Narrative Theories.

• Tim O'Sullivan (1998): argues that all media texts tell the audience a story in some way.

• Through mediation, media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves - not usually our own personal stories but a story of us as a culture/set of cultures.

• N.T 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.

• Pam Cook(1985): the standard Hollywood narrative should have;

• Linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution.

• A high degree of narrative structure.

• A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence.

• Todorov (1997):

• Kate Domaille (2001): Every story ever told can be categorised into one of eight narrative types. Each type has a source; an original story upon which the others are based. These are:

• Archilles - The fatal flaw that leads to the deconstruction of the previously flawless, or almost flawless person. e.g. Superman, Fatal Attraction.

• Candide - The indomitable hero who cannot be put down. e.g. Rocky, Indiana Jones, James Bond.

• Cinderella - The dream comes true. e.g. Pretty Woman.

• Circe - The chase, the spider and the fly, the innocent and the victim. e.g. Smokey And The Bandit, Duel, The Terminator.

• Faust - Selling your soul to the devil may bring riches but eventually your soul ends up belonging to him. e.g. Bedazzled, Wall Street.

• Orpheus - The loss of something personal/the gift that is taken away/the tragedy of loss/the journey which follows the loss. e.g. The Sixth Sense, Love Story, Born On The Fourth Of July.

• Romeo and Juliet - The love story. e.g. Titanic.

• Tristan and Iseult - The love triangle, (man loves woman, unfortunately one of them is spoken for or someone tries to intervene). e.g. Casablanca.

• Claude Lèvi-Strauss (1958): structuralist.

• He believed all stories operate to certain clear Binary Opposites, for example: good vs evil, black vs white, rich vs poor.

• These ideas then mean that a complicated world is then a simplified structure. Things are either good or bad, right or wrong. There is no in between.

• Michael Shore (1984): music video - audio visual poetry?

• He argues that music video are recycled styles used again and again on a continuous loop.

• Surface without substance, simulated experience, information overload, image and style scavengers, ambivalence, decadence (luxury), immediate gratification, vanity and the moment, image assaults and outré folks, death of content, anaesthetisation of violence through chic (look is more important than content).

• Weezer - Buddy Holly (1994)

• Recycled styles.

• Happy Days was a 1970's sitcom set in the 1950's.

• The editing technique used in the video is conventional of TV shows and also has a film texture effect.

• The actors in the video are dressed as 1950's college students, and the video uses footage from the TV show 'Happy Days' in it, making it look like original footage.

• The audience can infer (as we weren't born then) how the video is set in the 50's due to media texts and the expectations we have from them.

• Buddy Holly was a rock artist in the 1950's, who died 1959 in a plane crash.

• The video for this sign also had an ad break, to make it look like it was actually part of the show 'Happy Days'.

• Another way the video is similar to the sitcom is the way they used a live audience, which replicates the show as they also did this.

• Oasis - The Importance Of Being Idle.

• Edited into black and white.

• Set in a Northern town, with terraced housing.

• (1960) Saturday Night, Sunday Morning.

• British Social Realism.

• Video reflects the trailer as they have similarities.

• There is an individual bike and also a bike with a sidecar, which illustrates Binary Opposites (different ideologies).

• Narnia is an example of how good vs evil is portrayed, but also with CGI (Computer Generated Imagery).

• Sven Carlsson (1999):

• In one type of performance, the performer is not so much a performer anymore, he/she is a materialisation of the commercial exhibitionist.

• Another type is that of the televised bard. He/she is a modern bard singing banal lyrics using TV as a medium. The televised bard is a singing storyteller who uses actual on-screen images rather than inner, personal images. Greatest televised bards create audio-visual poetry.

• He suggests music videos generally fall into 2 rough groups;

• Performance clip - When a music video mostly shows an artist/artists singing and/or dancing.

• Conceptual clip - When the clip shows something else during its duration, usually with the intentions of being artistic.

• Performance video:

• Mostly filmed performance.

• A video that shows the vocalist(s) in one or more settings.

• Common setting are a recording studio and a rehearsal room, although they can take place anywhere.

• For rap videos, walking down the street is considered a cliché, as it happens so often.

• Narrative video:

• A silent movie.

• No lip synchronised singing.

• The story is usually easy for the audience to follow.

• Art video:

• No visual narrative and also no lip synchronisation.

• The video contains more modern, experimental music, such as electro-acoustic.