The Unreliable Narrator’s “Paper Eyes” in Visual Storytelling: Inference and Performance

Abstract

Highlighting the, as called by Emar Maier, blended perspective shots in cinematic narrative with an unreliable narrator allows us to escape the dilemma of the omniscient cinema-eye (Kino-Glaz, 1924) and of the false narrator’s paper eyes (Бумажные глаза Пришвина / Prishvin’s Paper Eyes, 1989). The following commentary on Maier’s paper detects the performative nature of the contradictions generated by using blended perspective in cinema narration with an unreliable storyteller. It also demonstrates the heuristicity of the concept of blended perspective to Cartesian philosophical narrative analysis.