Claude Lévi-Strauss thought that the way humans comprehend certain words
depends on the significance themselves contain but much more by our
understanding of the difference between the word and it’s opposite. Binary opposites
have been said to create balance within the world. Without them, the world
would be unbalanced. Critics of the theory have argued that although everything
may have an opposite everything must have a medium. For instance for rich and
poor there is the middle class and for gay and straight there is bisexual.
A Binary opposite is a connected concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the scheme by which there is not a antagonist neither is there a protagonist but there are two side which are against each other or a human or supernatural. They are used very often in films within the horror and thrill genre.
Roland Barthes
describes a text as "a galaxy of
signifiers, not a structure of signified; it has no beginning; it is
reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be
authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as
far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can
take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based
as it is on the infinity of language..." this basically
means that a text is tangled which needs solving so that then we can separate
out the letters to reveal that we can encounter
a definite potential of meanings. Looking at a narrative from
different angles create different meanings as many times as you like. Usually open
texts are not resolved at the end but closed texts are because their is a
definite meaning whereas open texts can go on forever.
Vladimir Propp –
character types
Vladimir Propp analysed series of Russian folk tales in the 1920s. He had
then decided that the same events kept being repeated in each of the stories,
creating a consistent framework. The plot is driven by the action and choices
of the hero but it is also spread across widely throughout all the characters.
- The villain, who struggles with the hero (formally known as the antagonist)
- The donor
- The helper
- The Princess, a sought-for person (and/or her father), who exists as a goal and often recognizes and marries hero and/or punishes villain
- The dispatcher-this is the character that makes the villians evil known and sends the hero off.
- The hero, who departs on a search (seeker-hero), reacts to the donor and weds
- the false hero (or antihero or usurper), who claims to be the hero, often seeking and reacting like a real hero (i.e.. by trying to marry the
in a smiggle scene-
vlmadmir propp has showed there is a sturggle and the villian is overcome and then the state of disorder is settled..
recognition scene-at this stage the hero is recognised(an action film like superman).
tordorovs narrative theory-
Todorov was a Bulgarian who was a structuralist linguist who then published influential work on narrative from the 1960s onwards) he had suggested that stories begin with an equilibrium where any potentially opposing forces are in balance.
tordorovs narrative theory-
Todorov was a Bulgarian who was a structuralist linguist who then published influential work on narrative from the 1960s onwards) he had suggested that stories begin with an equilibrium where any potentially opposing forces are in balance.
- Todorov suggested that conventional narratives are structured in five stages:
- A state of equilibrium at the outset.
- A disruption of the equilibrium by some action.
- A recognition that there has been a disruption.
- An attempt to repair the disruption.
- A reinstatement of the equilibrium.
- This type of narrative structure is very familiar to us and can be applied to many ‘mainstream’ film narratives.
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