The Power of Point of View

Tag: ideological

Does Acts 6:5 function to establish Stephen as a Point-of-View Character?

by GARY YAMASAKI   A previous post suggested the “badge of reliability” may qualify as an ideological-plane device for leading readers to experience a specific narrative event through the point of view of a particular character. This post looks to a textual feature of the Book of Acts as a possible means by which the badge of… Read More ›

Moving conversation with Tannehill to “Micro-View” of Ideological Plane (part 5)

by GARY YAMASAKI   In response to my question “through whose perspective an audience is being led to experience the action,” Robert Tannehill responded that it is the “ideological perspective of the implied author. . .the perspective of the work as a whole as a complex of interacting parts, dynamically arranged.” And while what he says… Read More ›

In Response to Yamasaki’s Query on Ideological-Plane Dynamics (part 4)

by ROBERT TANNEHILL   This comment continues the conversation with Gary Yamasaki which began with his post on the ideological plane of point of view. I recognize the distinction that Yamasaki makes in his rejoinder post between the ideological plane and the ideological “matrixes” of the implied author and the characters. If one wished to do a thorough… Read More ›

Rejoinder to Tannehill’s post on Ideological (or Evaluative) Plane of Point of View (part 3)

by GARY YAMASAKI   In this post, Robert Tannehill provides some helpful correctives to the portrait of ideological point of view presented in my earlier post. However, there are also some portions of his post against which I would like to provide some push-back. Tannehill is surely right when he asserts that “all the other planes contribute… Read More ›

Toward Further Clarification of the Ideological (or Evaluative) Plane of Point of View (part 2)

by ROBERT TANNEHILL   In this post, Gary Yamasaki rightly points out that ideological point of view cannot be reduced to theological belief, and that the ideological plane is more complex than the other planes. However, it would have been helpful to add the reason for that complexity: all the other planes contribute to the ideological… Read More ›

The Ideological Plane of Point of View: “so crucial, yet so misunderstood” (part 1)

by GARY YAMASAKI   The concluding paragraph of this post mentions that much work needs to be done to clarify the role of the ideological plane of point of view in a storyteller’s efforts to dictate through whose point of view their audience experiences a given event, and this post constitutes a first step in that regard. Of… Read More ›

Linguistics influencing Point of View: Trying to make a ‘Police Shooting’ Palatable

by GARY YAMASAKI   This post demonstrated how readers can be led to experience events through a Neanderthal point of view simply by linguistic manipulation, specifically, the avoidance of transitive clauses. This post goes a step further to explore how manipulation of transitivity can even lead readers to adopt the point of view of a particular… Read More ›

Further Comment on Mark 6:49-52

by ROBERT TANNEHILL   I agree with Gary Yamasaki (Responding to How Seaman Would Craft a Performance of Mark 6:49-52) that it is a mistake to present the disciples in Mark 6:49-52 from an external (“objective”) perspective, because, as he pointed out, there is a cluster of inside views of the disciples in this passage. Furthermore, this… Read More ›

Responding to How Seaman Would Craft a Performance of Mark 6:49-52

by GARY YAMASAKI   Over the past month, Leon Seaman has contributed two posts addressing ways in which attention to point-of-view dynamics impacts his performance of Mark. The earlier one–Perspective in Live Performance: To Embody or Not to Embody?–focuses on how he embodies certain characters–that is, mimics their speech and gestures–and does not embody others, and… Read More ›

Rejoinder to ‘How Perspective Criticism Actually Works (demonstrated by an SBL paper on the point-of-view crafting of Mary at the Tomb in John 20)’

by ROBERT TANNEHILL   It is good to ask whether the different planes of point of view reinforce each other or limit each other, as Gary Yamasaki argues in the post entitled How Perspective Criticism Actually Works contrasting the spatial point of view of following with the psychological and informational. However, in doing this I think… Read More ›

Helping an Audience to Get the Point (of View) in Performance

by LEON SEAMAN   In my last post, Perspective in Live Performance: to Embody or Not to Embody, I briefly told how perspective criticism helped me block Mark’s baptism and transfiguration scenes for performance. A simple “s/he/they saw” may be a clue to whose viewpoint is to be embodied or not. Of course, point of view… Read More ›