September 12, 1995
 
Is Kris Kringle an unreliable narrator?  Expectations for at least the
original MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET might support at least the possibility of
believing in these "miracles" as miracles, with some help from an ending which
both sanctions this belief and suggests a conversion to the possibility of
belief by the two skeptical adults.
 
In NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES one of the narrators even has visions which have
always proved true, and which are accepted by him and the couple as simply
accurate.  Yet even his visions are shown to be of limited accuracy because
what he can foresee is bounded by his life.  After he dies we see that what
looked like a completed event was still in progress, and that his
interpretation of it at the moment of his death accurately reflected only what
he thought at that point, not what "he could not have known."  Here the
unreliability comes not from the inaccuracy of his vision, or the possibility
that all visions of the future might be fallible, but in mistaking an
interpretation of what turns out to be true for "the facts themselves."
 
Perhaps we should be asking why we think any narration is, or should be, or
should even be taken to be, reliable.  Sure, we watch it happen in film after
film, but what does it suggest about our society that we want this
reliability?  I believe that we want more than reliability, for a story might
be reliable as far as it goes without telling us "all we want to know."  And
it is this latter wish I think films, and TV, and news, and commentary, and
many magazines, and far too much "conversation" cater to.  For example, at the
end of a whodunit, we want more than the information about who committed the
crime, we want the motives neatly set out for us such that we know not just
the identity of the criminal but "the whole person."  (We generally want minor
points, red herrings, and such cleared up too.)  That desire makes even mixed
motives unpleasant for many viewers.  "Don't just tell us he had all these
reasons to kill; what was the ONE that drove him to it?"
     To push this a bit further, that desire for the feeling of complete
knowledge (at least by the end of the show) may help account for the
popularity of genre conventions and star vehicles.  And more.
Of course this feeling must be illusory, since complete knowledge is beyond
any human.  Thus what we in fact settle for is the answer to all the questions
we are still interested in having answered.  Clearly the show itself has a
strong influence on what we continue to be interested in, and what we are
prepared to forget about.
 
Kendall D'Andrade             [log in to unmask]
 
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