Sven E. Carlson
This theorist believes music videos can be put into two categories:
• Conceptual (The audience observe a narrative or something other than the artist in the video)
For example: Arctic Monkeys: Fluorescent Adolescent
For example: Arctic Monkeys: Fluorescent Adolescent
• Performance (The audience observe the artist performing the song throughout the video)
For example: Weezer: Say it ain’t so
For example: Weezer: Say it ain’t so
Sven E. Carlson
“Modern mythic embodiment”
This theory consists of the ideas that most performance videos stop the performer being a performer. Instead they are selling their voice, look, lifestyle and other aspects.
It is thought that performers are restricted in how they can perform due to the fact that the artist is a seller of their own body image.
According to Sven E. Carlson, my music video will be conceptual rather than performance as it will show a narrative.
Therefore the performer in my video will not be selling their lifestyle, or look, merely the sound of their voice and the narrative their lyrics can produce.
Vladimir Propp
Propp proposed that characters featured in narrative could be placed into the following roles and functions:
• Hero
• Villain
• Donor
• Dispatcher
• False hero
• Helper
• Princess
• Princess’ father
He also proposed the following storyline could be applied to any narrative:
According to Propp, my narrative should contain a hero, villain, donor, dispatcher, false hero, helper, princess, and a princess’ father. However, my video is potentially only going to contain two characters, who may be seen as fitting into none of these categories. On the other hand, some may argue that ‘Delilah’ could be the villain as she has broken the main character’s heart.
Furthermore, due to the broken, potentially reverse narrative and lack of moving forward that the main character does (the video consists of him looking back at events), the journey Propp created does not apply to my narrative.
Tzvetan Todorov
Todorov proposed that narrative always began with a state of equilibrium, which is disrupted by some outside force, causing a disequilibrium.
This is then resolved and replaced by a new, better equilibrium, where a lesson has been learnt.
The music video I intend to create challenges Todorov’s narrative theory as it begins with a disequilibrium and is never resolved with a better equilibrium. The audience and main character are left with lose ends that they can interpret themselves.
Reception Theory
• This theory consists of focusing on the way an individual receives and interprets a text, and how their current situation affects their interpretation. For example, their gender, age, ethnicity, class, etc.
• The theory is based on Stuart Hall’s encoding / decoding mode, which explains the relationship between the text and audience as the text being encoded by producers and decoded by consumers.
• By using past experience of audience consumption, such as codes and conventions of other texts, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects, such as the use of familiar actors and making use of genre to portray certain message, the producer can position the audience. It therefore creates a certain amount of agreement on what the codes means. This is known as a preferred reading.
• This theory applies to my music video as the age of the characters within it means that the audience find it easier to relate to them.
• The relationship between the text and my audience is hopefully that they are watching a scene familiar to something that they or a close friend have been through and they can therefore understand the emotions they are going through. As the producer, I intend to portray these emotions in looking back at events instead of openly expressing the pain of the main character.
• Although my video will not be using familiar actors, it will make use of the indie genre, using the conventions of this genre within the text. Furthermore, I hope to create various messages that the audience have a choice to pick up on, such as application to their own lives.
Roland Barthes (1977)
Barthes believes there are five codes in a narrative which activate the understanding of the consumer:
• Action: Narrative device where a resolution is met through action.
• Cultural: Narrative device where the audience recognise the subject as part of a particular culture.
• Enigma: Teasing the audience with riddles or unanswered questions, used to delay the story’s ending.
• Semic: Otherwise known as denotation.
• Symbolic: Otherwise known as connotation.
Application to my product:
• Action: My narrative defies this code as there is no resolution at the end of the video, the man character is left where he began.
• Cultural: The audience may recognise this narrative as being part of the Western culture, where relationships are not arranged and therefore free will allows the character to have dated Delilah and now want her back.
• Enigma: My video has a sense of enigma as there is the unanswered question of ‘will he ever get her back?’. However, instead of merely delaying the ending, this enigma is throughout the entire video, including the ending.
• Semic: The literal meaning of my video is that the main character is writing letters to the girl he loves to try and get her back.
• Symbolic: The connotations of my video are that the main character is going through a mental war as to how to win her back, whether he should try to get her back, wondering how it went wrong, etc.
Roland Barthes described narratives as needing:
• Involvement with an established plot or theme
• The development of a problem (an enigma) which increases tension
• A resolution to the problem.
He described text as, “a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signified; 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..."
An interpretation of this quote is that every text has more than one meaning, the audience pick up their own opinions of the text based on their personal experiences. Furthermore by observing narratives from different perspectives, you can generate entirely different meanings behind it.
In relation to what Barthes thought a narrative needed, my video follows what he said. It has involvement with an established plot or theme (boy loses girl, wants her back, with the theme of love), as well as the development as an enigma (he doesn’t know how to get her back, he keeps remembering the bad times they had together).
However, there is no resolution to this problem by the end, the main character is left at a loose end. This challenges Barthes’ ideals, but does this to allow the audience to interpret their own meaning from the text. For example, some people by the end of the video may believe the character is going through a vicious cycle of facing the issue then shying away from it (through the throwing away of the letter), while others may judge his destruction of the letter as him realising he doesn’t need her.
Tim O’Sullivan (1998)
Tim O’Sullivan believed that all media texts tell the audience some sort of story. They offer a way of telling stories about the audience consuming the text. However, this does not mean that the text gives the audience a way of telling the story personally, instead giving a cultural overview. Furthermore, O’Sullivan argues that media texts are reliant upon the viewers’ understanding of stereotypes.
Narrative theory aims to show that the experiences we feel when consuming a text are there to make us understand a particular set of conventions, and how these conventions are placed together in our culture, or other cultures.
My music video compliments Tim O’Sullivan’s theory as it tells the audience a story of a hopeless romantic, a stereotype that seems to have been incorporated into our Western culture. The consumers will most likely know of someone who has experienced a similar event, if they have not experienced it themselves. It informs the audience that our cultural upbringing may be the reason we react to break ups in this way, as well as showing that this is not something that only one individual goes through.
Pam Cook (1985)
Pam Cook focused on the idea of the classic ‘Hollywood’ narrative, which should have:
• Linearity of cause and effect within an overall route towards an enigma resolution.
• High degrees of narrative closure
• A fictional world that includes verisimilitude
My music video challenges Cook’s theory as it does not follow the typical ‘Hollywood’ narrative.
Although there is a sense of enigma throughout my music video, there is no linearity of cause and effect due to the broken narrative which changes timeframe and location repeatedly with the possible chance of reverse narrative.
There is no degree of narrative closure either as the video will probably end with no sure answer or resolution.
The only aspect of Cook’s theory that may apply to my music video is the sense verisimilitude within it, as although there is a broken narrative, the narrative is based in a fictional world that could be real.
Jonathan Culler (2001)
Culler described his concept narratology as a narrative presenting a form in which the theme of the text can be discussed.
Overall, strands of narrative are wound together to create a sequence of actions or events that are considered independent of expression in communication. Basically, the events present a narration together, but individually they may not be considered significant.
It could be said that my music video compliments Culler’s theory as themes of loss and rejection, as well as love, are presented through a narrative about a man who has lost his girlfriend. The events that occurred while the characters were dating have been wound together to give an overall image of the sequence of their relationship, from the getting together to the breakup, even though it is not in order in the main character’s fragmented mind. Individually, these events would merely be seen as two people performing an action (arguing, talking, etc), but together they show the gradual decline of happiness in the relationship.
Kate Domaille (2001)
Domaille believes that every story that has ever been told fits into one of the eight narrative types below. Every narrative type has a source, an original story they are based on:
• Achilles: The fatal flaw that leads to the downfall of a person who was previously considered indestructible.
• Candide: The unconquerable hero who can’t be defeated
• Cinderella: The dream comes true for the innocent character.
• Circe: The chase, the spider and fly effect, one entangles the other, the innocent and the victim.
• Faust: Selling your soul to the devil (or villain) who may offer you riches but will collect the debt you owe by the end.
• Orpheus: The gift that is taken away, the loss of something or someone personal and the journey which follows.
• Romeo and Juliet: The love story, in which boy meets girl and they fall for one another.
• Tristan and Iseult: The love triangle, where man loves the woman, but before they meet, one or both of them are already taken by a third party.
According to Domaille, my narrative should fit into one of the eight narrative types. Overall, my music video would fit into a few of the types combined. The love story is the most appropriate, although my narrative occurs after one character falls back out of love with the main character. This means the narrative could also fit into the type where the gift is taken away, as the man loses Delilah’s love and is therefore destined to travel through life alone.
Claude Levi-Strauss (1958)
Levi-Strauss’ theory consisted of his ideas surrounding narrative amount. He believed that all stories operated around binary opposites, such as good and evil, rich and poor, etc.
In general, a fundamentally complex universe can be simplified or reduced to a basic structure of right or wrong with no in between.
According to postmodernism, Levi-Strauss’ theory is too basic, as there may be flaws in a hero or a villain may be just misunderstood.
Claude Levi-Strauss also investigated the way a narrative is arranged in terms of themes that seemed to always be methodical oppositions.
The order of the events were labelled as the systematic structure of a narrative. However, Levi-Strauss was more interested in the exemplary arrangement of the themes.
A choice of elements (paradigms) are arranged and edited in a particular way (syntagms).
According to Strauss’ theory, my narrative should surround the ideas of binary opposites. However, I believe my narrative is more postmodern in this sense as there as flaws with the protagonist as well as the misunderstanding of the apparent antagonist, who just wants to leave a relationship she is no longer happy in.
When looking at this theory, it has to be agreed, that it is too simplistic, as my narrative is not purely based on love and hate.
