Narrative is defined by the way in which a story is told in both fictional and non fictional texts. Todorov described narrative as always having a disruption throughout: "disruption is always figured literally- as physical force." In AS, our coursework production was a film opening called Untamed. This was a in the genre of teen drama which focused on the disruptive relationship between a teenage girl, Aubrey, and her mother, Carol, who did not understand Aubrey's rebellious teenage characteristics. The film opening begins with Aubrey drunkenly stumbling into the house, then arguing with Carol about where Aubrey has been. Aubrey stands up to Carol, then the film opening ends with Aubrey running away from home in the night.
Todorov's theory of narrative focuses on equilibrium, where when the narrative is negatively disrupted, it is a disequilibrium, which is ultimately restored by the end of the narrative - although the restored equilibrium is not the same as the original.
For our film opening, we decided to challenge Todorov's narrative theory in Untamed by making the disequilibrium take place at the beginning, instead of the positive equilibrium, as described by Todorov. We disregarded Todorov's theory in order to create a message of family conflict.
Levi Strauss's theory of Binary Opposites, which are reflected by a culture, is another narrative theorist which we applied to Untamed throughout the narrative. Within the narrative of untamed, we used a multitude of binary opposites. Some which we used were: youth and maturity, drunken and sobriety, mother and daughter, and the use of indoor and outdoor settings. After studying Strauss’s theory of binary opposites in the research stages prior to creating our film opening, we found this theory to be very effective for a film opening in order to create a gripping and interesting narrative. Therefore, we created these binary opposites deliberately to create meaning and a message in our narrative. The opposite of the conflicting relationship between the mature mother, Carol, and the unruly teenager, Aubrey was to create a message of disconnect within a family system and to create empathy from the audience for Aubrey not being understood by her mother or family.
Furthermore, we studied Propp’s theory of Stock characters, which we decided to not use in our film opening, Untamed. We subverted from Propp by creating characters which are not usually seen within mainstream, broadcasted films and productions. We purposefully made Aubrey a non-stereotypical female character. A stereotypical female teenage character would be portrayed as feminine and proper, as well as submissive and one who does not stand up for themselves due to being the female gender. We subverted from this stereotype by making Aubrey a female “baddie” who would typically be portrayed by a more masculine figure. Aubrey was not feminine, exemplified by her drunkenness, rugged clothing and outspoken nature. We additionally made Carol’s character subvert from Propp’s theory. A mature female who is also a mother is portrayed by films as caring and sometimes submissive to the youth/ their children. We decided to make Carol a female authority figure instead of the usual stereotypes. This was exemplified by Carol confronting her daughter harshly and being clear of her discontent of her daughter, Aubrey, going against her.
We decided to create these characters through subverting Propps stock character theory in order to create a highly interesting narrative.
Linking to the last point, to create an interesting narrative we used Barthes theory of Enigma Coding. Enigma coding creates a sense of mystery from the audience, and inspires their questions of ‘what happens next?’ – thus, making the narrative more gripping. Some enquiries from our film opening of Untamed are why is Aubrey drunk? Why does Carol not understand and accept her daughter? Why is Aubrey running away and where to? Why does Carol not stop her daughter from running away?
We deliberately left the film opening on a cliff hanger by using Barthes Enigma Coding in order to make the narrative interesting – and as it is a film opening, to make the audience have a desire to continue watching.
In conclusion, from our research of the main theories of narrative, we concluded that some were more useful for our film opening than others. The least applicable was Propp’s stock characters theory, whereas the most applicable to our film opening was Levi Strauss’s theory of Binary Opposites. We challenged some theories and embraced others by using them contently within our film opening’s narrative.
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