Vladimir Propp: He was a Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot of Russian folk tales, in order to identify their simplest narrative elements.
He argued that whatever differences there might be in a story you can group together the characters into 8 character roles. He suggests that there are a limited number of character types that share a function. When an audience read a media text it deploys its knowledge of these character types in order to decode the meaning of the text.
The American theorist Joseph Cameron later described a similar system of roles in narrative construction in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949. Cameron’s ideas and book influenced George Lucas very heavily and the Star Wars films can be seen as a practical embodiment of Cameron’s ideas, particularly of the Monomyth or hero’s journey.
Simple five step narrative
1 – A state of equilibrium (all is well)
2 – A disruption of that order by an event
3 – A recognition that disorder has occurred 4 – An attempt to repair the damage of disorder 5 – A return or restoration of new equilibrium.
He said that it is the constant creation of conflict/opposition that propels narrative. Narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict. Oppositions can be visual (light/darkness, movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate, control/panic) These are called ‘Binary Oppositions’
We use Binary oppositions to understand the world. To use a common example
The word ‘man’ in English means ‘not animal’, not ‘woman’ and ‘not boy’. This may be extended to suggest that it has further associations ‘not vulnerable’ or ‘not emotional’ . The meaning of the word ‘man’ therefore depends upon the particular understanding of masculinity that is current in the language- user’s culture.
Poverty – What function do the poor perform in society and how is the idea of poverty narrativised in the media as a pervasive form.
Benefits Street was a reality tv series by Channel 4 that documented the lives of several residents of James Turner Street in Birmingham where newspapers claimed that 90% of the residents claimed benefits. It showed benefits claimants committing crimes, and portrayed a situation in which people are dependent on welfare payments and have lack the motivation to seek employment.
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