Matthew Mah disagrees that the camera can be a narrator. For him, a narrator
must be biased.
 
>However, we have the camera.  The camera captures everything,
>and we have to assume that it is non-biased.
 
I used to feel this way but not after seven years of structural French
Metzian film theory: the camera itself may not be a lone narrator -- that is,
you may have to take the whole filmmaking system into account, but the
camera, along with the sound recording equipment, the projector, the screen
and the theatre etc., offer something to be seen, give us a window, create an
intrigue, and this is a narrator's function. You cannot avoid a narrator.
 
Moreover, a camera is so heavily biased -- the camera does not "capture
everything": it frames a very narrow angle, forcing our attention,
manipulating us to notice certain details, to see through a character's eyes,
or not, to look far, to look close, to pan away. The camera does not naively
open a window onto a pre-existant world. It creates that world. We cannot
escape it. Noone is immune.
 
-Pip Chodorov
 
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