Lecture 4: From Dallas to Baghdad – Introducing Narrative Theory

Lecture 4: From Dallas to Baghdad – Introducing Narrative Theory

• Understand the importance of narrative in analysing different media forms.

• Practice applying various structural narrative theories to media forms.

• Begin to evaluate ways in which these structures can help but also limit our understanding.

Narrative

• Life does not present us with information in an organized way: it is up to us to impose order upon it. This is narrative.

• Narrative is the organization given to ANY information: whether you’re gossiping to a friend, or watching a film, or the news, that information is organized into a narrative.

• Narrative makes a random series of events comprehensable.

What is Difference Between Narrative and Story?

• Story: “the irreducible substance of a story”– I went to buy milk and a dog bit me.

• Narrative: “the way the story was related.”– Once upon a time I went to the store…etc.

Plot

• Plot is simply the order in which events occur.

Genre

Genre• Genre categorizes a “text” through style and

form.

We know these are the same genre

• Similar structures• Lets try and map those structures.• http://www.youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEngli

sh#p/u/4/5AwpPGIK7c4 (AL Jazeera on Lebanon)

• http://www.youtube.com/user/cnninternational#p/u/14/zZOXwIt7_7M (CNN on Columbia)

• Street scenes/external shots with reporter talking over them.

• Talk to “regular person”• Talk to “expert person”• See the reporter on the street.• Higher officials at the end.• Totally different stories: same genre.

Narrative Conventions of News

• Narrative isn’t just applied to movies, or TV shows.• News stories are also told through narrative: News is a

“genre” just like Soap Opera or Reality TV.• The Comedy programme “Newswipe” makes fun of the

conventions of a News broadcast.• This would not be funny if we didn’t implicitly

understand the ‘genre’ of news:• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4

Time

• In a narrative there are two aspects of time:– 1. The “time of the telling”– 2. The “time of the story told.”

“Time of the telling” = 34 seconds.“Time of the story told” = less than 2 seconds.– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BEeOaX7_bo

(Zidane)

Examples of Narrative in Different Media

Photographs

Comic Strip

Video Games• Videogame designer Yoshinori Yamagichi in 2009:

– “It is more of a challenge to produce a game in order to tell a story. In TV, film and theatre, the creator has control over how he gives the story to the viewer--it's easier to control the emotions and feelings expected from the viewer,” Yamagishi told CVG.

– “In [a game developer's] case we always have to think about how players might react to each depiction of a character or storyline, and that's the part we can't predict. But if we manage to get over this hurdle, then I regard video games as a greater medium to provide people with deep emotional and exciting experiences.”

• Gamespot (http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6214951/index.html)

• Dennis Dutton disagrees: thinks video games ““There’s a deep division between the concept of a story as it has come down through tradition and the concept of a story as it is in video games,” Dutton said. “Games do not have the story structure we see in Greek plays, Shakespearean tragedies, or even soap operas on afternoon TV. They are, at their very heart, games and not stories.”

• Gamespot (http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6214951/index.html)

Radio

Structural Theories of Narrative

Vladimir Propp

• In 1920s examined hundreds of Russian folktales

• Argued that they shared certain structures.• Identified 31 functions which move the story

along (for example, a man needs to be married; a man loses all his money)

• As well as….

Propp’s Eight Character Roles

Barthes• Also a structuralist theory, but his incorporates

the reader/viewer’s reaction.• To Barthes, a text (could be written, a

photograph, a film) is not one thing but a “weaving together of different strands and processes.”

• Narrative works through 5 different codes which act as ‘alerts’ to the reader to make sense of what is going on.– TWO Codes are “inside the story”– THREE Codes are pointing outside of the story.

Barthes

Inside the Story.

Hermeneutic/ Enigma

Code

Proairetic/ Action

Code

• watch first part of ‘Cause and Effect’ Star Trek: The Next Generation.– What is wrong with this episode beginning?– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxxTUXVblA

A– http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=ACf7_0rBjng&NR=1

• What is wrong? The ship blew up, and we don’t know why. Lady hears voices, we don’t know why.– HERMENEUTIC CODE: Setting up

mysteries!– Do we think the main characters are

really dead?• No.• PROAIRETIC CODE: Driving the action forward

because we EXPECT that we will see the main characters again.

Hermeneutic/

Enigma Code

Proairetic/ Action

Code

The Semic Code

The Symbolic

Code

The Cultural

Code

A text is not one thing, but “a weaving together” of information inside and

outside the story.

The Semic Code

Enigma Code

The Action CodeThe

Symbolic Code

The Cultural

Code

Tzetvan Todorov’s Theory of Narrative

• In this news item: (The Great Busterd) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12232362

• In The Busterd story– 1. What is the equilibrium?

• They were all healthy and thriving.– 2. What is the disequilibrium?

• They were in danger.– 3. What is the new equilibrium?

• Money from the EU, hooray, Busterds are safe.

Claude Levi-Strauss: “Theory of Binary Opposition.”

• Suggests all narrative have to be driven forward by conflict between two opposing forces.– For example “fight between good and evil” – Luke

Skywalker versus Darth Vader.– or political issues boiled down to two sides.– American political ad uses narrative of binary

opposition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSQozWP-rM

• Levy-Strauss’ theory is best applied to a whole genre rather than an individual story.

• The text book attempts to look at Western news coverage of the War in Afghanistan. The language news shows use in the West set up oppositions between “east and west” “despotism and democracy”, “fundamentalism and freedom.”

• We will look more at this in a moment.

Case Study: DallasNarrative as Pleasurable…

“A Symbol of a New Television Age”- Dallas

• In the late 1980s, the American Soap Opera “Dallas” became a global phenomenon.

• Ien Ang wrote a book about this called “Watching Dallas”.

• Intro to Dallas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfNBCxnht-4&feature=related

• Popular throughout Asia and Europe: “evidence of influence of American consumer capitalism on popular culture?” (Ang 2)

• French minister of culture called this the “symbol of American cultural imperialism” (Ang 2)

• Dallas was seen as potentially threatening to “local, authentic” cultures.

• Ang argues that those may be the concerns of “elite” academics or government controllers.

• “In the millions of living rooms where the set is switched to Dallas, the issue is rather one of pleasure.” (Ang 5).

• Scene from Dallas: Katherine threatens Bobby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwSO4JMmylg&feature=related

• Changing the focus to the audience, Ang asks how the viewer “gets pleasure” from Dallas, what makes it a favorite object of entertainment for people all over the world – in many cultural contexts?

• To find out, Ang placed an ad in a Dutch womens magazine saying “Would anyone like to write and tell me why you like watching Dallas, or dislike it?”

• She based her book on the responses.• Scene from Dallas: Bobby dies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM3UT5hFMiA

• People had many answers:• “I find it bad but it offers a certain attraction.”

(Ang 17)• Ang concluded that people liked the show for

many reasons, but their enjoyment “owed a good deal to the intrinsic pleasure to be derived from its melodramatic narrative structure.” (Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, p. 46).

Applying Todorov to the News: Firdos Square

April 9, 2003

Firdos as Reported in 2003

• Remember Todorov’s– Equilibrium, Desequilibrium, New Equilibrium.

• By Fox News - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wss_urnuB7o

• By The Guardian online - http://www.guardian.co.uk/pictures/image/0,8543,-10104645413,00.html

What really happened on Firdos square?

• We are going to look more deeply at the gap between what happened at Firdos and how the media reported what happened at Firdos.

• The important thing to remember is that news “builds” a narrative in some way.

• But sometimes, too much information is cut out.• ProPublica on “the toppling”• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=YDu7bXqx8Ig

Remembering Firdos in the News

• “Al Jazeera interview with Iraqi gentleman : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7g_lxhNUUM

Activity• Watch this news segment : http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?

id=7253008n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel TWICE. • THREE DIFFERENT GROUPS

– Plot (What order are the events presented to us : just a simple list)– Story (One sentence: what happened?)

– GROUP 1: Make a list of every character in the story. Do any of them fit into Propp’s roles? Are there any BINARY OPPOSITIONS set up in the story?

– GROUP 2: Try to apply Todorov’s narrative analysis: What is the equilibrium? Desequilibrium? New equilibrium?

– GROUP 3: Try to identify the Hermeneutic/ Enigma Codes and the Proaitic/Action Codes in the Story…• What MYSTERY does the story set up at the beginning? (ENIGMA CODE)• What INFORMATION does the story give us to drive the story forward (ACTION CODE?)• Is the story pointing to any outside information we might need to understand what is going on?

– Any connotations around the characters or their actions? (SEMIC CODE)– Any SYMBOLIC CODES?– Any CULTURAL CODES – anchoring the text in a specific time or place?

–