Wednesday, April 17, 2019
The Voiceover
In both Black Girl and Days of Heaven a character narrates the story using the non-diegetic sound of a voice-over. Diouanna, the Black girl of the titles, tells her story in the present as she toils in the kitchen of her French employer and in flashback. Linda, the sister of one of the main character, often comments on the action of the film. Some people criticize this technique as uncinematic or inefficient storytelling. What do you think? How or why are the used? Do they give an unique element to the storytelling -- or are they distracting?
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The voice-over technique is extremely effective when a director is trying to make a statement and tell the story of the narrator. Black Girl is a prime example of a movie that uses the voice over to share and open up more with the audience. Without the voice over the audience would have missed critical points in the movie that help explain the feelings that are present. For example, without Diouanna narrating the story, the audience would not be able to understand Diouanna's frustration when she goes to France to clean the house instead of taking care of the kids. Another important scene, that would not be as emotional or connecting to the audience without the voiceover, is Diouanna's suicide scene. The movie’s title, Black Girl, directly refers to Diouanna herself. Because this movie is about her, it only makes sense that she is the one telling her story. The author effectively used the voice-over in a way that only contributed to the audiences viewing and appreciation of the movie. Specifically, to add more and go more in depth in Diouanna’s story, he incorporated many flashbacks to give evidence and information about her past life. While these flashbacks would happen, instead of also narrating that scene, her flashback would come alive just as it would happen. These scenes were very effective in capturing the audience’s attention because it caused for less confusion in the movie. After the flashback was over, the time would go back to present and Diouanna would be narrating again. Also, another way the voice-over added to this movie was in a unique way. This was that Diouanna could not communicate with her employers. Even though she may have been able to understand, she did not communicate back with speaking. So, the voice-over helped in a way so that the audience could actually hear what she was thinking and how she is feeling about her situation.
ReplyDeleteIn Black Girl the voice-over technique helps give the audience a better sense of Diouanna’s inner thoughts and feelings. This film’s main conflict is between Diouanna and her employers. While we often see and hear the cruelty of her employers, much of Diouanna’s response to their actions is internal. She never really says anything back to them even when they are yelling at her. She stays silent because it reflects how she feels trapped in this new job in a new country. This is what makes the voice over an important part of the storytelling. The voice over helps show distance between Diouanna and her employers, but it also provides more details about how Diouanna feels. From the voice over, we are able to understand how Diouanna feels tricked and trapped. She thought she would be taking care of the children, but instead she is the cook and the house cleaner. She cannot leave though, because she has no money and does not know anyone in France. Using a voice over and giving Diouanna very few lines of dialogue also helps feed the commentary on the Eurocentric views of Diouanna and how her employers see her as more of a piece of property than a human with thoughts, emotions, or opinions. The voice over in Days of Heaven is used for a slightly different purpose. The plot of Days of Heaven is much more complicated than the plot of Black Girl and the voice over is often used to help better explain certain plot points. Additionally, Linda is a much younger character and not really the main protagonist. Having her do the voice over as opposed to one of the other characters frames the film through the eyes of an innocent girl who maybe does not understand the complexities of everything that is happening around her. Overall, the use of voice over helps enhance the story in both of these films and is an interesting technique that provides further insight into the characters.
ReplyDeleteThe voice-over technique gives the audience a better understanding of the characters actions and emotions. In the short film Black Girl, Diouanna narrates her story as she takes her new journey to France as a house maid. Diouanna is portrayed as someone who is very quiet and does not use her voice to express herself much. In contrast, when she does use her voice it is mostly what she is supposed to say not what she wants to say. By using the voice-over technique the audience is able to understand what Diouanna is thinking exactly and what she wants to say to people. For example, when Diouanna is asked to make coffee and food for the French people’s friends she is very quiet and uses very little words to express her true feelings. Without the use of the voice-over technique the audience would never have known that Diouanna doesn’t cook dinner at home, and in fact does not clean at home. Diouanna explains that she took this job because she knew she could handle kids and wanted to come to France to travel and experience a new adventurous life. Since Diouanna never expressed her emotions to anyone, it was never clear to the audience how disappointed and miserable Diouanna really was. Although it was clear through her actions that she was out of her element, the use of a voice-over makes it Diouanna’s voice that tells the audience how life altering this move was. Being able to express oneself and use their voice is like plugging your phone cord into a wall, it gives it power. Additionally there were a lot of flash backs that used the voice-over technique to give a better understanding of who Diouanna was and her dreams before she moved to France. The audience learned a lot about Diouana in these flash backs like how she wanted to travel when she was in France, which gave further insight to Diouanna’s disappointment when she was stuck being bossed around in France. This movie is all about Diouanna and her story. Imagine this movie not using the voice-over and just seeing Diouanna’s actions throughout the film. There would be a big puzzle piece missing and this would no longer be Diouanna’s story, it would be a story but just not her’s.
ReplyDeleteThe use of a narrative voice to tell Diouanna’s story in Black Girl is a powerful too that is able to show her true feelings more deeply than if the film took the typical route of only using the characters’ lines to tell the story. Diouanna is shy and is put into a difficult situation where she wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking about talking about how she feels. The fact that she is able to narrate the story outside of the scenes themselves gives her more freedom to tell the truth. It gives the viewers more insight into how her employers’ actions are affecting her. If the movie didn’t use this method, the film who consist mostly of us seeing the employers’ side rather than Diouanna. This wouldn’t allow the film to make as much of an argument against the deep rooted colonialist ideologies and racist culture throughout the film. The film should not be criticized for using a tool that is less typical in films because of its laziness or untraditional methodology. It makes for a unique film that can show the deep ways that these ideologies can affect people. It gives a different and unique way of telling someone’s side of the story without being distracting. The directors did a great job of weaving in the narration enough that the viewer is rarely even aware of the fact that it is an outside voice. The use of narration allows for the character to show how she feels and is affected.
ReplyDeleteThe voiceover structure in Black Girl and Days of Heaven adds to the viewer's understanding of the emotional development and the cultural context of a film. In Black Girl, Diouanna's voiceover allowed the viewer to understand how Diouanna was feeling and why. An example is when Diouanna would tell her employers no madam and no monsieur; to the employer and viewer without the voiceover, it looked as if Diouanna was just in a bad mood and tired. However, when Diouanna's voiceover starts to play, the viewer learns that Diouanna is actually striking for better treatment and that she feels miserable and lonely and caged in. The voiceover allows the viewer to underdtand why Diouanna is doing nothing without compromising the emotional integrity of the scene. If she had expressed her thoughts and feelings out loud, her employer would've become angry, and it would not have been characteristic of Diouanna. The voiceover also gives the viewer a better sense of the cultural context and implications. Most of us watching would never allow ourselves to be hit and insulted like that, but most of us have also never been a member of a class that is viewed as beneath another class. Most of us probably would have screamed back, or wondered why Diouanna did nothing, but it's the cultural differences and the societal differences that keep Diouanna from responding visibly. When Diouanna says to herself that this is not what she signed up for and how mistreated and deceived she feels, the viewer learns about the cultural differences between the French and the Sengalese. We learn that Diouanna is used to a very transparent culture whereas the French in this movie talk a lot but say little. Without Diouanna's inner thoughts, the viewer would think that Diouanna was a quiet, lazy maid who became insubordinate, but we learn through her inner monologues that she is struggling with so many problems. In Days of Heaven, Linda's voiceover helps to clarify the events and the meaning of the events to the characters. After the series of events that lead to the woman marrying the rich man, and the guy seeming okay with everything that happened, the viewer is slightly confused. The viewer doesn't know why she just married the rich man after she told the other guy how much she loved him. Linda tells the viewer that the rich man was supposed to die within a year, and that they would be fine after he died. Linda synthesizes the events and overviews the con. The voiceover is effective for storytelling because the voiceover can be used to add important details that the viewer should know but shouldn't be known to the other characters on the screen.
ReplyDeleteBlack Girl, by Ousmane Sembene, is a very powerful film that deals with racism in France. The film stars Diouanna, an African American woman, who moved to France to in hopes of a better lifestyle. Although this plan falls through when she gets a job from a rich white family. The couple forces Diouanna to work as a servant when she thought she would be taking care of their children, and soon begins to experience harsh treatment. She feels trapped and completely alone in her situation. I think that by having Diouanna tell her story in the present, without actually talking in the film, gives a lot more power to the story. While the white couple continues to put Diouanna down every day, not giving her a voice in the film makes her seem even more powerless. A friend of the couple even says, “I’ve never kissed a black girl before!” at a dinner party. She continually receives these types of remarks, until one day she decided to end it by taking her own life. Although the voice-over makes the character seem powerless, it allows the film to show how important the main character is. Because Diouanna is the only character with a voice-over, the film surrounds her. Overall, I think that Black Girl did a great job using the voice-over technique as it showed how powerless Diouanna is, while making the movie focus around her story.
ReplyDeleteI think the voice-over is a very important, but also dangerous tool in storytelling. If done incorrectly, it makes the storytelling seem incredibly lazy. One of the biggest drawbacks of using too much narration is it breaks the fundamental rule of showing and not telling, so it is very important to consider what content should be shown on screen versus what should be narrated. I do not think, however, that it is inefficient storytelling by any means. Unless narration actively detracts from the plot, its probably the quickest way to get a point across. By any means the narration in both Black Girl and Days of Heaven are both done incredibly well. I especially like the use of narration in the style of Days of Heaven, where it was done over montage like scenes where time passage was occurring. I think it is a great way to recap events that didn’t necessarily happen on-screen and also as a way to give moral context to the film. There are certain ways in which narration can be extremely distracting or detract from the movie. These are cases where there is just too much narration, or the narration is occurring in the middle of the action. If the narration begins to replace dialogue it begins to seem lazy, and if it happens in the middle of the action, it just overloads the audience with sensory input. The reason Black Girl’s narration was so good was because the narration was from Diouanna’s point of view. She was supposed to be the focal point of the entire movie, so it only made sense that the narration was coming from her. The narration served to increase focus on her and make the viewer sympathize with her more. The film did a good job with it.
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