Narrative

Roland Barthes-  "a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language"

Genre
Character
Form
Time

What he is basically saying is that a media text is like a tangled ball of threads which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we encounter an large number of potential meanings. We can start by looking at narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle by pulling a different thread if you like and create a entirely different meaning, and so on. An infinite number of times, if you wanted to. (THERE ARE NO LIMITS TO NARRATIVE INTERPREATIONS)

Pam Cook- Stories/Narratives should have a beginning, a middle and an end (linearity) in which somthing happens (cause and effect) causing a series of problems (enigmas) which to be solved (resolution). THEY SHOULD ALL INCLUDE A BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END.

Tzvetan Todrov- 5 stages of narrative;
1) A state of equilibrium (all is as it should be)
2) A disruption of that order by an event
3) A recognition that disrupition has taken place
4) An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
5) A return or restoration of a new equilibrium

Vladimir Propp- Propps concluded that regardless of the individual differences in terms of plot, characters and settings, such narratives would share common strucural features.
He also concluded that all the characters could be resolved into only seven character types in the 100 tales he analysed:
1) The Villain- struggles against hero
2) The donor- prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object
3) The (magical) helper- helps the hero in the quest
4) The princess and her father- gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought  for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished
5) The dispatcher- character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off
6) The hero or victim/seeker hero- reacts to the donor, weds the princess
7) [False hero]- takes credit for the hero's action or tries to marry the princess

Claude Levi Strauss- Binary oppositions
His ideas about narrative amount to the fact that he believed all stories operated to certain clean Binary Opposites e.g good vs evil, black vs white, rich vs poor.
The importance of these ideas is that essentially a complicated world is reduced to a simple either/or structure. things are either right or wrong, good or bad. There is no in between.

 



The Binary oppositions for this music video are:
Black vs White
Man vs Women
Domestic vs Breadwinner
Danger vs Safety

Representation

Possible questions:

1. How does your video represent different social groups/people/places/lifestyle? What values/ideologies are you representing/promoting?
2. Does you production create a hegmonic (dominate) representation/ Does it represent and reinforce the dominant ideology?
3. What positive/negative/sterotypical connotations and representation are you constructing/using/challenging.?
4. How are represenations in your production the products of your own culutural experience/background/ideology/value.

What would Laura Mulvey say about your production???

"the gaze is male whenever it directs itself at, and takes pleasure in, women, where women function as erotic objects" - Laura Mulvey.

Laura Mulvey is controversial individual in the media due to producing the term 'Male Gaze' in 1975. She introduced her beliefs that film audiences have to view characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male. For example, the video is based around women and using them sexually to create a viewing point for the males. However, females can see it in three set ways, how men look at women, how women look at themselves, and how women look at other women. I believe this has potentially played a big part of how society has been shaped and led to the insecurities of women today and how many feel the need to be 'perfect' and criticise the way they look, particularly if the focus is continually on women in a sexual way. Women often feel the need to change how they are for this reason.

Features of the Male Gaze include the camera shots and editing focusing on the female body and attractive parts of the body such as a women's figure and curves, exploiting their sexual aspects. There are also features regarding events which happen to the women but are presented in the aspect of the man's reaction. The way the women is portrayed, immediately produces the main focus on them and the way the male interact and view them. Although, there is also a slight focus on the male and the representation of the males and how the females view them. However, they are secondary and this is seen as not as important, showing how the main focus is from the male point of view.

 

Reflective view- Creating a identical replication. E.g News

Intentional view- Opposite of reflective, representation of person presenting. E.g an attractive person in a coke advert

Constructionist view- A Response to what has been seen as a weakness on the other two theories.

1. The thing itself

2.The opinions of people doing the represenation.

3. The reaction of the individual to the representation.

4. The context of the society in which the representation is taking place.

E.g the film Independance Day

 

John Berger- "men act women appear"

                      "men look at women, woman watch themselves being watched"

 

Barthes- Sexualisation

 

Walter Lippmann- a shortcut or ordering process  in ideological terms, stereotyping is a means byw hich support is provided by a groups differences against another. The way we see things automatically pick out things palcing them into sterotypes by us.

 

Richard Dyer (1997)

Details that if we are able to be told that we are going to see a film about an alcoholic then we will know that it will be a tale either of sordid decline or of insuring redervition.

Suggests that this is partisucarly interesting potentional use of stereotypes.

Collective Identities- Byker Grove

Byker Grove is a British television series which aired between 1989 and 2006 and was created by Adele Rose. The show was broadcast at 5.10pm after Newsround (later moved to 5pm) on CBBC on BBC One. It was one of the few television series to air on CBBC that was aimed at an older teenager and young adult audience, as it tackled some controversial storylines.

The show ran between 1989 and 2006, and was set in a youth club in the Byker district of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Byker Grove was the original idea of lthe TV executive Andrea Wonfor. In 1987, she approached soap writer Adele Rose. Together they created a single pilot episode featuring children aged 8–11 at an out-of-school club (transmitted on Tyne Tees TV in 1988). In autumn 1988, Wonfor gained the backing of Anna Home, then Head of the Children's Department at BBC Television. Home gave the go ahead for a run of a series of six 25-minute episodes to be broadcast by the BBC. The age of the main characters was raised to 12-16 after support from first producer-director, Matthew Robinson. The first series therefore centred on young teenagers crossing the bridge from childhood to adulthood. Although some of the action took place outside the youth club, the series was unusual among dramas in that the characters were rarely shown in school. One of the major settings was the foster home run by the kindly but strict Lou Gallagher, the longest-running character.
          

Collective Identities Case Study- Grange Hill

Grange Hill is a British television dram series originally made by the BBC. The show began in 1978 on BBC1 and was one of the longest-running programmes on British television when it ended its run in 2008. It was created by Phil Redmond who is also responsible for the Channel 4 dramas Brookside and Hollyoaks; other notable production team members down the years have included producer Colin Cant and script editor Anthony Minghella.

http://www.grangehill.com/


 First ever episode of Grange hill 1978 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdI1kWkl-N4 
This portrays the youth to have innocence, naivity, curiosity, respect for elders etc,

 Last episode of Grange hill 2008- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7iSNV0NAUg
This portrays the youth to be less smart (personalised uniforms), less respect for elders, looking for relationships (dating) and their use of technology (internet)

Samuel 'Zammo' Maguire - 1981-1987

It is impossible to think about Grange Hill in the 1980s without mentioning the character of Samuel ‘Zammo’ Maguire, the cheeky chappy whose life spiralled into heroin addiction in one of children’s television’s most ground-breaking storylines. Actor Lee MacDonald played Zammo for six years and helped to make Zammo one of the iconic characters of the 1980s. The 1986 cast released Grange Hill: The Album, with two singles: "Just Say No" (tying in with a character's heroin addiction)
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkrAmH6H5eU

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





Andrew Goodwin theory

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.
   (e.g. stage performance in metal videos, dance routine for boy/girl band, aspiration in Hip Hop).    [this is also known as iconography]
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are represented with images.
   (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music.
   (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, mirrors, stages, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
6. There are often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos etc).

Usher- Burn:-

Genre characteristics- RnB flashy car, designer clothing, nice location 

Lyrics relate to the visuals "Let it burn" the trees start to burn and the pool bursts into flames

Communicating to the audience using metaphors

The car relates to James Bond

Usher's hat represents his origin 

Voyerism- womens chest and usher's topless body 

Red Light Race Car Driver:-

Genre characteristics- musical instruments, cars, indie rock dress code

"Runaway with me"- shows protagonist getting ready to runaway with a boy 

Close-ups of the band members playing the guitar and drums

Voyerism- protagonist applying lipstick and fixing her hair

"Stay with me"- boy and girl hugging  

Introduction to Semiotics

Semiology is an attempt to create a science of the study of signs, systems and their role in the construction and reconstruction of meaning in media texts.

The theorists of this Semiotics are Rolan Barthes, Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Pierce.

Semiotics is "the study of signs that help us deconstruct Media Texts". What this means is that we look at representations within media texts (any outlet of media), and we use them to understand the subtextual meaning of that media text.

Codes
A system of signs, languages or symbols that allow audiences to decode meaning. In simpler terms, this is a collaboration of signs to implement a meaning behind it. Examples usually derive from technical and symbolic codes, or narrative codes. In our trailer, we will collaborate a variety of shots to ensure that it is known that the girl who commits suicide is the killer. This will include running shots, distorted shots, and possibly an eerie voiceover.

Connotations
The various meanings/suggestions produced by the sign. For example, in our trailer, we could use destauration of shots to show the colour and vibrance being sucked out of life. We could further evaluate and say that this is the life of the protagonists that are suggestively being abducted. It could be said that they become much more weary of their surroundings, and become cautious of their own well being rather than enjoying life as they did before.

Decoding
The Process where meaning is deconstructed or 'read' by audiences

Denotation
The physical form of the sign.

Collective Identities Theorists: Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall- Born: Kingston, Jamaica 1932 is a cultural theorist and sociologist.

Stuart Hall states our personal cultural background influences the way in which we consume media.