Narrative patterns in TV drama

Narrative patterns in genre

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Pixar: Mater and the ghost light

The Hero: The hero is Mater himself because he is the one who finds out that the ghost light is only a lantern on his tow bar.
The Villian: The cars that tell Mater about the ghost light and the car that puts the lantern on his tow bar.
The Donor: This is lighting mcqueen because he tries to reassure Mater that its just a story.
The dispatcher/helper: The police car is the helper by telling Mater that the ghost light is fake.
The father figure: The police car because he is trying to reassure Mater that the ghost light isnt real.
The princess: The princess will be Mater. This is because, although he is not a girl, he is still the damsel in distress.

Action code: This when the the ghost light goes off for a second, and you have the suspence of what is going to happen next.
Enigma code: The ghostlight is the enigma code because it is infact just a latern, which is explained in the end.
Semantic code: The light could in fact mean being saved (light at the end of the tunnel).
Cultural code: The ligh is referred to as something from the deep beyond. This could mean a spiritual precence.

Symbolic code: Mater is the hero, but it scared of the light. 

Binary opposites: Mater is the hero, even though he does not know it. He is a coward because he is scared of the ghostlight.

ideology: The ideology is that when you are scared, the outcome usually isn't as scary as you mkae it out to be.

Barthes' theory of narrative

Roland Barthes describes a text as:

"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..."

What he is basically saying is that a 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 absolute plurality of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a 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 an entirely different meaning. And so on. An infinite number of times. If you wanted to.

Barthes wanted to - he was a semiotics professor in the 1950s and 1960s who got paid to spend all day unravelling little bits of texts and then writing about the process of doing so. All you need to know, again, very basically, is that texts may be ´open´ or ´closed´. Barthes also decided that the threads that you pull on to try and unravel meaning are called narrative codes and that they could be categorised in the following five ways:

• Symbols & Signs
• Points of Cultural Reference
• Simple description/reproduction

Propp's Theory of narrative

Vladimir Propp, a Russian critic, active in the 1920’s, published his Morphology of the Folk Tale in 1928. While the Soviet cinema was producing excellent films, Propp was essentially interested in the narrative of folk tales. He noticedFolk tales were similar in many areas. They were about the same basic struggles and they appeared to have stock characters. He identified a theory about characters and actions as narrative functions. Characters, according to Propp, have a narrative function; they provide a structure for the text.

The Hero – a character that seeks something

The Villain – who opposes or actively blocks the hero’s quest

The Donor – who provides an object with magical properties

The Dispatcher – who sends the hero on his/her quest via a message

The False Hero – who disrupts the hero’s success by making false claims

The Helper – who aids the hero

The Princess – acts as the reward for the hero and the object of the villain’s plots

 Her Father – who acts to reward the hero for his effort

Todorov's teory of narrative: