Who Owns a Story Once It Has Been Told?

 

    There was a time when I attended Hindu literary Festival at Chennai that was when Perumal Murugan’s Poonachi was out. So, people associated the significance of the black goat with multiple meanings- an allegory of state surveillance, metaphor for caste hierarchy, gendered oppression, poverty and the vulnerability of marginal lives. When the crowd questioned about the actuality of its representation, Perumal Murugan refused to offer a definitive answer. He said it is the reader’s discretion to associate, confront and relate to the text in their own convincing ways.

    Similarly, in the preface of the English translated version of Pethavan as The Begetter, Imayam argues that once the story is written, it is no longer in his authority to offer interpretations and meanings.

    This idea resonates in the long-standing debate in literary theory.  In the essay Death of The Author, Roland Barthes argues that on the death of the writer, the birth of the reader happens. He argues that meaning of the text should not be determined by the attributes and intentions of its creator.  While Reader- Response critics such as Stanely Fish demonstrate how meaning of a text is produced by the interpretive communities to which a particular reader belongs.

    Perhaps stories that the authors create do not entirely belong to them. The stories are shaped by the narrators, transformed by readers and consistently rewritten through interpretation. Once a story is told, it grows bigger beyond the grasp of the story teller. In a work of fiction different interpretations to a same story compete in becoming the actual meaning. When facts are fictionalised during such interpretations, the actual truth becomes elusive.

    Having now established the multiple possibilities of a story, a question arises- who gets to tell a story and whose version becomes accepted truth? These questions deepened after watching the wonderfully made psychological thriller Disclaimer (2024, Apple Tv.) by the reputed director Alfonso Cuarón starring Cate Blanchett and a star crew. (I binge watched the seven episodes straight, depriving myself of a night’s sleep- also with the strong adult content I can’t watch it with my daughter around or say anybody around) The series is an adaptation of Renee Knight’s 2015 novel of the same name. The narrative explores how the narrators, characters and the audience manipulate ‘truth’ through their own subjective lens.

         

    Each of the episode in the series unfold through competing narratives, each claiming authority over the same set of events. As viewers we become determinative and hold our biases to certain voices.  As the episodes progress our understanding of truth is consistently revised echoing Wayne C. Booth’s concept of the unreliable narrator- a narrator whose account cannot be considered or accepted at the face value as it is filled with their own prejudices, limitations, desires.

 

    In the psychological thriller, unreliability of the narrator function as an element that induces suspense. The impeccable screenplay which presents the reasons for each character or narrator to side with their comfortable version of truth kept me hooked throughout.  The aspect of unreliability exposes the instability of truth itself. Each narration offers pieces of truth- embellished by desire, distorted by grief and edited by memory while the gaps are filled by resentments. Eventually the tainted  truth emerges out of a series of competed fabrications.

    Placing it in the frame, Disclaimer resonated the ideas of Perumal Murugan and Imayam. On the occasion of readers/viewers participation in arriving at the meaning of a story, even narrators/storytellers become interpreters. The stories are not objective presentation of reality but a heavily influenced rendition of their own perspective. The core of the series lies in the struggle over establishing the narrative authority- who gets to say what has happened? – the power to determine how an event and ultimately a person will be remembered and understood.

 

    Ultimately, no story belongs to a single entity and everyone involved can claim autonomy over their own versions but a story takes its own flow tainted by its narrators and audience.  Corresponding between fact and fiction, interpretation and intention, prejudices and fairness stories acquire new lives. That’s perhaps the boon and bane of it.