Online Assignment 3

 The Importance of Bruner’s Referentiality

(Or lack of) in the film The Princess Bride

“Scaling the Cliffs of Insanity, Battling Rodents of Unusual Size, Facing torture in the Pit of Despair.
- True love has never been a snap” (Wiki Quote, 2007)

Film Summary

The Princess Bride (1987) is based on the book by the same name published in 1973 and authored by Simon Morgenstern, a pseudonym for William Goldman.

The film is framed around an ill grandson whose grandfather comes to visit intent on cheering the grandson by bringing a special book. The story, a fairy tale, contains fencing, revenge, redemption, true love, pirates, giants, torture, miracles, captures, and escapes. The grandson reluctantly agrees to listen to the reading of the story.

In the fictitious country of Florin, farm-boy Westley and Buttercup fall in love but as he is poor, he sets off to earn his fortune so that they may marry. It is soon reported to Buttercup that The Dread Pirate Roberts attacked Westley’s ship, and Westley has been murdered. Fast-forward five years and Crown Prince Humperdinck decides to marry Buttercup. She has but no choice to marry the cowardly prince as the law gives him the right to choose his bride without objection. 

Just a few days before the nuptials, the future Princess is kidnapped by three former circus performers; Vizzini the self noted ‘brains’ of the operation, a man of small stature with an even shorter temper from Sicily, gentle giant Fezzik, and an alcoholic former master sword fighter from Spain, Inigo Montoya. Inigo is determined to avenge his father, who was murdered by The Six Fingered Man when Inigo was a boy. It is Vizzini’s plan to murder the Princess and leave her body in the neighboring country, Gilder, in order to start a war between the two countries, Gilder and Florin. Inigo and Fezzik are reluctant participants in his scheme.

The kidnappers make off with Buttercup but are followed by The Man in Black (MIB). The MIB catches up, knocks the Inigo unconscious in a duel, beats Fezzik in hand to hand combat, wins a battle of wits against Vizzini and kidnaps Buttercup himself. By this time, Prince Humperdinck and his evil partner-in-crime, Count Rugen, are tailing them hoping to rescue the princess.

Buttercup soon learns that The MIB is really The Dread Pirate Roberts inhabited by her true love Westley. The reunited pair escapes into the fire swamp and is faced with three previously un-survivable terrors: The Flame Spurt, Lightening Sand and R.O.U.Ses (Rodents Of Unusual Size, which are the size of a very large dog). Amazingly, but not without encountering peril, they survive to be captured on the other side of the swamp by Humperdinck and his men. Buttercup negotiates the safe return of Westley to his ship by agreeing to return to Florin and marry the prince. The Prince instructs Count Rugen to take Westley and throw him into the Pit of Despair where Westley is tortured until he is mostly dead.
Inigo and Fezzik have reunited and Fezzik tells Inigo of The Six-Fingered Man, Count Rugen. Inigo decides they need The Man in Black to help plan his revenge. The two companions rescue Westley from The Pit of Despair. Because of Westley’s mostly dead state they seek a miracle. They seek out Miracle Max, who retired after being fired by Prince Humperdinck, on hearing that Westley is Buttercup’s true love, makes a chocolate-coated miracle pill to bring him back to life. 

The revived, but still weakened, Westley comes up with a plan and the three of them storm the castle. Inigo finds and kills The Six Fingered Man, Buttercup ties the Prince to a chair, Fezzik finds four white horses for their escape and they all ride off, happily ever after.

Definition of Bruner’s Narrative Feature: Referentiality

Bruner writes that “Narrative ‘truth’ is judged by its verisimilitude rather then it’s verifiability” (Bruner, 1991). He speaks here of providing the correct balance of ‘truth’ in a work of fiction so that an audience will identify with the story and characters.

Analysis

The Princess Bride is a film that is dependant on the audience knowing the rules of a fairy tale so that Goldman and the director, Rob Riener, can use them to parody the fanciful nature of this type of narrative all the while getting the audience to applaud the ending.

We look at the common elements of a fairy tale which include:

• A good character
  • Westley, Fezzik, Inigo
• An evil character
  • Prince Humperdinck, Count Rugen, Vizzini
• Royalty and/or a castle
  • Prince Humperdinck lives in a castle
• Magic is an integral part of the plot

• Magic Max and the miracle chocolate covered pill that brings Westley back from being mostly dead thus allowing the storming of the castle.

Problem and solution

• Initially the audience is lured into believing that the problem is the kidnapping and potential marriage of Buttercup to Prince Humperdinck, but actually the problem resides within Buttercup and the audience. The problem is to first convince the Princess of true love, and for the audience to believe in it as well.

Things often happen in threes

• Three heroes
• Three villains
• Three perils in the Fire Swamp
• Three identities of Westley: Farm-boy, The Man in Black, The Dread Pirate Roberts

By using the common, or referential elements, of the fairy tale narrative, albeit in a humorous, over-the-top way, the films creators develop a world and characters that audiences expect to encounter. The parody of the fairy tale narrative lends to suspend the audiences cynical nature, which leads to the moral of the story: True Love conquers all. Even being mostly dead.

References

The Princess Bride (film) Retrieved on June 9, 2007 from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride_%28film%29#Taglines

Bruner, J. Autumn 1991; The Narrative Construction of Reality; Critical Inquiry Vol 18; The University of Chicago; Chicago, IL