Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
Classical Hollywood Narrative is a theory, devised by Tzvetan Todorov, that refers to the basic stereotypical structure of what many fictional media texts use to maintain audience retention. This structure consists of three key segments;
- The equilibrium is the point of the story in which we are introduced to the characters, settings and what is presumed to be considered 'normality'. Everything is stable and there appears to be no threat of this changing to our protagonists.
- The disruption is the point of the story where complications arise, causing the recently proposed 'normality' to be conflicted. A disruption is a negative impact on a story and our main characters are likely to have to face obstacles in order to try to return back to an equilibrium.
- The new equilibrium is the point of the story when the main characters have overcome the disruption and have reinstated 'normality', usually with a few changes caused along the journey (such as deaths of characters we were introduced to from the start).
Is this theory useful for understanding media texts? Personally, I would say that it entirely depends on the media text in question. I believe that a majority of media texts follow this structure to some extent, although, it's the extremity of how far they conform to this structure as opposed to a basic 'they do' or 'they don't'. Take Halloween for example; Halloween subverts against this narrative structure by opening the movie with a disruption, Myers killing his sister, and ends it with another disruption, or cliffhanger, with Myers presumably being alive after his body disappears. This is the case with many horror movies which use these techniques to create tension and fear within its audience.
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'Propp's Character Types' is a theory that defines the main roles that are usually portrayed within fictional media texts. Vladimir Propp devise this list by looking at hundreds of examples of folk tales and combining his research to identify the 8 roles that appear to be most common. These roles include;
- The Hero - the protagonist who we relate to and follow along the story.
- The Villain - the antagonist who we dislike as he attempts to hinder the hero.
- The Princess - the 'reward' for the hero and object of the villain's schemes.
- Her Father - 'father' of the princess who rewards to hero for saving the day.
- The Helper - someone who helps the hero along the way, provides aid.
- The Doner - someone who provides the hero with something that can help.
- The Dispatcher - the person who sends the hero on his way.
- The False Hero - the 'double agent' who hinders the hero rather than helping him.
Audiences need to be able to understand what a character is offering to the story, in order to understand who they should be 'cheering' on and who they should be 'booing'. Without these character types being identifiable, it may be difficult for the audience to follow the story, hence making it a less pleasurable experience. Halloween follows loosely to Propp's character types, with Laurie and the Hero and Michael Myers as the Villian. Other characters play different roles too in relation to Propp's character types with the asylum doctor perhaps loosely fitting into being a doner or helper as without him, Laurie would likely have died in the end. Laurie's friends could perhaps also be seen as helpers as they made Laurie partially aware of the killer being on the loose although overall they were rather useless.
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'Binary Opposition' is a theory by Levi-Strauss that focuses on the opposition in media texts. I believe this theory to be useful as it can help identify themes and ideas that a media text is trying to illustrate to us, by providing contrasting ideas. I will use Halloween as an example to identify the opposition that we are shown;
Good/Evil - Our protagonist Laurie is innocent while Michael portrays 'pure evil'.
Virginal/Non-Virginal - The non-virginal seem to be the main victims while the virginal
character (Laurie) remains alive.
Day/Night - All of the shown killings take place during the night.
Children/Adults - The children symbolize imagination (bogeyman) while the adults seem unwilling to believe it.
Dark/Light - Similar to day/night, darkness can represent danger while light can represent safe.
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Bordwell and Thompson define narrative form as "a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space".The aspects of cause and effect can be triggered by a character or an event, not always shown on the screen, although the audience may be aware that it happens which can help tie the story together. I feel this theory can be useful for considering all the events that lead to a media text narrative to happen, and therefore, help further our knowledge and understanding of said media text.
Two events in the film that we see that cause something else to happen are;
- Michael escaping the asylum which leads to the killings of innocent people.
- Michael killing his sister which lands him in the asylum in the first place.
Two events in the film that we didn't see that cause something else to happen are;
- Dr Samuel attempting to help Michael in the asylum, which lead to his disbelief that he could change.
- The killing of the man who owned the car which then lead to Michael using the car through the film.
The Crazies (Breck Eisner, 2010)
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'Propp's Character Types' is a theory that defines the main roles that are usually portrayed within fictional media texts. Vladimir Propp devise this list by looking at hundreds of examples of folk tales and combining his research to identify the 8 roles that appear to be most common. These roles include;
- The Hero - the protagonist who we relate to and follow along the story.
- The Villain - the antagonist who we dislike as he attempts to hinder the hero.
- The Princess - the 'reward' for the hero and object of the villain's schemes.
- Her Father - 'father' of the princess who rewards to hero for saving the day.
- The Helper - someone who helps the hero along the way, provides aid.
- The Doner - someone who provides the hero with something that can help.
- The Dispatcher - the person who sends the hero on his way.
- The False Hero - the 'double agent' who hinders the hero rather than helping him.
Audiences need to be able to understand what a character is offering to the story, in order to understand who they should be 'cheering' on and who they should be 'booing'. Without these character types being identifiable, it may be difficult for the audience to follow the story, hence making it a less pleasurable experience. Halloween follows loosely to Propp's character types, with Laurie and the Hero and Michael Myers as the Villian. Other characters play different roles too in relation to Propp's character types with the asylum doctor perhaps loosely fitting into being a doner or helper as without him, Laurie would likely have died in the end. Laurie's friends could perhaps also be seen as helpers as they made Laurie partially aware of the killer being on the loose although overall they were rather useless.
_________________________________________________________________________
'Binary Opposition' is a theory by Levi-Strauss that focuses on the opposition in media texts. I believe this theory to be useful as it can help identify themes and ideas that a media text is trying to illustrate to us, by providing contrasting ideas. I will use Halloween as an example to identify the opposition that we are shown;
Good/Evil - Our protagonist Laurie is innocent while Michael portrays 'pure evil'.
Virginal/Non-Virginal - The non-virginal seem to be the main victims while the virginal
Day/Night - All of the shown killings take place during the night.
Children/Adults - The children symbolize imagination (bogeyman) while the adults seem unwilling to believe it.
Dark/Light - Similar to day/night, darkness can represent danger while light can represent safe.
_________________________________________________________________________
Bordwell and Thompson define narrative form as "a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space".The aspects of cause and effect can be triggered by a character or an event, not always shown on the screen, although the audience may be aware that it happens which can help tie the story together. I feel this theory can be useful for considering all the events that lead to a media text narrative to happen, and therefore, help further our knowledge and understanding of said media text.
Two events in the film that we see that cause something else to happen are;
- Michael escaping the asylum which leads to the killings of innocent people.
- Michael killing his sister which lands him in the asylum in the first place.
Two events in the film that we didn't see that cause something else to happen are;
- Dr Samuel attempting to help Michael in the asylum, which lead to his disbelief that he could change.
- The killing of the man who owned the car which then lead to Michael using the car through the film.
The Crazies is a remake of a previous film of the same name. It does not follow the classic Hollywood narrative structure, however this is common in horror films. It starts with a fast forward to the small town of Pierce County, meddled with destruction and gloominess
before rewinding back two days to show what caused these events. From the start alone we see that it does not follow CHN as we start off straight away with a disequilibrium, most likely to draw the viewer in with questions such as "What's going on here?" and "What's caused these events?".
This film conforms quite a bit to Propp's characters types, while also developing and mixing them up. The hero that was central to the film was David, who we followed from the start of the film to the end, which it could also be the case that Judy was a heroine due to large amounts of solo screen time and being able to fend for herself. For the helper I would say that Russell would be the obvious role due to saving David's life three times, however, there is a scene when he becomes highly affected by the disease and turns on David and Judy, becoming much more like a villain. We end with Russell being a helper though when he creates a distraction and sacrifices himself so that David and Judy could live. The film has more than one villain, with it being split between the people infected by the virus and the American government. The infected killed people in
a much more gruesome way and caused a lot of graphic scenes which led us to initially believe that they were the central villain, although, as we are given more information we find that the government pose a much larger threat to our heroes. The virus was created by the government for biological warfare and was intended to be destroyed yet the plane that it was being taken on crashed down in Pierce County, causing the events of this movie. The government intended to kill everyone (healthy or infected) to avoid the virus spreading, and also likely prevent the population of America to be aware of the evil that their government have been doing.
In terms of Binary Opposition, we can pull many examples from 'The Crazies'. I feel
there is opposition between good and evil, with our heroes and helpers representing good whilst the government and the infected people represent evil. This also ties in with opposition between healthy and infected. While the infected seem to represent evil, it may not be the case that the healthy represent good since the government are supposedly healthy but are killing innocent people. Life and death are opposed quite a lot in this film too with life being the main objective for our heroes and helpers, but yet, facing death consistently throughout the film duration. Throughout the film, we also see contrasts between normality and chaos. A good example of this is the first scene where we are initially shown a destroyed Pierce County, before flashing back to the normality of two days before. When our heroes and helpers fight for their lives throughout the film, we see a contrast between safety and vulnerability, a good example being when Judy and David return to their house after the government took over Pierce County, although this is soon contrasted when two infected people appear and create vulnerability for our heroes.
There are three durations within the film which show are the on-screen duration, the plot duration and the story
duration. The on-screen duration is the time that the movie lasts which is 92 minutes while the plot duration is how long the timespan this 92 minutes is supposed to account for from start to finish, which is 3 days. The story duration is the timespan that the entirety of the story is supposed to take place including events that took place before the plot that would then lead to the events we see in the movie. The story duration is implied to be years.
We are made aware of events that happen out of the frame within this movie. An example of a past event could be the process of Judy becoming pregnant, which becomes a major part of the plot since this causes her to become separated from David, in effect saving their lives (since David wouldn't have tried to escape but instead would have gotten killed with the other 'healthy people'.) Another example would be the plane crash which lead to the spread of the infection, with the infection being the main centrepoint of the film.
An event that takes place during the film, yet not shown, is the killing of the healthy people. Although this is important to the film to signify the evilness of the government, we are shown the dead corpses through the eyes of David. An event that supposedly takes place after the film is a repeat of the events that happened during it, with the screen focusing on the new town which they escaped to as if the government were preparing to do the same thing. Another event that took place during the film but we are not shown is the military puncturing the tyres of Russell's truck. We are told this on screen and are also shown later the spikes that they used to puncture them with.
This film conforms quite a bit to Propp's characters types, while also developing and mixing them up. The hero that was central to the film was David, who we followed from the start of the film to the end, which it could also be the case that Judy was a heroine due to large amounts of solo screen time and being able to fend for herself. For the helper I would say that Russell would be the obvious role due to saving David's life three times, however, there is a scene when he becomes highly affected by the disease and turns on David and Judy, becoming much more like a villain. We end with Russell being a helper though when he creates a distraction and sacrifices himself so that David and Judy could live. The film has more than one villain, with it being split between the people infected by the virus and the American government. The infected killed people in
In terms of Binary Opposition, we can pull many examples from 'The Crazies'. I feel
there is opposition between good and evil, with our heroes and helpers representing good whilst the government and the infected people represent evil. This also ties in with opposition between healthy and infected. While the infected seem to represent evil, it may not be the case that the healthy represent good since the government are supposedly healthy but are killing innocent people. Life and death are opposed quite a lot in this film too with life being the main objective for our heroes and helpers, but yet, facing death consistently throughout the film duration. Throughout the film, we also see contrasts between normality and chaos. A good example of this is the first scene where we are initially shown a destroyed Pierce County, before flashing back to the normality of two days before. When our heroes and helpers fight for their lives throughout the film, we see a contrast between safety and vulnerability, a good example being when Judy and David return to their house after the government took over Pierce County, although this is soon contrasted when two infected people appear and create vulnerability for our heroes.
There are three durations within the film which show are the on-screen duration, the plot duration and the story
We are made aware of events that happen out of the frame within this movie. An example of a past event could be the process of Judy becoming pregnant, which becomes a major part of the plot since this causes her to become separated from David, in effect saving their lives (since David wouldn't have tried to escape but instead would have gotten killed with the other 'healthy people'.) Another example would be the plane crash which lead to the spread of the infection, with the infection being the main centrepoint of the film.
An event that takes place during the film, yet not shown, is the killing of the healthy people. Although this is important to the film to signify the evilness of the government, we are shown the dead corpses through the eyes of David. An event that supposedly takes place after the film is a repeat of the events that happened during it, with the screen focusing on the new town which they escaped to as if the government were preparing to do the same thing. Another event that took place during the film but we are not shown is the military puncturing the tyres of Russell's truck. We are told this on screen and are also shown later the spikes that they used to puncture them with.
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