequires us to reinterpret the meanings attached to the familiar techniques ofcontinuity editing and how it converts the practices of the early Nouveau Roman,which marginalizes traditional plot-structures, the notion of character, and con-ventional descriptions of objects, to interact with a subjective vision governed bya fictional mind.}, keywords = {Attila Janisch, continuityediting, focalization, nonlinearity, ocularization, perspectivation}, doi = {10.1515/fns-2018-0007}, author = {Cs{\"o}nge, Tam{\'a}s} } @article {673, title = {Moving Picture, Lying Image: Unreliable Cinematic Narratives}, journal = {Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Film and Media Studies }, volume = {10}, year = {2015}, month = {09/2015}, chapter = {89}, abstract = {By coining the term {\textquotedblleft}unreliable narrator{\textquotedblright} Wayne Booth hypothesized another agent in his model besides the author, the implicit author, to explain the double coding of narratives where a distorted view of reality and the exposure of this distortion are presented simultaneously. The article deals with the applicability of the concept in visual narratives. Since unreliability is traditionally considered to be intertwined with first person narratives, it works through subjective mediators. According to scholarly literature on the subject, the narrator has to be strongly characterized, or in other words, anthropomorphized. In the case of film, the main problem is that the narrator is either missing or the narration cannot be attributed entirely to them. There is a medial rupture where the apparatus mediates the story instead of a character{\textquoteright}s oral or written discourse. The present paper focuses on some important but overlooked questions about the nature of cinematic storytelling through a re-examination of |the lying flashback in Alfred Hitchcock{\textquoteright}s Stage Fright. Can a character-narrator control the images the viewer sees? How can the filmic image still be unreliable without having an anthropomorphic narrator? How useful is the term focalization when we are dealing with embedded character-narratives in film?}, keywords = {Alfred Hitchcock, cinematic narrative, focalization, mediation, unreliable narrator}, doi = {10.1515/ausfm-2015-0028}, author = {Cs{\"o}nge, Tam{\'a}s} }