This document discusses different theories of narrative structure. It describes narratives as consisting of a story and plot. Common narrative structures include equilibrium, disruption, quest, resolution, and re-equilibrium. Narratives can fall into types like Achilles, Cinderella, or Romeo and Juliet. The document also discusses music videos and how they use recycled styles, images, and references to other works to both promote artists and draw from cultural knowledge.

1. Narrative Theory

2. What Is A Narrative?
Story + Plot = Narrative
Narrative Structures:
- Narrative
- Performance
- Abstract
Inferred
Events
(what we
don’t see)
Bordwell & Thompson (1997)
Text
(What we
see)
Non-diegetic
material
Story (what happens/ the
events)
Plot (how what happens is
presented to the audience)

3. TIM O’SULLIVAN (1998)
• Argues that all media texts tell us some kind of
story
• Through careful use of mediation, media tects
offer a way of telling stories about ourselves- not
usually our own personal stories, but the story of
us as a 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

4. KATE DOMAILLE (2001)
• Each story can be held in 1 of 8 narrative types
Archilles – the fatal flaw that leads to destruction of the
previously flawless person e.g. superman
Candide – the indomitable hero who cannot be put down e.g.
James Bond
Cinderella – the dream comes true e.g. Pretty Woman
Circe – the chase/ the innocent and the victim e.g. the
terminator
Faust – selling your soul to the devil may bring riches but
eventually your souls belongs to him e.g. The Little Mermaid
Orpheus - the loss of something personal, the gift that is taken
away, the tragedy of loss or the journey that follows the loss e.g.
The Sixth Sense
Romeo & Juliet – love story e.g. Titanic
Tristan & Iseult – love triangle e.g. Casablanca

5. PAM COOK (1985)
The structure of the classic narrative system –
• Linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory
of enigma and resolution
• A high degree of narrative closure
• A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially
governed by spatial and temporal coherence
Equilibrium
(balance) Protagonist
Antagonist
Take on
narrative role
– they have
conflict of
desires
Disruption
of
equilibrium
(changes
the story)
Quest
Resolution
Re-equilibrium
TODOROV – explores this idea
too

6. CLAUDE LEVI STAUSS (1958)
• 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
• 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
• Use of contrast is shown within the mise-en-scene.

7. MICHAEL SHORE
Music videos are:
• Recycled styles
• Surface without substance
• Simulated experience
• Intro overload
• Image and style scavengers
• Ambivalence
• Decadence
• Immediate gratification
• Vanity and the moment

8. ANDREW GOODWIN
• Argues that in music videos –
“narrative relations are highly complex”
• Meaning can be created from the individual audio-viewer’s
personal musical taste to sophisticated
intertexuality that uses multidiscurvise phenomena
(art form and knowledge) of western culture
• Many are dominated by advertising references,
film pastiche and reinforce the post-modern ‘re-use’
tradition
• Our response to video depends on our knowledge
of western culture.

9. SVEN CARLSSON
• Suggests music videos have performance,
narrative, abstract
• The performer is not a performer anymore,
he or she is a materialization of
commercial exhibitionist
- Not longer about the music talent but
about them as promotional products
• Therefore the video is about promoting the
artist not the song.