NARRATIVES OF WAR: IMMERSIVE TECHNIQUES IN LITERARY AND CINEMATIC TEXTS

Abstract

This research focuses on the study of narratives of war, as depicted in cinematic texts of various genres. The research material comprises narratives created between 2020 and 2022 which reflect the ongoing russian war against Ukraine. The uniqueness of these narratives lies in the fact that the author, the reader/viewer, and the unfolding events exist within a unified temporal space. The stories of people in a country at war are real-life accounts of occupation, of living in conflict zones, where individuals face war daily. A distinctive immersive experience is generated because readers/viewers share the same experience of living in a country engaged in a liberation struggle against an aggressor. Thus narratives of war become stories about life during war, life under occupation, life under shelling and threat, which unfolds parallel to everyday life, family concerns, and genuine emotions. The narrative techniques employed in these works are unique due to the seamless continuity of the story, focalization, narration, the real experience of the author and the viewer, and the temporal continuum that envelops both the artistic and real worlds. In this way, a temporal-spatial immersive blend of the real and fictional, objective and emotional, reinterpreted and lived, is created. The paper offers a general typology of the narratives of war: war narrative chronicles, fictional cinematic narratives of war, and immersive narratives of war. One of the unique properties of these narratives is the parallel development of the war story taking place in the country and the stories of ordinary people living under occupation, under shelling, in danger, yet striving to maintain dignity, moral values, and the significance of genuine emotions. These narratives of war, created exclusively by witnesses of military events in Ukraine, are based on real or reinterpreted life stories and maintain the truthfulness and objectivity of the depiction of the Russian-Ukrainian war.