Narrative Theory

Narrative Theory 

Classical Hollywood Narrative (CHN) was used in the American film industry in 1927 and 1963, it is the traditional story in modern Hollywood films. The theory starts from an equilibrium before something bad happens, where the main characters have to fight to sort it just before the equilibrium at the end of the film. TZVETAN TODOROV is a theorist that we looked at for the CHN. He is a Bulgarian structuralist linguist who published influential work on narrative from the 1960’s and onwards. It is useful to look at CHN as it gives an understanding into the film industry and why films are made the way they are. The film Halloween does follow CHN due to the first scene of the murder. However, The Crazies does not follow CHN as the opening scene to the film is the town on fire which is prior to what happens at the end of the film.

VLADMIR PROPP’s various character types are; The Villain, The Hero, The Donor, The Helper, The Princess, Her Farther, The dispatcher, The False Hero. This list was created from Propp examining 100 folk tales and identifying 8 character roles and 31 narrative functions as well. These character types can be applied to different types of narratives which helps to understand media texts. In Halloween it features three of Propps characters which are the villain who is Michael Myers and the Hero who is Louie Stroud and the Doctor, whilst the helpers are Annie and Lindsey. In the Crazies there is the Villain which is the virus, the hero which is David, the princess who is Judy whilst her friend Becca is the helper and Davids work partner Russel is the helper and the false hero.

Binary opposition is a set of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. For this theory we looked at CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS who looked at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions. I think that looking at binary oppositions helps to understand the arrangements of themes and we will be able to apply it in later work. Five binary oppositions in the film Halloween is Good/Evil, Dark/Light, Strange/normal, Masculinity/Feminism, and Past/Present.

‘A chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occurring in time and space’ This means events that will occur and cause different effects happening at different times. This is useful because it gives the story a plot and a sense of mystery because of the different events occurring. In the Crazies the plane crashed caused the water got contaminated and then the water caused a virus to attack people in the film. Two events that we know happened but didn’t see was the plane crash and the burning of the dead people.