The Power of the Voice: From Voice-Over to Character?

The use of voice-over narration was frowned upon over the course of the 20th century, and it is only after the 1980s that it was accepted and became more prevalent in the film and television industry (Kozloff 12-13). The following decade was marked by more experimentation with this narrative techniq...

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Main Author: Rim KHALED
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA) 2024-06-01
Series:E-REA
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/erea/17830
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author Rim KHALED
author_facet Rim KHALED
author_sort Rim KHALED
collection DOAJ
description The use of voice-over narration was frowned upon over the course of the 20th century, and it is only after the 1980s that it was accepted and became more prevalent in the film and television industry (Kozloff 12-13). The following decade was marked by more experimentation with this narrative technique leading to the creation of diverse narrator profiles. This is illustrated in a miscellany of TV series, such as Desperate Housewives and Jane the Virgin, wherein the voice-over narrator plays an important narratological function. As these two series showcase, voice-over narrators can be either homodiegetic or heterodiegetic. Accordingly, the former exists in the storyworld as a character, while the latter does not. This paper hypothesizes that under certain circumstances, heterodiegetic voice-over narrators can become characters despite their incorporeality on the screen, thanks to the power of the voice.
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spelling doaj-art-cd66e06ec3b14a54a61d97d8244250792025-01-09T12:55:06ZengLaboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)E-REA1638-17182024-06-0121210.4000/11wa5The Power of the Voice: From Voice-Over to Character?Rim KHALEDThe use of voice-over narration was frowned upon over the course of the 20th century, and it is only after the 1980s that it was accepted and became more prevalent in the film and television industry (Kozloff 12-13). The following decade was marked by more experimentation with this narrative technique leading to the creation of diverse narrator profiles. This is illustrated in a miscellany of TV series, such as Desperate Housewives and Jane the Virgin, wherein the voice-over narrator plays an important narratological function. As these two series showcase, voice-over narrators can be either homodiegetic or heterodiegetic. Accordingly, the former exists in the storyworld as a character, while the latter does not. This paper hypothesizes that under certain circumstances, heterodiegetic voice-over narrators can become characters despite their incorporeality on the screen, thanks to the power of the voice.https://journals.openedition.org/erea/17830discoursecharacternarratorvoice-overcharacterizationstoryworld
spellingShingle Rim KHALED
The Power of the Voice: From Voice-Over to Character?
E-REA
discourse
character
narrator
voice-over
characterization
storyworld
title The Power of the Voice: From Voice-Over to Character?
title_full The Power of the Voice: From Voice-Over to Character?
title_fullStr The Power of the Voice: From Voice-Over to Character?
title_full_unstemmed The Power of the Voice: From Voice-Over to Character?
title_short The Power of the Voice: From Voice-Over to Character?
title_sort power of the voice from voice over to character
topic discourse
character
narrator
voice-over
characterization
storyworld
url https://journals.openedition.org/erea/17830
work_keys_str_mv AT rimkhaled thepowerofthevoicefromvoiceovertocharacter
AT rimkhaled powerofthevoicefromvoiceovertocharacter