Media conventions: Narrative

1. Media conventions:Narrative

2. Definitions – Plot vs. Narrative • Plot: The sequence of incidents or events that comprise a story. • Narrative: The way a story is told; how information is presented to an audience.

3. What Narratives Do in Media Texts • Simplify & organize • Familiarize & allow for prediction

4. Features of Narrative Structure of time • Linear/Chronological – ex. most ‘biopics’ (biographies) • Non Linear – ex. Pulp Fiction, Memento • Cyclical – ex. Groundhog Day, Run Lola Run Point of view • Single/Multiple viewpoints (restricted vs. omniscient) Motivations, Causes & Effects Open or closed • Episode of a TV sitcom vs. a film

5. Russian Formalist The Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928) Stated that all fairytales have common narrative structures and character functions (stock characters) Vladimir Propp

6. Propp’s Analysis of Fairytales Propp examined hundreds of fairy tales and identified: • 31 functions which move the story along Examples include the punishment of the villain (usually at the end of the story); the ban of an action (i.e. if Sleeping Beauty touches a spinning wheel, she will die) • Not all 31 had to be present, however, they did always follow the same sequential order • These functions were performed by one of 8 main character types/roles that advanced the action 8 character roles (or‘spheres of action’)

7. Propp–(Stock) Characters & Roles Propp’s8 character roles or‘spheres of action’ • The hero, who is motivated by an initial lack • The villain, who tries to defeat the hero • The donor, who provides an object with some magic property • The helper, who aids the hero • The princess, a reward for the hero and object of the • villain’s schemes • Her father, who validates the hero • The dispatcher, who sends the hero on his way • The false hero, who presents a contrast with the real hero

8. Propp– Narrative as Structure • Propp’s theory is a form of structuralism, which is a view that all media is inevitably in the form of certain fixed structures. • These structures are often culturally derived and form expectations in the mind of an audience from within that same culture (fairy tales always have happy endings or the princess always marries the handsome prince). • Genre plays an important role in structuring our expectations and understanding which rules can apply in the narrative. In other words, we know the rules that determine how certain kinds of narratives will ‘behave’ (detective stories vs. romantic comedies)

9. Tvzetan Todorov • Franco-Bulgarian philosopher who coined the term narratology, meaning to look at units of meaning in a text. • Claimed all stories had a basic structure based on equilibrium.

10. Todorov – Narrative & Equilibrium • Equilibrium (sense of order/calm, the status quo) • A disruption of this equilibrium by an event • A realizationthat a disruption has happened • An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption • A restoration of the equilibrium which may be a new or changed one

11. Roland Barthes • French semiologist • Identifies 5 ‘codes’ of narrative: • hermeneutic (narrative turning-points) we know where the story will go next • proairetic (basic narrative actions) Ex. A detective interviews a suspect • cultural (prior social knowledge) Ex. our attitudes about gender or race • semic(medium-related codes) intertextuality • symbolic (themes) iconography

12. Barthes – The Enigma Code (Puzzles) • The narrative poses questions or ‘puzzles’ that create suspense and move the story along. • As audiences, the unravelling of these codes and thinking about the questions posed by events provide viewing pleasure. • We should feel at the end of a good detective story or thriller that we have been pleasurably puzzled, so that the‘solution’—our piecing together of the story in its proper order out of the evidence offered by the plot—will come as a pleasure. We should not feel that the plot has cheated; that parts of the story have suddenly been revealed which we couldn’t possibly have guessed at (ex. In a murder mystery, the butler cannot, at the last minute, suddenly be revealed to be a poisons expert).

13. Barthes – The Semic Code (Intertextuality) John Fiske develops Barthes’ semic code • A representation of a car chase only makes sense in relation to all the other car chase we have seen. • This process of using one media text to make sense of another is called intertextuality. We are unlikely to have experienced a car chase in reality, but even if we did, we would still make sense of it by making reference to existing media texts (since they shape our concept of ‘car chase’)

14. Claude Levi-Strauss • French anthropologist • He looked at narrative structure and themes in texts in terms of binary oppositions. • Binary oppositions are opposite values that reveal the structure of media texts (he also argued that cultures are structured in a similar way). • These oppositions create tensions and conflicts that structure stories.

15. Levi-Strauss – Binary Oppositions

16. Binary Oppositions in a ‘Western’ film

17. Summary • PROPP – ‘Stock’ character types with prescribed roles • TODOROV – Equilibrium is disturbed and then restored • BARTHES –Narratives provide puzzles for us to solve • LEVI-STRAUSS– Binary oppositions create conflicts and tensions that propel the narrative