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Robert Stecker, Seeing Fictions in Film: The Epistemology of Movies , by George M. Wilson. , Mind, Volume 125, Issue 498, April 2016, Pages 582–585, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzv147
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Seeing Fictions in Film is George Wilson’s most ambitious attempt so far to understand the way narration operates in mainstream cinema. At the centre of this book is a set of theses about the experience and cognition of such narratives, which Wilson has argued for in earlier writings. Here they are not merely defended again, though this is done very ably, but considerably developed and refined against the backdrop of a slew of criticisms and alternative views. In addition to this theoretical centre, the final chapters of this book are critical studies of narrative techniques of specific films and the epistemic challenges, not to mention rewards, they present to viewers. These chapters serve as vehicles for applying Wilson’s theory of narrative understanding to complex cases, but they are of independent interest as critical studies of the films in question.
Here is a more detailed summary of the chapters. Part I sets out the main problem. It is natural to speak of seeing characters in the films we watch, but it is hard to believe we mean this literally. So what do we mean and, more important, what is actually involved in experiencing cinematic narrative? Parts II and III provide the answer. More elaborately, they examine several attempts to answer these questions, arguing in favour of one set of theses. Part II (chapters 2-4) argues for two related theses. First, the general imagined seeing thesis : the chief and most immediate way in which we engage with fictional narratives in mainstream films is by imagining seeing the characters, events, and situations represented by the images on screen. Second, the mediated imagined seeing thesis : we typically don’t imagine directly seeing these fictional entities, but do so in a mediated way. Just as we are actually seeing moving images that represent fictional things, it is fictional for a viewer of a film that he or she is seeing moving images that constitute a documentary record of people and events. Part III (chapters 5-6) argues that in imagining seeing characters and events in this mediated way, we necessarily imagine that there is someone who is responsible for the seeings we imagine. This is the effaced narrator thesis : there is some agent, even if it is one about whom we know little or nothing, responsible for showing us these fictionally actual things.
