Narrative Theory;

Narrative Theory

Roland Barthes - Semiotics 1950's - The science of signs - Developed from linguistic theory.

Television and magazine advertisement became massively consumables. Disposable income = advertising.

Impact of visual imagery on people = Semiotics.

Action code = visual code = short hand to starting the narrative.

We can have visual imagery which we decode to lead to a particular action. Creating signs which the audience read in a particular way. It becomes Cultural and stereotypical.

Kate Domaille (2001) every story ever told can be fitted into one of eight narrative types. Each of these narrative types has a source, an original story upon which the others are based. The stories are as follow : Achilles - The fatal flaw that leads to the destruction of the previously flawless, or almost flawless, person, e.g. Superman

Candid: The indomitable hero who cannot be put down, e.g. Indiana Jones, James Bond, Rocky.

Cinderella: The Dream comes true, e.g. Pretty woman.

Circe: The chase, the spider and the fly, the innocent and the victim e.g. Sokey and the bandit, Duel, The Terminator

Faust: Selling your soul to the devil may bring riches but eventually your soul belongs to him, e.g. Bedazzled, Wall Street.

Orpheus: The loss of something personal, the gift that is taken away, the tragedy of losses or the journey which follows the loss, e.g. The sixth sense, Love Story, Born on the fourth of July.

Romeo and Juliet: The love story, e.g. Titanic

Trist and Iseult (Is-old-ay): The love triangle, man loves woman...unfortunately one or both of them are already spoken for, or a third party intervenes, e.g. Casablanca.

The Russian Theorist VLADIMIR PROPP (1928) studied the narrative structure of Russian Folk tales.

He also concluded that all the characters could be resolved into only 7 broad character types in the 100 tales he analysed.

Subjective approach - Semiotics.

Aesthetics = Pre-semiotics, critics point of view

Structuralism - objective structure, objective view point.

Post Structural - The idea that structuralists felt that everything was objective, follow certain rules, un-biased.

Modern day - Everything is subjective = depends on life experience, influences in our life.

The villain - Struggles against the hero

The Donor - prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.

The (magical) helper - Helps the hero in the quest

The princess and her father - gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionality, the princess and the father cannot be clearly distinguished.

The dispatcher - character who makes the lack (something that is missing) known and sends the hero off.

The hero or Victim/seeker hero - reacts to the donor, weds the princess.

(False Hero) - takes credit for the hero's actions or tries to the marry the princess.

(Character shapes)

Beautiful south - The villain = music industry, the donor = song writer, magical helper = the band, Princess = No.1, the dispatcher = the band, the false hero = the blamonge.

Joseph Campbell's (1949) Universal hero mono-myth = in all cultures, narratives, religions etc.

Problem needs solving, hero solves problem, hero helps society overcome problem.

In terms of music video - The hero = the star/artist.

We project ourselves onto the artist.

Claude Levi-Strauss' (1958) Ideas about narrative amount to the fact that he believed all stories operated to certain clear binary opposites e.e good vs evil, black vs white, rich vs poor etc.

The importance of these ideas is that essentially a complicated world is reduced to a simple either/or structure. Things are either right or wrong, good or bad. There is no in between.

Following - Robin Hood.

Against - Batman

Music Video - audio visual poetry?

--> Michael Shore (1984) argues that music videos are...

--> Recycled styles, surface without substance, simulated experience, information overload, image and style scavengers, ambivalence, decadence, immediate gratification, vanity and the moment, image assaults and outré folks, the death of content, anaesthetisation f violence through chic, adolescent male fantasies, speed, power, girls and wealth, album art come to turgid life and classical storytelling motifs.

Andrew Goodwin (1992) argues that in music video, "Narrative relations are highly complex" and meaning can be created from the individual audio-viewers personal musical taste to sophisticated intertextuality that uses multi discursive phenomena of Western Culture.

Many are dominated by advertising references, film pastiche and reinforce the postmodern 're-use' tradition

Sven Carlsson (1999) suggests that music videos in general, videos fall into two rough groups: Performance and Conceptual.

When a music video mostly shows an artist singing, dancing, it is a performance clip.

When the clip shows something else during its duration, often with artistic ambitions, it is a conceptual clip.

Performance: If a music video clip contains mostly filmed performance then it is a performance clip. A Performance clip is a video that sows the vocalist in one or more settings.

Common places to perform are the recording studio and the rehearsal room. But the performance can take place anywhere.

Narrative clip: Visual story which is easy to follow, either develop narrative or tell narrative through the lyrics of the song.

If a music video clip is most appropriately understood a a short silent movie to a musical background, it is a narrative clip. a narrative clip contains a visual story that is easy to follow.

Developed a mythical method of analysis of music video - centred on a modern mythic embodiment.

Viewed from this perspective the music video artist is seen as embodying one, or a combination of 'modern mythic characters or forces' of which there are three general. the music video artists is representing different aspects of the free floating disparate universe of music video.

In one type of performance, the performer is not a performer anymore; he or she is a materialisation of the commercial exhibitionist.

Another of the performances in the music video universe is that of the televised bard. He or she is a modern bard singing banal lyrics using television as a medium. The televised bard is a singing storyteller who uses actual on-screen images instead of under, personal images. The greatest televised bards create audio-visual poetry.

All media exists within the culture which creates it, and FOR the culture that creates it.

The third type of performer is the electronic shaman.

Sometimes the shaman is invisible and it is only her or his voice and rhythm that anchor the visuals. He or she often shifts between multiple shapes.

At one moment the electronic shaman animates dead objects or have a two-dimensional alter egos (as in cartoon comics), seconds later he or she is shifting through time and so on (e.g. DJ's).

Narrative is central to everything we, and how we live our live. Life structure is reflected in media.

Critical Perspectives in Media

- Genre conventions of my song and music video

Genre is a critical tool that helps us study texts and audience responses to texts by dividing them into categories based on common elements.

Daniel Chandler 2001, argues that the word genre comes from the French (and originally Latin) word for 'kind' or 'class'. The term is widely used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory to refer to a distinctive type of 'text'.

Codes = Things we read from a text

Conventions = the rules, what we expect from a genre or form.

All genres have sub genres

This means that they are divided up into more specific categories that allow audiences to identify them specifically by their familiar and what become recognisable characteristics (Barry Keith Grant, 1995)

However, Steave Neale (1995) stresses that "genres are not 'systems' they are processes of systematisation's" - i.e. they are dynamic and evolve over time.

Settings, Costume, Transport, Actions, Weapons & Characters are all recognisable as particular characteristics of a particular genre, however they are not fixed, they change with society.

Genres are dynamic and they reflect the society of the present era.

- Typical editing style - fast cuts meet fast music

Jason Mittel (2001)

Argues that genres are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience, and cultural practises as well.

In short, industries use genre to sell products to audiences. Media producers use familiar codes and conventions that very often make cultural references to their audience knowledge of society, other texts.

Genre also allows audiences to make choices about what products they want to consume through acceptance in order to fulfil a particular

Pleasure of genre for audiences

Rick Altman (1999) argues that genre offers audience a set of pleasures.

Emotional Pleasures - The emotional pleasures offered to audiences of genre films are particularly significant when they generate a strong audience response.

Visceral Pleasures - Visceral pleasures are 'gut; responses and are defined by how the films stylistic construction elicits a physical effect upon its audience. This can be a feeling of revulsion, kinetic speed, or a roller coaster ride.

Intellectual Puzzles - Certain film genres such as the thriller or the whodunit offer the pleasure in trying to unravel a mystery or a puzzle. pleasure is derived from deciphering the plot and forecasting the end of big surprise by the unexpected.

The main strength of genre theory is that everybody uses it and understands it - media experts use it to study media texts, the media industry uses it to develop and market texts and audiences use it to decide what texts to consume.

The potential for the same concept to be understood by producers, audiences and scholars makes a genre a useful critical tool. Its accessibility as a concept also means that it can be applied across a wide range of texts.

Christian Metz - Genres go through changes

Music Video - Medium with many sub genres/ post modern styles

Music video is a medium intended to appeal directly to youth sub cultures by reinforcing generic elements of musical genres.

They are called pop-promos as they are used to promote a band or artist

Music videos are post modern texts whose main purpose is to promote a star persona (Dyer, 1975)

They don't have to be literal representations of the song or lyrics.

Generic conventions stay the same but the style changes between the genre.

David Bordwell (1989) - Any theme may appear in any genre.

Some music videos have themes for a more youthful audience such as...

- Teen Angst

- Rebellion

- Romance

- Sex

- Nostalgia

- Nihilism

- Coming of age rituals

- Tribalism

- Bullying

Juvenile Delinquency : Moral panics and the teenager as a folk devil

The currency f Cool

Hedonism - Living purely for pleasure

Friendship

War

Crime

Poverty

Capitalism

Racism

Genres are not fixed. They constantly change and evolve over time - your coursework articles, as we have discussed, are postmodern pieces.

David Buckingham (1993) argues that 'genre is not...simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change.

The law of the law of genre is precisely a principle of contaminate, a law of impurity - Jacques Derrida.