ABSTRACT
Analysing narrative requires the distinction between story and discourse. Story is the set of events that are represented. They could potentially be told in any order (chronologically, or in flashback for example) and with any emphasis. Discourse is the narrating process that puts story events in an order, with a shape and direction. In any medium, someone or something must be doing the storytelling, and this agency is the narrator, whether it is a voice, on-screen performer, or simply the agency which viewers reconstruct as the force which controls the arrangement of camera shots, sound and music that deliver the story. Some fictional and nonfictional programmes have voice-over narrators throughout, or in particular sequences. Star Trek: The Next Generation begins with the familiar scene-setting narration for the programme as a whole, beginning with the ‘Captain’s log’ where a voice-over narrates the setting and situation at the start of each episode’s story. This is followed by the narration at the start of the title sequence, beginning ‘Space, the final frontier . . .’. Narration can sometimes be found in the title songs of programmes, as in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and One Foot in the Grave. Desperate Housewives has a narrator who is apparently talking to us from beyond the grave. Series like ER may open with a voice-over reminding the audience of scenes in a previous programme. A few drama programmes include a voice-over narrator or an on-screen narrator within scenes, as in Sex and the City. Non-fiction programmes like wildlife programmes, history programmes like Time Team, commercials, cooking programmes, and Reality TV like Big Brother or Survivor have narrators. In each of these examples, the function of the narrator is to establish a link between the
shots in a narrative progression, often with music linking shots together into sequences and giving them an emotional point of view. Sarah Kozloff (1992: 79) notes that: ‘Music, in film and in television, is a key channel through which the voiceless narrating agency “speaks” to the viewer.’ The viewer is aligned with point of view shots of characters or performers, alternating with apparently neutral shots that observe the represented space and the figures in it. The performers in television fiction behave as if the viewer is absent, making it more evident that the camera is the agency conveying their actions to the audience, whereas factual programmes perhaps make narration less obvious because the camera appears more to be a neutral observer. But in each case, there is an implied narrator composed from the different camera positions.
