Rashomon effect

Tajōmaru the bandit and the wife of a samurai, two characters who offer different perspectives of events in the film Rashomon

The Rashomon effect is the phenomenon of the unreliability of eyewitnesses. The effect is named after Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Japanese film Rashomon, in which a murder is described in four contradictory ways by four witnesses.[1] It has been used as a storytelling and writing method in cinema in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same incident.

Discussion

The term addresses the motives, mechanism, and occurrences of the reporting on the circumstance and addresses contested interpretations of events, the existence of disagreements regarding the evidence of events, and subjectivity versus objectivity in human perception, memory, and reporting.

The Rashomon effect has been defined in a modern academic context as "the naming of an epistemological framework—or ways of thinking, knowing, and remembering—required for understanding complex and ambiguous situations".[2]

The history of the term and its permutations in cinema, literature, legal studies, psychology, sociology, and history is the subject of a 2015 multi-author volume edited by Blair Davis, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls, titled Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon and their legacies.[3]

Valerie Alia termed the same effect "The Rashomon Principle" and has used this variant extensively since the late 1970s, first publishing it in an essay on the politics of journalism in 1982.^[citation needed] She developed the term in a 1997 essay "The Rashomon Principle: The Journalist as Ethnographer" and in her 2004 book, Media Ethics and Social Change.[4][5]

A useful demonstration of this principle in scientific understanding can be found in Karl G. Heider's 1988 journal article on ethnography.[6] Heider used the term to refer to the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.

In the Queensland Supreme Court case of The Australian Institute for Progress Ltd v The Electoral Commission of Queensland & Ors (No 2), Applegarth J wrote that:

The Rashomon effect describes how parties describe an event in a different and contradictory manner, which reflects their subjective interpretation and self-interested advocacy, rather than an objective truth. The Rashomon effect is evident when the event is the outcome of litigation. One should not be surprised when both parties claim to have won the case.[7]

The vagaries of memories and how they depend on one's own identity and interests is also a theme of the unfinished 1963 Polish film Passenger (based on a 1959 radio play), in which an Auschwitz survivor and guard differently recall events in that Nazi concentration camp.

Works using the Rashomon effect

• 1950: Rashomon
• 1954: Andha Naal – an Indian Tamil-language film with thematic similarities to Rashomon.[8]
• 1990: "A Matter of Perspective" – an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Commander Riker is accused of murder and faces an extradition hearing where everyone's version of what transpired is re-created in the holodeck.
• 1997: An Instance of the Fingerpost – a mystery novel featuring contradicting narrators.[9]
• 1998: "Bad Blood" – an episode of The X-Files featuring differing retellings of an investigation into Vampire activity .[10]
• 2004: Virumaandi – the film's narrative presents two competing legal narratives, drawing comparisons to the Rashomon effect.[11]
• 2013: "The Ashtray" – an episode of How I Met Your Mother that shows the same event from multiple characters' perspectives.[12]
• 2014: Ulidavaru Kandanthe – an Indian Kannada-language film about five characters telling their different perspectives on a person's murder.[13][14]
• 2015: Talvar – an Indian Hindi-language film based on the 2008 Noida double murder case.[15][16]
• 2016: The Handmaiden – a South Korean picture adapted from Fingersmith by Sarah Waters.[17]
• 2021: The Last Duel – 3 main characters narrating the rape of a knight's wife in three chapters.[18]
• 2022: Vadhandhi: The Fable of Velonie – an Indian Prime Video web series.[19]
• 2024: Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story – a reenactment of an infamous case uses multiple perspectives.[20]^[better source needed]

See also

• Unreliable narrator
• Blind men and an elephant

References

1. Davenport, Christian (2010). "Rashomon Effect, Observation, and Data Generation". Media Bias, Perspective, and State Repression: The Black Panther Party. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 52–73, esp. 55. ISBN 9780521759700.
2. Anderson, Robert (2016). "The Rashomon Effect and Communication". Canadian Journal of Communication. 41 (2): 250–265. doi:10.22230/cjc.2016v41n2a3068. ISSN 0705-3657.
3. Davis, Blair; Anderson, Robert; Walls, Jan, eds. (2015). Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon and Their Legacies. Routledge Advances in Film Studies. Abingdon, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-1138827097. Retrieved 28 September 2016. See also the citation of individual chapters.
4. Alia, Valerie (1997). "The Rashomon Principle: The Journalist as Ethnographer". In Alia, Valerie; Brennan, Brian; Hoffmaster, Barry (eds.). Deadlines and Diversity: Journalism Ethics in a Changing World. Halifax, CAN: Fernwood. ISBN 9781895686548.
5. Alia, Valerie (2004). Media Ethics and Social Change. Edinburgh, UK and New York City: Edinburgh University Press/Routledge US; Routledge US. ISBN 9780415971997.
6. Heider, Karl G. (March 1988). "The Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree" (PDF). American Anthropologist. 90 (1): 73–81. doi:10.1525/aa.1988.90.1.02a00050. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-17.
7. The Australian Institute for Progress Ltd v The Electoral Commission of Queensland & Ors (No 2) [2020] QSC 174 (15 June 2020), Supreme Court (Qld, Australia).
8. Guy, Randor (12 December 2008). "Andha Naal 1954". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 21 February 2015. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
9. Bernstein, Richard (April 3, 1998). "'An Instance Of The Fingerpost': Many Voices Tell An Intricate Tale". The New York Times. Retrieved August 16, 2024. "An Instance of the Fingerpost" is told "Rashomon" style, by four different narrators, each of whom has only a partial understanding of events and only one of whom makes telling the truth his primary purpose.
10. Handlen, Zack (June 11, 2011). "The X-Files: "Bad Blood" / Millennium : "Luminary"". The A.V Club. Retrieved November 5, 2024. This is a Rashomon episode, in which much of the running time is given over to either Mulder or Scully explaining their version of events.
11. Kumar, Radha (2021). Police Matters: The Everyday State and Caste Politics in South India, 1900–1975. Cornell University Press. hdl:20.500.12657/49454. ISBN 978-1-5017-6106-5. Online commentaries speak of this as depicting the "Rashomon effect" in Tamil cinema, but it is noteworthy that the movie makes no pretense that Kothala Thevar speaks the truth. These are not two different memories of an event, these are two different legal narratives of an event.
12. "Ryan Murphy responds to 'Monsters' criticism, says audience didn't understand". 2024-09-24. Retrieved 2024-10-30. If you need an example of what a Rashomon style episode of TV would look like, the Season 9 episode of How I Met Your Mother titled "The Ashtray" demonstrates it perfectly. Critically, it's a trope that relies on an event being told via flashback from various perspectives.
13. Prasad, S Shyam (28 March 2014). "Movie review: Ulidavaru Kandante". Bangalore Mirror. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
14. Shivakumar, S. (2016-02-18). "A cult classic, and then..." The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 2024-08-20. Rakshit Shetty: 'I'm a great fan of Kurosawa but I never thought of 'Rashomon' while writing the film.'
15. Jamkhandikar, Shilpa (2015-10-01). "Bollywood's 'Talvar' does a 'Rashomon' on Aarushi murder case". Reuters. Retrieved 2024-08-20.
16. "Making 'Talvar' was a painful journey: Vishal Bhardwaj". The Indian Express. 28 September 2015. Archived from the original on 15 January 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
17. Choe, Steve (2017–18). "Park Chan-wook's Critique of Moral Judgment: The Handmaiden (2016)" (PDF). Studies in the Humanities. 44 & 45 (1 & 2). Indiana University of Pennsylvania: 20. On the other hand, the very structure of The Handmaiden may be read to interrupt these pleasures and the sense of moral certitude that underpins it. Rashomon-like, the two parts of Park's film provide the viewer with two perspectives on the same event.
18. Sims, David (2021-10-13). "Ridley Scott's New Film Plays a Masterly Trick". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2024-08-16. The story is told in the style of Rashomon, the 1950 film in which the same murder is recounted by several different characters. But Rashomon underscored the subjective nature of truth; in The Last Duel, each new storyteller works to peel back the self-aggrandizement of the last.
19. Ramnath, Nandini (2022-12-02). "'Vadhandhi – The Fable of Velonie' review: Murder mystery becomes the thing it wants to avoid". Scroll.in. Retrieved 2024-08-16. The show uses a Rashomon-like device of presenting Velonie from the subjective viewpoints of the men who are describing her.
20. Kelso, Abby (2024-10-17). "Reel Thoughts: 'Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story' utilizes the Rashomon Effect at the expense of accurately portraying the case". Daily Northwestern. Retrieved 2024-10-29. Monsters" traps the viewers with its expert use of the Rashomon Effect, named after the 1950 film "Rashomon," which depicts a murder from four contradictory perspectives.