La démultiplication des points de vue ou le récit audiovisuel diffracté. Pour une théorie de la répétition narrative, entre POV-Sequel et effet Rashomon

Abstract

This article focuses on narrative repetition, more precisely on the phenomenon of seeing the same events again, but in a different way, by adopting a new perspective. While this multiplication of points of view is at the core of serial practices such as POV-sequels, it emblematizes a variation, serialization and networking of narratives that can occur in any audiovisual format, and offers a reflexive culmination of seriality. Using dozens of examples, the author identifies three different kinds of application of these narrative repetitions and variations:- The "perceptive complement" aims at revealing the offscreen and hidden sides of the story, which has to be re-examined in order to be better understood. According to an investigative approach, each new perspective contributes to complete the "puzzle" of an always more panoptic picture.- The "focal decentering" (using Saint-Gelais' word) offers to re-experience the events through the point of view of a new character, in order to reconsider the scene from his/her perspective and context - exploring all the aspects of the audiovisual point of view and playing with shifts of meaning and tone. - The "subjective divergence", finally, allows, through the confrontation of versions and the play of variations, to question the reliability of the previously shown events, and to measure their interpretative, idealized, or misleading deviations, in other words their degree of subjectivity.

Keywords

• narratologie
• films
• sérialité
• focalisation
• variation
• séries télévisées