MEDIA CONVENTIONS: NARRATIVE

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.

What Narratives Do in Media Texts

1.

Simplify & organize 2.

Familiarize & allow for prediction

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

Vladimir Propp

• Russian Formalist •

The Morphology of the Folk Tale

(1928) • Stated that all fairytales have common narrative structures and character functions (

stock characters )

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’)

Propp – (Stock) Characters & Roles

Propp’s 8 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

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)

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.

Todorov – Narrative & Equilibrium

•

Equilibrium

(sense of order/calm, the status quo) • A

disruption

of this equilibrium by an event • A

realization

that a disruption has happened • An attempt to

repair

the damage of the disruption • A

restoration

changed one of the equilibrium which may be a new or

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

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).

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’)

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.

Levi-Strauss – Binary Oppositions

Hero Natural Good Male Rational Strong Day Coward Artificial Evil Female Emotional Weak Night

Binary Oppositions in a ‘Western’ film

Homesteaders Christian Domestic Weak Farm/Garden Inside society Native Americans Pagan Savage Strong Wilderness Outside society

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