Narrative Theorists

I was looking through my old GCSE media studies books from when I was studying film trailers for the first time, and I came across all of my old notes about narrative theory and the four main narrative theorists: Vladimir Propp, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Rolande Barthes and Tzvetan Todorov. We studied these in class recently but however I decided to go home and research them into more depth and once I had found my old notes I decided to use my old notes along side my Alevel notes (which are more in depth), as well as then research more about these theorists.

 

Vladamir Propp

Propp studied folk tales and legends from many different countries and noticed they all were very similar. They appeared to be about the same basic problems and the same character types appeared in most of the folk tales.
During his study Propp identified 32 basic categories of action which he called ‘functions’, as well as identifying a set of basic spheres of action or character functions. He focused on the way characters in folk tales tended to be types rather than individuals. here are the main eight that he believed were used most commonly throughout film productions:

• The Hero (who is on the quest)
• The Villain (who opposes the hero)
• The Donor (who helps the hero by giving him a magical tool)
• The Dispatcher (who starts the hero on his way)
• The False Hero (who tempts the hero away from his quest)
• The Helper (who helps the hero)
• The Princess (who is the reward for the hero)
• The Princess' Father (who rewards the hero for his efforts)

These characters don't necessarily have to be people just so long as the item or person holds the same responsibility as the name given, for example the princess it stereotypically the winning prise for the prince. So this could be a human or even a valuable object. One character and item can also posses two of these theory characters. However not all texts are conventional with these principals. This is why Propp can be an unreliable way of deconstructing certain texts.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Lévi-Strauss was a structural philosopher, he was interested in binary oppositions, for example, night/day, good/bad/, light/dark, inside/outside. Lévi-Strauss realised that these oppositions often structured texts such as stories, plays as well as films.

Thinking about advertisements, washing powder companies rely on the ‘before/after’ contrast, whereas when you think about News Reports they tend to be structured as binary opposites, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, that way it enables them to present a story easily.

Rolande Barthes

Barthes was interested in concepts such as negotiated meaning between institution and audience. He argued that the audience produces new meanings when reading a text, the audience would do so by making use of previous experiences as well as the text itself.  The cultural content of consumption becomes as important as the content of the text. He described texts as networks which can be related closely to the current multimedia texts, For example websites and the different ways in which the audience interacts with these texts.

The most well known of Barthes’ theories is probably the enigma code. The enigma code in its simplest form is the hook or the mystery that needs to be resolved for the audience. For example a series of a TV show could use ‘Next time on …’, ‘The adventure continues…’ or ‘Come back next week to find out what happens’. Trailers for new films use the hook more often as a film trailer is a non-linear narrative and the trailer would show frames from the film and usually end with a frame which uses the hook method as it just ends on a ‘cliff hanger’ which then hooks the audience in to see what happens next.

Tzvetan Todorov

Todorov suggested that there are five stages to a narrative:

• Equilibrium
• A Disruption of this equilibrium by an event
• A Realisation that a disruption has happened
• An Attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
• A Restoration of equilibrium- which could be a new equilibrium

These stages can be applied to fictional and non-fictional texts and can be used as a good starting point for identifying the structure of a text.

For example, when thinking about advertisements again, food companies can use this narrative form, where the mother has to make a quick nutritious meal for her family who then become a perfect family when confronted with the meal as a restoration to the disruption (hunger).