Slides for media and narrative

1. Mass Communication & Media
Literacy 05

2. Narrative
Boy meets girl
Girl meets boy ... Girl loses boy
Boy meets girl ... Loses girl ... Re-finds girl and
finds love etc.

3. Narrative
Narrative refers to the organisation of "Story is the irreducible
textual elements into a pattern in substance of a story (A meets
terms of space, time and perspective. B, something happens, order
It is the narrative that encourages us returns), while narrative is the
to read specific parts of the text as way the story is related (Once
‘events’ which are ordered through upon a time there was a
time (temporal succession) and which princess...)" (Key Concepts in
we conceive as the cause of the other Communication - Fiske et al
events (causation). (1983))

4. Origins and Interest
 Literary theory
 Psychology
 Anthropology
 Film studies
 Roman Jacobson
 Vladimir Propp
 Gerard Genette
 Tzvetan Todorov
 http://www.tictocs.ac.uk

5. Narrative as Structure: Propp
 Functions of characters  Narrative units descriptive of
particular action
 Villain, the donor, the  (31 units)
dispatcher, the hero, the
The villain appears and (either villain tries to find the
false hero, the princess, the

children/jewels etc; or intended victim encounters the
villain);
King 

The villain gains information about the victim;
The villain attempts to deceive the victim to take
possession of victim or victim's belongings (trickery;
 A single character can fulfil more  villain disguised, tries to win confidence of victim);
than one function (characters are  The victim is fooled by the villain, unwittingly helps the
enemy;
more like character masks)  Villain causes harm/injury to family/tribe member (by
abduction, theft of magical agent, spoiling crops, plunders
in other forms, causes a disappearance, expels
someone, casts spell on someone, substitutes child
etc, commits murder, imprisons/detains
someone, threatens forced marriage, provides nightly
torments);
 Alternatively, a member of family lacks something or
desires something (magical potion etc);
 Misfortune or lack is made known, (hero is
dispatched, hears call for help etc/ alternative is that
victimised hero is sent away, freed from imprisonment);
 Proppian Fairytale Generator

6. Eco uses Propp
 M moves and gives task to
Bond
 The villain moves and
appears to Bond
 Woman moves and shows
herself to Bond
 Bond consumes woman:
‘In Casino Royale there are already possesses her or begins her
all the elements for the building of a
machine that functions basically on a seduction
set of precise units governed by
rigorous combinational rules.’  The villain captures Bond
Umberto Eco (1969) The Bond Affair
 Bond conquers the villain
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Basic-Plots-Tell-Stories/dp/0826452094

7. Todorov
Cinematic Narrative  Exploring the narrative
structure of classic realist
films
 In media res
Stable world
 Deigesis
Disruption (usually cause by human action)
 Non-deigetic
Chain of cause and effect (human action)
Resolution
Stable world restored!

8. Plot and Story
 We construct the story in our heads from information narrated
to us through the plot
 Fabula (story)  Syuzhet (plot)
 The fabula is a pattern  The syuzhet is the actual
that film spectators create arrangement and
through assumptions and presentation of the fabula
inferences: we do not see in the film. The syuzhet is
or hear the fabula on the a system because it
screen or hear it in the arranges elements – the
soundtrack. story events – according
to specific principles.

9. Narrative
 Narrative logic
 The syuzhet of a film is often far more complex than the fabula that
we construct as spectators.
 Time
 The organisation of time by the syuzhet can be used to assist or block
our fabula construction.
 Shouldn’t films have a beginning, middle and end?
 Yes, but not in that order.
 Pulp Fiction, Memento, Lost,
 The Matrix
 Groundhog Day
 Space
 In order to construct our fabula we need a sense of the space in
which events ocurr.

10. Memento

11. Babel

12. Using the tools
 Rhetorical + Semiotic + syuzhet/fabula help us
understand how films are constructed and how we
make meaning from them.
 How does the syuzhet present story information?
And why does it do so in the way it does?

13. Using the tools
 What point-of-view (POV) are we presented with?
 Who is telling the story or looking explicitly or
implicitly?
 What kind of position are we, as consumers of the
text, being asked to take or being placed in?

14. Saving Private Ryan

15. Photography as Narrative

16. Photography as Narrative