In books and movies, the title character is simply the character referenced in the title. Not necessarily the main character, however.
But, what is the name of the character that is referring to the title character in the title?
E.g.
[ul]
[li]in “My Stepmother Is An Alien”, Celeste Martin (Kim Basinger) is the title character, the alien. But Jessie Mills (Alyson Hannigan) is the character who would refer to Celeste as “my stepmother”.[/li][li]in “My Cousin Vinnie”, Bill (Ralph Macchio) was the character that referred to Vinnie as his cousin.[/li][li]In “My Girl”, the person referring to Vada as “my girl” could either be her father Harry (Dan Aykroyd) or her friend Thomas (Macaulay Culkin). I suppose it’d be her father since Thomas dies in the first movie and there’s a “My Girl 2”.[/li][/ul]
I also don’t think there’s a term that means exactly what you’re looking for. In many cases the person presumably referring to another character as “my [whatever]” in the title will be the protagonist or narrator. However, this is not always the case, perhaps especially with movie titles because of marketing reasons.
In the movie My Girl the girl is the main character, and as the OP says it’s not clear whether we’re meant to understand that the person calling her “my girl” is her father or her friend/boyfriend. (I can’t remember if anyone in the movie ever even uses that term.) But I’m pretty sure My Girl isn’t called My Girl because whoever wrote the screenplay thought this was the best possible title for that particular story. I think the title was chosen because it’s the title of the well-known old Temptations song that was used in the soundtrack and the song evokes both a past era and the idea of sweet youthful romance. In the song “My Girl” there is an obvious first-person narrator, a man who is describing his girlfriend.
The title My Cousin Vinnie is taken from an actual line in the movie, so we know who says it: the Ralph Macchio character (Billy). Vinnie himself is the main character of the movie though, while Billy is a fairly small role even though his arrest is what gets the whole plot moving.
With books I think a “my” in the title tends to be more literal, and typically indicates that a first-person narrator or central protagonist is the person who says/thinks the words in the title.
So it kind of seems like “narrator” would be the best fit for this. But since I cited movies, and the exposition is done differently, that would probably work better for books than movies.
This wouldn’t be a bad suggestion if “indirect title character” didn’t already mean a title character who was referred to by a description rather than by name.
from Wikipedia (bolding mine). Googling “indirect title character” brought up an “indirect movie title characters” quiz which included such entries as The Godfather, The Dark Knight, and Elf.
That person may not literally narrate the story, especially not in a movie where explicit narration is lacking, but the use of the first person puts that character in the narrator role at least as far as the title is concerned.
This also works for titles containing subjective and objective as well as possessive first-person pronouns, such as I Married a Werewolf or Supersize Me.
I can’t think of any examples where a character if the viewpoint character of the title and then doesn’t go on to be the viewpoint character of the book as well.
There are, of course, numerous examples of the reverse; where the viewpoint character in the book isn’t referenced in the title. There’s nothing pointing to Nick Carraway, for example, in the title of The Great Gatsby.
As for movies, I think viewpoint characters are much less common. The camera acts as a de facto viewpoint character. But the camera is almost always representing just an impersonal viewpoint. It’s relatively rare for the camera to actually stand in for the viewpoint of one of the characters in the movie. And very rare for it to be done for an entire movie.
It’s rare for a movie to be shot entirely from the literal POV of a character, but there are other ways to indicate that a character is our viewpoint into the world of the movie. Sometimes there is actual narration provided by one character and/or a framing device that shows us that the bulk of the movie is a character recalling his or her memories. More subtly, a movie might reveal to the viewer only things that the main character would know about, or sometimes even only things the main character actually saw.
Yes, but if a POV character is used in a movie, it’s usually the protagonist rather than a viewpoint character. Look at Hardcore Henry as an example. Or Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” video.
I don’t understand the distinction you’re trying to make here. You seem to be using the terms “viewpoint character” and “POV character” in a way that’s unfamiliar to me, because I would consider those to be synonyms. The viewpoint character is often, but certainly not always, also the protagonist.
If a movie uses a POV shot then what we see onscreen is sometimes supposed to be literally what a particular character is seeing, but this could be any character and not just the protagonist. It’s fairly common in thrillers to have a shot from the perspective of the killer (which helps keep the killer’s identity hidden from the audience). Sometimes this kind of shot is just a technique and we’re not supposed to think we’re seeing through a character’s eyes at all.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that a movie doesn’t need to use POV shots to have a viewpoint character or characters. In your previous post you seemed to be conflating the viewpoint character with the technique of the POV shot, but these are two different things.
A POV character is when the camera is used to show directly what the character would be seeing. You never see the POV character unless he or she looks in a mirror or something like that. It’s more of a camera technique rather than a narrative technique.
A viewpoint character is a character who is observing the events of the story. The audience only sees what the character sees. But this doesn’t require a POV camera angle; we generally see the viewpoint character on screen. This is a narrative technique, not a camera technique.
The protagonist is the central figure of the narrative; he or she is the person who the story is happening to.
None of these are universal. Obviously, a lot of movies never have a POV shot so they don’t have a POV character. Many movies don’t have a viewpoint character and some movies don’t have a protagonist. On the other hand, some movies have multiple viewpoint characters or protagonists. And in some cases, the viewpoint characters and the protagonists are the same characters.
I agree a POV character can be any character, including a viewpoint character or a protagonist. What I said was that I can’t think of any examples in which the entire work was presented via a POV character unless the POV character was the protagonist.
Okay, I get now how you are using these terms, but while it’s been quite a few years since I studied film I don’t believe this is the standard usage. I mention this because [del]I’m a Doper and love pedantic semantic nitpicking[/del] literary/cinematic terms are the topic of the thread.
In both literature and film a viewpoint character is a character whose thoughts and experiences shape or color the story. A film can limit itself to showing only things that the viewpoint character was actually there to witness, but this is not the only way to handle viewpoint in film. I’ve already mentioned some other techniques, such as voice-over narration, but I’ll add here that movies can also show us the inner thoughts of a character. Sometimes this is in an obvious fantasy sequence, other times there’s a (rather cliched) “twist” where we learn that the viewpoint character is delusional and some of the things we saw previously never really happened.
When describing a POV shot then I think one would normally say something like “POV shot from John’s perspective” or “shot from Jane’s POV”. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered “POV character” except as a synonym for “viewpoint character”.
Well then I guess I’m confused as to why you were saying this to me. The post that you were replying to was about movies that had a viewpoint character but weren’t shot as though seen through that character’s eyes.