Narrative Theorys

This week I have looked at several Narrative Theorys, thinking about how we use these in our music video.

Levi Strauss Theory

Strauss says that in every kind of media text there will be some use of binary opposites. These are two things which are comletely opposite to one another and so create conflict. The audience should be aware of who they are supporting within your narrative. We will be using several of these binary oppositions in our video:

• Rich and Poor - This is the main reason for conflict in our video, as the woman wants money and so chooses a richer man over her current boyfriend.
• The main character is betrayed because of the womans greed, and so we also see Good and Bad - The clown who is trying to make the relationship work and the woman, who cheats and lies.

We use these opposites to clearly show whose side the audience is on and who they are empathising with. The audience sides with the poor performer, as he is the underdog and is more honest. They also represent the ideology of the video, that it is important to be faithful and honest in relationships. The opposites are very clear in our video because we crosscut between shots of the clown, whose struggle we empathise with, and the other couple being unfaithful.

Todorov's Theory

Todorov states that there are five stages to each media text, these stages are included in our narrative.

• Original Equilibrium/Normality - This stage is included in our narrative, though you don't actually see it in the video, the audience assumes the relationship was at once stable.
• Disruption - This is the conflict in the video between the clown and his girlfriend, and her being unfaithful.
• Recognition - The clown recognises that he is being cheated on, during his performance.
• Attempt to Restore the Equilibrium - This is one part of the theory that isn't included in our video, as the clown has no chance to try and repair the relationship.
• New Equilibrium - This new state is also not really seen in our video, though the audience can deduce that the couple split up.

Music videos are very short and so the narrative we use has to be quite clear to the audience. Our video also has to engage the audience, the most interesting part of our narrative is the disruption, and so we will focus on this part in our video. Our story follows  Todorov's traditional structure and so we don't need to include the very beginning and end, as the audience can work those parts out for themselves.