Postmodernism, Meta-Narratives, and Cultural Stereotypes in Atonement

By: Mirenda Gwin, Fourth Year, History; Media Studies

Jean-Francois Lyotard’s idea of Grand Narratives and Jean Baudrillard’s theory of truth as a social construction can be utilized in examining the manner in which the British film Atonement (2007) relies on contradictory visions of truth at the level of the script and at the level of the genre of ‘historical fiction.’ The script dramatizes the consequences of misinterpreting the truth; this trope is exemplified in the actions of Briony Tallis, one of the main characters in the film who wrongly accuses another of the central characters, Robbie Turner, of raping a young girl.[1] This dramatization becomes tragic based on the nearly universal supposition that truth can, at some point, be apprehended properly. However, this argument about truth implicit in the script contradicts the film’s reliance on carefully constructed, polished, and dangerous historical truths, like ideas about the postmodernist blurring of truth and fiction, the cultural imposition of hetero-normative sexual intimacy within marriage, and the imagined ‘British’ cultural stereotypes.