Media Theorist

During our media lessons we have been learning about several medial theorists and theories. We have started to learn about how different things are portrayed in films such as structuralism, narrative, intertextuality and genre. Our group can use what we have learned about these theorists and apply them to our trailer. The theorist we are going to focus our work on are:

Theorist 1: Vladimir PROPP (1895-1970)
Propps theory is a form of structuralism. Propp examined hundreds of fairy tales in the generic form ‘the folk wonder tale’. He identified 8 character roles.
The 8 character roles include:
The villain
The hero
The donor
The helper
The princess
Her father
The dispatcher
The false hero

These structures are often culturally derived and form expectations in the mind of an audience from within that same culture e.g. fairy tales always have happy endings or the princess always marries the handsome prince. Propps theory can be applied to generic structures in western culture such as popular film genres, thus, genre structures form expectations in the mind of an audience that certain rules apply to the narrative. However, cultural change can force structures to change, e.g. a hero can now be a woman.

An example of this used in films today is from the thriller I analysed called ‘Disturbia’. The main protagonist Kale is the hero, the princess is his neighbour/love interest, the dispatcher is Kale’s friend and the Villain is clearly the killer. However there are some cultural changes as the hero is a hero accidently by being on house arrest, not the stereotypical ‘knight in shining armour’.

Theorist 2: Tzvetan Todorov
Todorov was a Bulgarian structuralist 1960’s; he developed the theory of disrupted equilibrium.
He realised that stories follow a typical pattern of:
Equilibrium - The status quo when things are as they should be.
Disequilibrium - The status quo is disrupted by an event.
Equilibrium - The status quo is restored at the end of the story by the actions of the hero.

An example of Todorov’s theory used in the trailers I analysed is from the film Taken:
Equilibrium- The young girl goes to a trip to Paris with her friend.
Disequilibrium- Both the girls are kidnapped by intruders.
Equilibrium- The young girl is rescued by her father.

Theorist 3: Roland Barthes
According to Barthes, there are 5 action codes that enable an audience to make sense of a narrative:

Hermeneutic - (narrative turning point) we know where the story will go next.
Proairetic - (basic narrative actions) e.g. detective interviews. Cultural - (prior social knowledge) e.g. our attitudes to gender or racial stereotypes.
Semic - (medium related codes) intertextuality
Symbolic - (themes) iconography or a theme such as image versus reality

Theorist 4: Claude Levi Straus
Levi-Strauss used the ‘Western’ film genre to develop his theory of Binary Oppositions. Examples include:
Rich                 Poor
Detective        Villain
City                 Sub-urbs
Weak              Strong
Sane                Mad

An example of this being used today is from a film I analysed called ‘Hush’. The main protagonist girlfriend is weak as she gets kidnapped. Whereas the protagonist himself is strong as he fights his was through many obstacles to find her by risking his own life.

Theorist 5: Diegesis
The theory of diegesis applies to narrative events, just as it did to sounds.
Diegetic narrative events take place before the audience, within the field of vision.
Non-diegetic narrative events take place off-screen - before the movie started, between scenes, simultaneously but in another room.

A Diegetic sound helps fit the story together such as dialogue, whereas as non-diegetic sound creates tension and the atmosphere in a scene. We can use Diegetic sound in our video to help tell the story, but the non-diegetic music is used in trailers to attract the viewer and set the mood. For example during the Taken trailer the music is very peaceful as happy event occur, whereas as the clip unfolds the music gets faster and more dramatic to anchor what is happening in the trailer. The use of sound instead of dialogue creates tension in the viewer as they realised that the situation is about to change...maybe for the worst?