Tag: vantage point
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 ›
“Memento”: a Masterpiece in Point-of-View Manipulation
by GARY YAMASAKI What would it be like to be unable to remember anything for more than five minutes? Director Christopher Nolan attempts to capture this in his Memento (2000), sketching out a storyline in which protagonist Leonard Shelby works to discover who murdered his wife while hampered by anterograde amnesia, a brain dysfunction that… Read More ›
Psychological-Plane Point of View and the Movie “Open Water”
by CHARLES AARON In the 2004 indie film Open Water, a young couple, Susan and Daniel, take a vacation to escape the stress of their lives and jobs. They go to a tropical location for scuba diving. Due to a mistake by the employees of the charter boat that has taken them out, Daniel and Susan… Read More ›
The First-Person Narration in Ezra as a Point-of-View Issue
by MARK BODA Much ink has been spilled over the past century over the controversial shifts in person in the account of Ezra in Ezra 7-10. The account begins in 7:1-11 with a third person account about Ezra which introduces a document written in the first person voice of King Artaxerxes, commissioning Ezra for service… Read More ›
The Seahawks, the “historical present” and Point of View on the Temporal Plane
by Gary Yamasaki Third and five, on the Redskins 27. . .Wilson is in the shotgun. . .he takes the snap and hands off to Lynch trying the left side. . .he cuts to the right and evades a tackle. . .he has the first down. . .he gets to the outside. . .crosses the… Read More ›
“The Hobbit” – a Review from a Unique Point of View
by GARY YAMASAKI The blogosphere is swarming with reviews of “The Hobbit,” so what else can be said? Well, this is a blog on perspective criticism, and a look at The Hobbit from the point of view of “Point of View” would stand out from the rest. So, just like earlier posts have examined… 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 ›
Who Knew What When? Meir Sternberg’s “Informational Axis” and the Four Leprous Men of Samaria (2 Kgs 7:3-5)
by GARY YAMASAKI With some narrative accounts in the Bible, you can’t help but view the events through the point of view of particular characters. You may not know why it is happening, but you can’t deny that it is happening. One such case is the account of the four leprous men of Samaria (2… Read More ›
“Why do we pull for Jesus in the gospels?” One Unexpected Reason
by GARY YAMASAKI In a story, there will often be a single character who attracts the spotlight. This, of course, is the case in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, with Jesus occupying that role, though the degree to which the spotlight stays on Jesus in these stories is noteworthy. Take the Gospel of Mark as… Read More ›
‘Perspective Criticism’: Everything you never realized you wanted to know about ‘Point of View’
by GARY YAMASAKI “Point of view” has been the forgotten child in the study of biblical narratives. “Plot” and “character”—its more popular siblings—have found eager adoptive parents among biblical scholars looking to the study of the modern novel for insights into how biblical stories might be analyzed. While point of view has received many looks… Read More ›
PERSPECTIVE CRITICISM 