Narrative Theories

Narrative is the way in which a story is told in both fictional and non-fictional media.

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp was a Russian critic and literal theorist that analysed over 100 Russian fairytales in the 1920's. He suggested that it was possible to classify the characters and their actions into clearly defined roles and functions. The typical character roles are;

Vladimir Propp

• The hero: the protagonist that leads the narrative.
• The villan: the antagonist that opposes the hero.
• The donor: helps the hero by providing object
• The dispatcher: sends the hero on his way
• The false hero: leads the audience to believe they are the hero.
• The helper: gives support to the hero
• The princess: the reward for the hero who needs protecting from something
• The father of the princess: cares for daughter.

Films such as Star Wars and Shreck fit Propps model, but recently more and more films are defying against it, changing the well known structure to create contrast in the film industry. Propps model is useful as it highlights the similarities between different stories.

Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov

Todorov is a Bulgarian literary theorist. He proposed that most narratives start in a state of equilibrium where the charcters are happy and life is normal. Then the state of balance is disrupted by an outside force which has to be fought against in order to return to the state of equilibrium.

The order goes:

1. A state of equilibrium.
2. A disruption of the ordered state by an event
3. A recognition that a disruption has occurred.
4. An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption.
5. A return to the new equilibrium

Roland Barthas

Barthas was a French semiologist that suggested that narrative works with five different codes which activate the reader to make sense of it.

Roland Barthas

• Enigma codes: these refer to the mystery within a text. It leads the audience on and usually if there are unanswered enigmas it frustrates the audience
• Action codes: This code contains sequential elements of action in the text, adding suspense.
• Semantic codes: these refer to denotations within the text.
• Symbolic codes: these refer to the connotations, which are the hidden meanings, within a text.
• Referential/ Cultural codes: codes that link to a certain culture.

Claude Levi-Strauss

Claude Levi-Strauss

Levi-Strauss was a social anthropologist who studied myths of tribal cultures and through this he examined how stories unconsciously reflect the values, beliefs and myths of a culture. He found that they are usually expressed in the form of binary opposition which is when two things contrasts against each other in a text.

Research has been adapted by media theorists to reveal underlying themes and symbolic oppositions in media texts to support Levi-Strauss' theory. For example, 1970's Western Films.

Modular narratives in contemporary cinema by Allen Cameron

Modular narratives 'articulate a sense of time as divisible and subject to manipulation'.

Anachronic modular narrative

• Involve the use of flashbacks and/or flash forwards.
• There is no clear dominance between any of the narrative threads.
• Often repeat the same scene again but from a different perspective.
• Examples of this narrative in films: Pulp Fiction and Memento (check out my analysis at the bottom of this linked page for more on Memento)

Forking-path narrative

• Includes juxtapose alternative versions of a story.
• The possible outcomes of the narrative might result after a small change/event.
• Examples of this narrative in films: Groundhog Day

Episodic narrative

• This type of narrative is organised as an abstract series or narrative anthology
• Involve individual short tales that are supposedly disconnected but they all share a random similarity.
• Examples of this narrative in films: Love Actually

Spilt screen narrative

• The screen is didived into more than one frame juxtaposing events within the same visual field.
• Examples of this narrative in films: Time code

Linear Narrative

• The plot moves in a straight line.
• This narrative is used in most films.

Parallel Narrative

• Two scenes are observed as happening at the same time by cross-cutting between them.