Vladimir Propp (1895-1970) was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who studied hundreds of Russian folklore & fairytales. Propp believed that all narratives are based on a common structure, shaped and directed by character archetypes and specific actions.
Propp identified 7 distinctive character types known as ‘sphere of actions’:
The Hero: can be either a ‘seeker’ type who relies upon the donor to complete a quest, or a ‘victim’ type who has to overcome weaknesses to complete a quest.
The Villain: struggles against the hero, needs to be defeated for the hero to complete a quest. Often represents socially undesirable morals.
The Donor: gives the hero a magical agent to aid defeating the villain.
The Helper: accompanies the hero’s quest, helps the hero overcome difficulties at critical moments. Can also highlight limits of the hero.
The Princess & Princess’s father
Princess: an object or person, represents the quest reward
Princess’s father: sets difficult tasks to prevent completion of quest
The Dispatcher: sends the hero onto a quest at the beginning of a story, sometimes combined with princess’s father.
The False Hero: Acts heroically throughout the movie despite being a villainous character, confused with actual hero and usually revealed in the last act.
Propp also described 31 recurring plot devices, referred to as ‘functions’, which builds up a large proportion of how we recognise and resonate with stories. Certain functions may be skipped in different narratives, but their order remains the same.
Critically, Propp’s theory was well-received and popular because it suggests that all fictional works have the same underlying structure, and that stories can be constructed through a sequence of abstract plot elements.
Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017) was a Bulgarian literary theorist, and has been a major contributor of literary structuralism and semiotics. In 1969, he proposed Todorov’s narrative theory, which divided a the progression of a story’s narrative into 5 stages:
Initial Equilibrium
Disruption of equilibrium
Recognition of disruption
Attempt to repair damage
New equilibrium
The narrative of the original Star Wars trilogy can be dissected into the 5 stages proposed by Todorov. The initial equilibrium is the protagonist Luke Skywalker living a normal life with his adopted parents. The equilibrium is soon disrupted by stormtroopers destroying his home and murdering his adopted parents. With help from the mysterious Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke recognises the disruption and is informed of the larger background of the disruption. Luke then attempts to repair the damage through fighting alongside the rebel alliance to destroy the evil galactic empire, and finds out about his true origins. By the end, the empire is destroyed, Luke is reconciled with his father, and a larger equilibrium of peace is reestablished throughout the galaxy.
French director Jean-Luc Godard famously suggested that ‘A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end… but not necessarily in that order.’ At present-day, the emergence of non-linear narrative structures has challenged Todorov’s theory.
In Inception, the opening scene depicts the protagonist lying unconscious on a beach, and subsequently being hauled to meet the property owner. The film begins with a disequilibrium, which subverts Todorov’s theory that narratives begin with an initial equilibrium: the initial equilibrium for the protagonist is mentioned in conversations later on, but is not explicitly shown in the film. This deviation from the standard narrative drives the audience straight into the action and suspense of a film. Chronologically, the opening scene occurs moments before the film ending, where the final equilibrium is reached. This is also an alteration of Todorov’s ideal narrative sequence.
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) was a Belgian anthropologist and ethnologist who studied myths from tribal cultures to examine how these stories unconsciously reflected upon the values and beliefs of these cultures, Strauss conclude that we interpret the world through binary opposites: narratives are structured in pairs, and themes consist of differences, contradictions, conflicts and opposites.
Common binary opposites include:
Day & Night
Young & Old
Good & Bad
Life & Death
Male & Female
Strauss believed that these oppositions are fundamental to our ability to create meaning. For example, the concept ‘good’ is understood only when it is juxtaposed against the concept of ‘evil’. Such oppositions also help provide structure to texts.
A number of binary opposites can be found in Kamen Rider Black, a Japanese Tokusatsu series produced in 1987. The protagonist/hero Kamen Rider Black is a symbolises the forces of good, life, the sun and nature, whereas the antagonist/villain Shadow Moon is his binary opposite, symbolising the powers of evil, death, the moon and machine. The two characters were originally brothers who underwent similar body and mind modifications, which sharpens their contrast and conflicts.
Strauss’s theory of binary opposites has been widely accepted in media theory, and is often used to reveal underlying themes and symbolisms in media texts. However, binary opposites can be problematic because they often result in a status hierarchy tied within the narrative structure, in which one side of the conflict will inevitably emerge victorious. Under such circumstances, audiences are expected and provoked to favour the winning side of the opposition, which creates potentially problematic norms, such as male protagonists being socially expected to be white, handsome, strong, masculine and brave.
However, certain genres may challenge the validity of Strauss’s binary opposites. The Noir genre is a sub-genre of crime and mystery, which focuses on moral obscurity and grey areas where situations cannot be defined with clear opposites. Despite being the ‘protagonist’ of the story who tries to solve mysteries, the main character is often rude, drunk and prone to violence, which makes their personalities, motives and actions more complex than characters which adhere to binary opposites, and as a result encourages the audience to reconsider their own positions rather than merely supporting the prevailing side.
Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a prominent French literary theorist who suggested that narrative works contain different code which provokes the audience to derive meaning. Similar to Todorov’s theory, Barthes puts forward that the audiences’ experience of a narrative involves anticipation and expectation of a resolution for disruption and conflict, also encouraging the audience to actively seek for answers and clues in the process.
Enigma Code (Hermeneutic Code)
The enigma code consists of puzzles within narratives waiting to be solved, and is applicable to all sorts of media. Enigmas delay the ending or resolution of a narrative to maintain interest and anticipation of the audience, and the resolution of these enigmas in mainstream media provides enjoyment and satisfaction for the audience, similar to the new equilibrium mentioned in Todorov’s theory.
In the case of thriller films, the enigma code is often based upon murder mysteries, common questions including who committed the murder, as well as how and why the murder was committed.
Action Code (Proairetic Code)
The action code include codes of behaviour and action which leads the audience to expect certain conventional consequences. Similar to the Enigma code, action codes build tension through having certain actions or event indicate that something else will happen as a consequence, which stimulates curiosity in the audience and thus keeps them interested as to further narrative developments. Barthes described the enigma and action codes as ‘the revelation of truth and the coordination of the actions represented: there is the same constraint in the gradual order of melody and in the equally gradual order of the narrative sequence.’
In thriller films: when the story involves an armed villain entering the room where a girl is hiding, the audience will likely assume that the girl may be found and/or injured. This is linked to the social convention of females as weaker and more vulnerable. On the other hand, if the male protagonist was hiding in the room, the audience would more likely assume that the protagonist will elude or defeat the villain.
Semantic Code
Semantic codes similar to iconographic features, consisting of connotative meanings of characters, objects and locations, in which the audience’s experiences leads them to interpret these denotations and connotations. Semiology is the study of signs, which consists of a signifier (words, images, sounds etc.) and its meaning. The denotation of a sign is its literal meaning, and denotations signify associations known as connotations. Denotations and connotations are organised into myth, made of ideological meanings. Myths serve to make ideologies seem more natural.
For instance, the connotation of the colour red would differ greatly in thriller and drama films: in thriller films, the audience would link red with blood, violence, murder and anxiety, whereas in drama films the colour is more often linked with love, passion and sexuality. Moreover in China, the colour red is a cultural symbol for happiness and auspiciousness, and has the ideological meanings of the Chinese state, as well as communism.
Symbolic Code
The symbolic code is also very similar to semantic codes, but it acts on a wider levels through organising semantic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning. Themes and visual motifs repeated throughout a narrative to signify underlying meanings. As in Strauss’s theory of binary opposites, symbolic features often signify oppositions and antitheses, where new meaning is created out of opposing and conflicting ideas.
In thriller films, symbolic codes can be found in recurring imageries such as blood, often signifying guilt and/or paranoia of the linked character.
Cultural Code
Cultural codes are references within a text that are linked with external knowledge to create meaning. Examples of cultural codes include common knowledge, culture-specific knowledge, and intertextual references.
In thriller films, cultural codes often rely upon common knowledge of the audience regarding how certain objects, such as guns, cars and simple mechanisms function. Such knowledge is often required for the audience to understand and keep pace with actions of characters.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philospher who was regarded as the ‘founder of semiotics’. Saussure asserts that there are three levels on which we read and interpret media texts.
Syntactic: the basic denotations in text & its dominant elements
Representation: the representations conveyed in text
Symbolic: the hidden cultural & symbolic meanings in text
He also believes that our understanding of media texts depend not only upon what the text portrays, but also its relationship with folklore and myths. For example, the Cinderella myth presents men as economically powerful and active, whereas women are sexually appealing but passive.
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was a French philosopher who developed the form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction. In response to structuralism and formalism, Derrida asserted that the meaning of all texts are undecidable. Post-structuralist such as Derrida reject the notion of deep structures, doubting the search for meaning and the existence of meaning to begin with. As a result, post-structuralists emphasise the interpretation of texts over their production.
Rather than attempting to discover the real meaning of a text, deconstruction often includes the discussion regarding what elements are missing in the text, because absences and gaps helps reveal what the text is privileging and/or promoting.
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche raised the concept of ‘God is dead’, presenting how God was no longer capable of asserting meaning for individuals. Similarly, post-structuralists emphasise the importance of the audience over the author, arguing that texts without an audience has no meaning, and the meaning of the text is what the audience chooses to assert. As a result, the audience is no longer a passive receiver of predetermined meanings.