The place of fiction in the cinematographic reproduction of reality

Abstract

In this work we are going to focus our attention on the audiovisual representation of reality. In the first part, we will discuss some of the criteria used to distinguish the fictional from the non-fictional genre in the cinema, from the problematization of the distinction between narrative and plot used by Bill Nichols and the idea of audiovisual rhetoric as deviation developed by Carl Plantinga. In addition, we will discuss the representation of historical fictions in Hollywood narrative cinema according to Robert Rosenstone. In the first two cases, the distinction reintroduces those problems that it intends to solve, since it presupposes knowledge of what "reality" is; in the latter, Rosenstone's conception of the narrative of Hollywood cinema informs about reality, although the author does not specify the way in which the narrative develops this capacity. In the second part of the paper, we will argue that in the representation of reality, narrative does not exclude argumentation, but rather, both are inseparable in all narrative fiction. We will hold that the narrative (mythos1) has two irreducible functions that allow it to communicate information, the plot (mythos2) and the argumentation (dianoia), which coordinate the powers of poetics and rhetoric. Finally, we will consider the role of the possible and the verisimilitude in narrative, cinematographic or verbal modelling of reality.