MEDIA THEORIESFadilah Bakth

Narrative

The way in which a story is told in both fiction and non-fiction texts.

Vladimir Propp■ Vladimir Propp was a Russian literary critic and a scholar who

founded the idea that a certain type of character was to be used in every narrative structure.

■ His theory has influences many film makers to writing and producing successful narratives.

■ He proposed that it was possible to classify characters and their actions into clearly defined roles and functions.

■ Propp also suggested that fairy tales also follow a specific narrative structure.

■ Propp analysed over 100 Russian fairytales in the 1920’s.

Vladimir Propps TheoryProp suggested that every single narrative has eight character roles. These character types are:■ The villain – who opposes the hero and engages in conflict with the hero.■ The dispatcher – The character who makes the villain’s evil known and sends the hero to

rectify the evil.■ The helper – The character to helps the hero on his quest.■ The Princess or prize – This character is the hero’s prize. The hero deserves to have her

throughout the narrative but is unable to usually because of the unfair evil the villain has created. The hero’s journey often comes to an end when he gains his prize and marries the Princess. This is where the ‘happily ever after’ moment takes place.

■ Her Father – This character gives the task to her hero, identifies the false hero and marries the hero to the princess. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father cannot be distinguished.

■ The donor – This character prepares the hero or gives him a magical object that will help him.

■ The Hero – This character seeks something, reacts to the donor and marries the princess.■ False Hero – This character takes credit for the hero’s actions and tries to marry the

Princess.

The Villain

The Princess

The Hero

The Donor

The Despatcher

The Helper

Genre

■A genre is a specific type of music, film, or writing.

Daniel Chandler and his theory

■Daniel Chandler (born 1952) is a British visual semiotician based (since 2001) at the department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University.

■He believed that genre uses specific codes and conventions in order to appeal to a certain set audience.

Audience

■An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or academics in any medium

Stuart Hall and his theory■ Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and professor of sociology at the open

university.■ He looked at the role of audience positioning in the interpretation of mass

media texts by different social groups.■ Hall came up with a model suggesting 3 ways in which we may read a media

text:1. Dominant reading – The reader fully accepts the preferred reading

(audience will read the text the way that the author intended them to) so that the code seems natural and transparent.

2. The negotiated reading – The reader partly believes the code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes modifies it in a way which reflects their own position, experiences and interests.

3. The oppositional reading – The readers social position places them in an oppositional relation to the dominant code. They reject the reading

Representation

■The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way.

Edward Said■Edward Wadie Said was a literary theoretician,

professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, and a public intellectual who was a founder of Post-colonialism.

■He believed that in Western culture, the East was presented as ‘other’ and different. He called this ‘Orientalism’. He believed that the stereotypes of Eastern culture in Western Literature and Media could be very damaging as it represented the two cultures as opposites.