Oliver Turner AS MEDIA: Narrative

What is Narrative?
The narrative is the retelling or recount of events, often in word format (oral narrative) as opposed to written narrative. This idea doesn't focus on the actual story itself nor does it communicate with the what is going on visually but more the telling of the story. A story is just the sequence of events but the Narrative recounts these events and can emphasise on things that have happened prior to the main story itself.

What are the conventions of narratives in each of the following genres:

• Comedy
• Horror
• Action
• Drama
• Romance

Comedy:
Narrative plays an important role in comedy because as to ultimately keep the audience entertained and engaged with the film. It must fit into three main bodies being: Slapstick, Dark humour and Wit/Wordplay.

Horror:
When we think about the conventions of narrative in Horror we would expect to see the devices that are used to communicate a story to the audience. These are:

• The narrative must provide a template or formula in film production.
• The narrative must be clear to the audience to allow them to recognise the structure and genre of the film as a way of developing an understanding of why events happen and their order.

Action:
An action adventure film is essentially one long quest or mission that takes up the majority of the film itself  with a succession of different chase sequences that allow for the story to flow. It is these chase sequences that keeps us hooked and encourages us to watch on which highlights the importance of film narrative which helps organize these scenes. The action film should then finally end with a finale that solves these problem(s). 
Drama:
The genre of Drama ties in with narrative well when we consider these points:

• Intense social interaction with other characters
• Plot twist that is not expected - can lead us down a different viewpoint or outcome that we did not expect.
• Must move the audience emotionally
• Should exhibit real life situations with realistic characters, settings, and stories.

Romance:

• "Boy meets girl" scenario- typical guideline to satisfy audiences expectations.
• Everyday events
• Characters go separate ways perhaps because of an argument but can then re-unite.
• Typically aimed at the female audience.

Narrative Theories:
Propp:

• Vladimir prop studied hundreds of Russian folk and fairy tales before deciding that all narratives have a common structure.
• He also observed that narratives are shaped and directed by different types of characters and specific actions or events.
• He claimed that there are 32 stages/functions that form a narrative.
• He said that the function is a plot motif or critical event in the story.
• A tale can skip these functions but it cannot shuffle their unvarying order.

Todorov:
Todorov's theory involved five stages of which a narrative must pass through:

1. The state of equilibrium (state of normality-good, bad or neutral).
2. An event that interferes with this equilibrium ( a character or action).
3. The main protagonist recognises that this equilibrium has been disrupted.
4. The protagonist attempts to rectify or correct this to restore the equilibrium.
5. The equilibrium is restored but there are now differences (good, bad or neutral) from the original.

Claude Levi-Strauss's theory:


Claude Levi Strauss studied hundred of myths and legends to form the theory that humans make sense of the world, people and events by seeing and using binary opposites.
He realised that narratives were arranged around the conflict of binary opposites.
He also found that words act as "symbols for society's ideas" and the meaning behind words is a relationship rather than a certain meaning or definition -a relationship between opposing ideas.




Example of Binary opposites:

• Good vs Evil
• Black vs white 
• protagonist vs antagonist
• humanity vs technology
• Young vs old
• man vs nature
• black vs white  

Barthes Theory:


Barthes explains how text and dialogue within narrative is
like a "tangled ball of threads" and that this ball needs to be
unravelled. When unravelled, we gain a more in-depth insight to a variety of meanings. He said that as an audience we can look at a narrative in one way from one viewpoint and create one meaning for that text. Or you can look at this text and look at it in a different perspective with an entirely different meaning.

He highlighted these Five Codes which are key to any narrative:

• The hermeneutic Code (HER)
• The Enigma/Proairetic Code (ACT)
• The Symbolic Code (SYM)
• The Cultural Code (REF)
• The Semantic Code (SEM)