2. PROPP
Vladimir Propp was a Russian scholar who studied the basic structure of fairy
tales to discover their elements. He discovered that within every narrative
there is a set of stock characters which appear. These are:
• Hero – person on the quest
• Princess – prize for the hero
• Helper – helps hero on quest
• False hero – someone who believes they are the hero
• Dispatcher – sends the hero on their quest
• Father – rewards the hero
• Villain – attempts to prevent hero from finishing his quest
• Donor – provides objects to help hero on his quest
3. IS THIS RELEVANT?
Although we do have characters in our piece, it’s hard to
distinguish them into different sections like Propp has. I
don’t think that we will really be using his theory within
our work, and I think that it is more relevant for films,
television and novels rather than music videos.
4. STRAUSS
Levi Strauss’ theory states that in every media text there are
binary opposition or a conflict between two opposites. The
audience subconsciously knows who should win, and this theme
can make a political theme within a text. Some examples are:
• Good vs evil
• Rich vs poor
• East vs west
• Love vs hate
5. IS THIS RELEVANT?
The only real binary opposition that will feature within
our music video is the opposition between the two main
females. The girl in the white dress is very much a
victim, whereas the ballerina in black is more like the
bully, as portrayed by the animals running from her.
6. BARTHES
Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist who identified five
different codes by which a narrative story captures the attention of the
audience. They are:
•The enigma code – the audience is intrigued by needing to solve a
problem
•The action code – the audience is excited by the need to resolve a
problem
•The semantic code – the audience is directed to an additional meaning
by use of connotation
•The symbolic code – the audience forms their expectations based on
generic conventions, eg. Black = evil
•The cultural code – the audience derives meaning from shared cultural
knowledge about the way the world works.
7. IS THIS RELEVANT?
Our video is quite entropic, and doesn’t have a linear storyline, so
it is hard to apply this theory. However, the audience are intrigued
by small details of the storyline, for example who is the girl in
black, and why does she scare the animals? Also, they assume that
the girl in black is evil, and the girl in white is good and innocent.
Therefore, the symbolic and enigma code relate to our music
video.
8. TODOROV
Tzvetan Todorov was a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher whose theory
states that in a media text there are five stages:
Original equilibrium
Disruption
Recognition (of the disruption)
Attempt to restore equilibrium
New equilibrium
9. IS THIS RELEVANT?
As stated before, our storyline is non linear and doesn’t
follow a chronological pattern. Therefore, these stages
don’t really feature in our video at all, and so Todorov is
the least relevant of all the narrative theorists.
