The document discusses structuralist approaches to narrative theory proposed by Roland Barthes and Claude Levi-Strauss. Barthes argued that the reader, not the author, creates meaning by linking images with cultural experiences. Levi-Strauss theorized that understanding is formed through binary oppositions, and that narratives use opposing ideas to create meaning. The document instructs analyzing one's own film production in relation to these narrative theories, considering how codes like action, enigma, symbolic, cultural and semantic create narrative, and how binary oppositions can form meaning.

1. 1b. Analyze your production in
relation to narrative

2. A structuralist approach to narrative
Roland Barthes wrote an essay entitled ‘The Death
of the Author’
He theorized that nothing is ever written, only rewritten.
This basically weakens the legitimacy of the
‘author’, who, therefore, is reduced to the writer .
He argued that, instead, it is the reader who makes
meaning by linking images with cultural
experiences.

3. Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (Sunless)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K8j3MU9d
w4&safe=active
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGDu7YOlVu
E
‘If they don’t see happiness in the picture, at
least they’ll see the black’

4. The 5 codes
• The action code
Narrative created through action/ events: consider
how this might be inherent in short films?
• The enigma code
Narratve created through raising questions
• The symbolic code
Narrative created through conflict/ opposing ideas
• The cultural code
Narrative created through cultural understanding/
ideology: consider how the location of your
film, and also how issues of sexuality, will play a
part in creating narrative for your target audience
• The semantic code
Narrative created through connotation/ denotation
Barthes: a woman is sexualized more by her clothes than
her naked body. That’s why a stripper leaves the stage
before the moment of nudity

5. Claude Levi-Strauss
• Binary oppositions
Levi-Strauss theorized that understanding is
formed through oppositions. This premise is
formed around the idea that, for instance, there
can be no good if there were no evil. We only
know what it means to be good because there is
an opposite force.

6. Levi-Strauss
Consider how binary oppositions are formed
and how meaning is created.
Children’s stories
Religious teachings
Political ideologies
Binary oppositions have been used to create
narratives for thousands of years. Even when
images were used instead of words, before mass
media, before all children had to go to school.

7. Your task
Do some wider research around these narrative
theories and see if you can find a quote or
paraphrase a few sentences which you feel sums
up the concept of narrative.
Then, write 200-300 words about how these
theories can be related to your short film.