Discuss how ideas are presented through conflicting perspectives.
Representations of conflicting perspectives are created to position the reader towards the composer’s perspective which will shape meaning and influence responses. The techniques of representation allows us to examine the text closely, adding depth to the text but avoiding a personal affiliation. Ultimately, each text reveals that the appearance of an event, personality or situation has a larger significance than the true nature of them. This is evidently demonstrated though David Guterson’s 1995 novel Snow Falling on Cedars, Fred Schepisi’s 1988 film Evil Angels and ofcourse the audio extract provided by Mrs. Schultz.
In Snow falling on Cedars, despite being a non-alien citizen and demonstrating his ‘loyalty [at war] to the united states: his country’, is blamed for a murder out of prejudice ‘having slanted eyes’. Through the technique of in media res, Guterson explores the conflicting perspective of mans innocence. Alvin Hooks is initially presented, with a defiant tone, through the use of rhetorical question ‘consider this man, consider his face, what is your duty as citizens of this community?’ implying racial degradations shared among the islanders, and the moral implications therein. Sergeant Maples emphasis that Kabuo mastering of kendo and being able to ‘kill a man far larger then himself’’ incites Kabuo’s flashback to his generational blood line, and his willingness to carry out seppuku (self-sacrifice) to obtain what was rightly ‘stolen from [him]’. Furthermore, Kabuo’s stream of consciousness is often represented as undemenour to the situation at hand, “Everything was conjoined by mystery and fate, and in his darkened cell he meditated on this. . . . He would have to . . . accept that the mountain of his violent sins was too large to climb in this lifetime” and hence this shows a conflicting perspective, as to what German had been killed; the soldiers or Carl Heine. From this, the audience will now be puzzled into the true nature of Kabuo, whether he is a ‘loyal’ or a malevolent tyrant. Guterson purposefully does this to shape meaning and influence responses whereby causing the audience to avoid an affiliation to a particular perspective.
Similarly to Kabuo, Lindy Chamberlain in ‘Evil Angels’ is forced to defend herself to a public convinced she was responsible for the murder through the presentation, resulting in assumptions placed on people. The film Evil Angels chronicles the case of Azaria Chamberlain, a nine-week-old girl who disappeared from a campground near Uluru on 17 August 1980, said to be taken by a dingo. The mother, Lindy Chamberlain, struggles to prove her innocence to the public convinced she was responsible for the death.
The murder re-enactment has a low-angle shot on Lindy, instilling fear
