Narrative Theorists

1. Narrative theorist

2. Tim O’Sulivan (1998)
Tim states that all media text tell us some kind of story. Through
careful mediation the text is telling us not usually our own personal
stories but of out culture or set of cultures.
Narrative theory sets out to show that what we
experience when we ‘read’ a story is to understand a
particular set of constructions, or conventions, and that
it is important to be aware of how these constructions
are put together.
Narrative: The structure of a story.
Diegesis: The fictional space and time implied by the
narrative – the world in which the story takes place.
Verisimilitude: Literally – the quality of appearing to
be real or true.

3. Bordwell and Thompson (1997)
They offer two distinctions between story and plot which
relate to the diegetic world of the narrative that the audience
are positioned to accept and that which the audience actually
see.
Fabula (story) is all the events in the narrative that we
see and infer. The fabula is defined as the
chronological series of events that are represented or
implied.
• Syuzhet (plot) everything visible and audibly present
before us. Syuzhet is considered to be the order,
manner and techniques of their presentation in the
narrative .

4. Pam Cook (1985)
The standard Hollywood narrative structure
should have:
• Linearity of cause and effect within an overall
trajectory of enigma resolution.
• A high degree of narrative closure.
• A fictional world that contains verisimilitude
especially
governed by spatial and temporal coherence.

5. Tzvetan Todorov (1977)
• Stage 1: A point of stable equilibrium, where
everything is satisfied, calm and normal.
• Stage 2: This stability is disrupted by some kind of
force, which creates a state of disequilibrium.
• Stage 3: Recognition that a disruption has taken
place.
• Stage 4: It is only possible to re-create equilibrium
through action directed against the disruption.
• Stage 5: Restoration of a new state of equilibrium.
The consequences of the reaction is to change the
world of the narrative and/or the characters so that
the final state of equilibrium in not the same as the
initial state.

6. Barthes (1977)
He suggested that narrative works with five
different codes and the enigma code works to
keep up setting problems or puzzles for the
audience. His action code (a look, significant
word, movement) is based on our cultural and
stereotypical understanding of actions that act
as a shorthand to advancing the narrative.

7. Adrian Tilley (1991)
He used the buckling of the gun belt in the
Western genre as a means of signifying the
preferred reading of an imminent shoot out, and
this works in the same way as the starting of a
car engine etc.

8. Kate Domaille (2001)
She every story ever told can be fitted into one of
eight narrative types.
•Achilles: The fatal flaw that leads to the destruction
of the previously flawless, or almost flawless, person,
e.g. Superman, Fatal Attraction.
•Candide: The indomitable hero who cannot be put
down, e.g. Indiana Jones, James Bond, Rocky etc.
•Cinderella: The dream comes true, e.g. Pretty
Woman.
•Circe: The Chase, the spider and the fly, the
innocent and the victim e.g. Smokey 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 loss 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.
•Tristan and Iseult: The love triangle,
Man loves woman…unfortunately one or
both of them are already spoken for, or
a third party intervenes, e.g. Casablanca.

9. Vladimir Propp (1928)
He also concluded that all the characters could be resolved into only 7 broad character
types:
• 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 functionally, the
princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.
• The dispatcher - character who makes the lack 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 marry the princess.

10. Joseph Campbell’s (1949)
• Ordinary World – the ordered world that the hero will choose (or be forced) to
abandon.
• Call To Adventure – a problem or challenge arises.
• Refusal Of The Call – fear or reluctance may strike the hero.
• Meeting With The Mentor – the mentor is a key character.
• Crossing The First Threshold – the hero commits to the adventure.
• Test, Allies, Enemies – the hero must learn the rules that will govern his quest.
• Approach To The Innermost Cave – the most dangerous confrontation yet,
perhaps the location of the treasure, or the object of the quest.
• Ordeal – the hero must face his fear or mortal enemy who will seem more
powerful. Mental or physical torture may occur.
• Reward (Seizing The Sword) – the hero can celebrate the victory.
• The Road Back – vengeful forces controlled by the villain are unleashed.
• Resurrection – perhaps a final confrontation with death.
• Return With The Elixir – return to the ordinary world with some wisdom,
knowledge or something else gained from the adventure.

11. Claude Lèvi-Strauss’ (1958)
He ideas about narrative amount to the fact that
he believed all stories operated to certain clear
Binary Opposites e.g. 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.

12. 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 …anesthetization of violence
thorough chic …adolescent male fantasies … speed,
power, girls and wealth … album art come to turgid
life … classical storytelling’s motifs

13. Andrew Goodwin (1992)
He argues that in music video, “narrative relations
are highly complex” and meaning can
be created from the individual audio-viewer’s
musical
personal musical taste to sophisticated
intertextuality that uses multidiscursive phenomena
of Western culture.
Many are dominated by advertising references, film
pastiche and reinforce the postmodern ‘re-use’
tradition.

14. Sven Carlsson (1999)
suggests that music videos in general, videos fall
into two rough groups: performance clips and
conceptual clips.
• When a music video mostly shows an artist (or
artists) singing or dancing, it is a performance
clip.
• When the clip shows something else during its
duration, often with artistic ambitions, it is a
conceptual clip.

15. Carlsson (1999)
He 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 artist is
representing different aspects of the free floating
disparate universe of music video.