narrative..

Vladimir Propp-

looked at eight diferent characters that are used in lots of folk tales to begin with, and foccused on them rather than the individual person.

the hero, villain,donor, dispatcher, false hero, helper, princess and her father.

There are of course, many texts which do not conform to this, and films and stories where there is a protagonist who is the hero and the antagonist who is the villain.

Is Propp a useful way of looking at texts?



Claude Levi Strauss-

how our world was described in binary oppositions e.g night/day, good/bad, light/dark. These oppositions tended to structure texts such as stories, plays and films.

E.g Washing powder adverts rely on 'before and after' contrast to convince you to buy the product.



Rolande Barthes-

interested in concepts such as negotiated meaning between institution and audience. A reader produces new meanings when reading a text, making use of previous experiences as well as the actual text. The cultural context of consumption becomes as important as the text itself.

Most famous for his enigma code- it is the hook or mystery that makes people want to watch, so could be a trailer, or at the end of one episode, exciting clips from the next one which will want to make people come back and watch.



Tzetvan Todorov-

he worked out that there were five stages to a narrative.: equilibrium, a disruption of this equilibrium by an event, a relaisation that a disruption has happened, an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption and a restoration of equilibrium, which may be a new equilibrium. This structure can be applied to both fiction and non fiction and makes it easy to identify the structure of a text.



Lev Kuleshov-

experimented by showing shots of an actor in between shots of different objects, food, a dead woman and a baby. The audience interpreted the actors expressions, although it never changed, as being hungry, sad and affectionate. This is because our brains try to make continuitive sense of what we see. This is called montage.



Sergei Eisenstein-

believed that if consecutive shots werent linked, the audience were forced to think and interact more to make the mental jump from shot to shot., and that this si more effective. Often used in propaganda, and more light-heartedly in pop videos and advertising.