Media concepts- Narrative

In class we were asked to write a full short story which has a beginning and end this is so that understood that all stories have some sort of narrative structure. Me and Becky came up with this short story;...

There once was a man named Malcolm, he was married to his school sweat heart Lola. They got divorced because Lola slept with Brian, Malcolm's handsome brother. They lived happily ever after, apart from Malcolm who was sad and died alone.
The End.

Narrative; Describes the way a story is told, how the elements are structured and organised in a way that makes sense to the audience. It has also been described as how events are unified in time and space.

Linear narrative;- the story is told in chronological order.

Non- linear narrative/ disjointed narrative;- told in non-chronological order.

There are three theorists who have given their opinion and summarised what is needed for an audience to understand what is happening in the story, in my case music videos. The three main theorists who have voiced their opinion on what narrative is and how the audience understand the structure are; Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi- Strauss. These
three theorists did not apply their theory to music video's or film but to old folk fairytale stories, in 1950's their theories were adopted by French cinema critics who believed that films follow similar narrative structures as they suggested. In this blog I am attempting to apply these theories to music video to see if they are right, these theories are....

Todorov

He came up with the narrative theory that a story is structured in 5 stages'

Stage 1; Equilibrium

- This is an on going situation before anything happens.

Stage 2; Disequilibrium (disruption)

- This is a disruption in the story which gets it moving and must be resolved.

Stage 3; Recognition

- This is when the character realises there is a problem and tries to deal with it (often making the situation worse).


Stage 4; Reparation

-This is when the character realises the damage of the disruption and deals with it to resolve the disruption.


Stage 5; New equilibrium

-This is when the story is concluded by returning to a new equilibrium (different to where the story began).

Vladimir Propp

In 1969 Vladimir Propp developed a character theory after studying 100 media texts, his narrative theory was spheres of action (anything that makes/ causes events) they are;

-Hero; seeking something, reacts to donor, marries the Princess.

-Villain; obstructs the hero quest.

-Helper; helps the hero on their quest.

- Donor; prepare the hero and provides information to help the hero on their quest.

- Princess; the reward, either marriage or money

- Father; giver of the reward

- Dispatcher; events that sends hero on a quest.

- False/seeker hero; character that thinks he is the hero but he is not.

I have applied Vladimir Propp's theory of the characters in a narrative to the music video Lifestyles of the rich and famous by Good Charlotte.


Good Charlotte - Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous
Uploaded by fuzz59. - Up-to-the minute news videos.

Hero; The band are the hero as they are on a quest to get out of present for being common.

Villain; The villain's of this music video are the rich people as they are against our hero's which causes them to be imprisoned.

Princess; The princess of this music video is the hero's being released from prison for being proven innocent.

Father; The father is the court Jury as the plead the hero's not quality which allows them to freed from prison.

The false hero; The false hero is also the rich people, especially the blonde woman at the end of the music video. They are the false hero's because they believe that they are imprisoning the 'villain's' which in fact is our hero.

The dispatcher; This could be them getting arrested which is an event which sends them onto the quest to be freed from prison.

Claude Levi- Strauss

His theory of narrative structure is that it is motivated by a struggle between binary opposites, one side of which will be represented as the 'right' side that the audience should identify with and support. A good example of this would be good and evil - the audience understand the concept of good as being the binary opposite of evil . From reference from http://www.scribd.com/doc/8332523/Narrative-theory-notes I have found that...

'Levi -Strauss was not so interested in looking at the order in which events were arranged in the plot. He looked instead for deeper arrangements of themes. For example,if we look at Science Fiction films we can identify a series of binary oppositions which are created by the narrative:

• Earth- Space


• Good- Evil


• Humans- Aliens


• Past- Present


• Normal- Strange


• Known- Unknown
  

For example, in films (superhero) such as; Spiderman, Batman and superman etc.. The hero who is the good guy are represented in a favourable way by; close up shots of their face to connect with the audience and low angle shots to create the tone of power and strength associated with them to show the audience that this character is of great importance.

Another important element that effects the audiences understanding of a film or in my case music video is the way the narrative is structured. There are two types of narrative:

1. Restricted narrative; this is when the narrative is tied to one character and the audience only sees or knows what they know, this generally creates the feeling of mystery for the audience as they do not know what is happening or what is going to happen.


2. Omniscient narrative; this is when the narrative is not tied to a single character and the camera reveals elements that they may not voluntarily have wished it to do so the audience know more about the character, this usually creates suspense as the audience are waiting for something to happen.

Learning about the different theorists and their opinion on narrative it has helped me to take in consideration if for my own music I produce will include a narrative and if so which narrative do I believe will fit with my genre choice of music. Each theorist has conveyed what the narrative structure is for a fairytale story but now throughout my research I will have to adapt their theory to fit with the narrative structures of music videos.