Narrative Essay

Narrative Essay. Narrative is a written account of connected events, also known as a story. Todorov believed that Narrative is a line with a beginning, middle and end also known as equilibrium, disequilibrium and resolution. There are two types of narrative; linear narrative, this is a simple approach to understand, it is conventional so you don’t get your intellectual pleasure the audiences are after. The other type is a non-liner narrative, this is not knowing anything about a film for example the characters. Due to this it creates an intellectual pleasure for the audience to guess the unknown conventions of the film that are not revealed. In this essay I will be exploring different theorist’s ideas about the narrative of a film, in this case it will be of the horror genre. A media theorist called Domaile believed that every story told can be fitted in one out of eight narrative types. Each of these types have a source, an original story which others have been based around. Out of these eight types, it is narrowed down to three that apply to the horror genre. These are circe, faust and orpheus. Regarding my horror trailer, I concluded that circe was the type that connected the most. Circe is the battle between the good and the bad in a film, in a horror genre case it would regard to the antagonists and the protagonists in a film. In my trailer the protagonists also known as the final girl fights against the antagonist and escapes from his grip. Looking deeper into the meaning behind this type it inherits myths that we tell our generations to teach those values and lessons in life. Circe teaches people that you need to fight off the bad people in your life and show them how strong you are. This could be in any case for example bullies in your school or people who are jealous of you. On the other hand another theorist called Levi Straus belonged very strongly in binary oppositions. Binary oppositions are the are two things that are completely opposites from the other, for example; love and hate. Regarding the horror genre, he believed that conflicts are based around these binary oppositions. He states that they are always the central of a climax in a horror film. To further explain his theory on binary oppositions he continued to explain that characters in a horror are either good or bad and situations are with wrong or right. There is never any middle, it is either one or the other. Linking my summer trailer to this theorists idea, i believe i did go along with what he believed was to be included in a horror genre. My characters had either a good agenda or a bad, even if they seemed good at one point, they always in their mind knew they were bad. Also my trailer agrees with his idea that binary oppositions are always the central of the climax. This is due to the fact that the climax e.g. the jump scares always happen when there is a fight or close accountancies between the antagonist and the protagonist in a horror film. Another media theorist called Propp believed that narrative in the horror genre needed 7 types of characters to make it a successful horror film. A example of these are characters such as a Villain, hero, agent or princess. A princess in a horror would be the character threatened by the Villain in the horror. Regarding my summer trailer, it shows signs as Propps theory. A few of the characters he believed needed to be in my horror genre were, for instance; the villain in my horror was shown from time to time and the princess was the main character filmed throughout the trailer. Although I have a few of these characters in my trailer, I don't have a lot of them. This is due to me not knowing about the theory and therefore not being able to fully apply it to my trailer. I believe this does make my trailer a little less effective but on the other hand I think it is a positive thing that I didn't show all seven of these characters on my trailer because it would show too much, too fast and therefore would make the target audience less eager to want to watch the film when it comes out. The last theorist that I will be exploring in regard to narrative is Barthes. He believed in three codes that need to be included in a horror; Enigma, action and symbolic. Enigma refers to the mystery within a text, Action refers to how the writers create the suspense and symbolic is the symbols within the text of a horror film. Linking Barthes theory to my horror trailer, without knowing it I included a few of his codes that he created. For example there is a lot of symbolisms in my horror trailer and the storyline, to explain this further there was a lot of deeper subtext to the meaning of this horror, for example; my protagonist being stalked by the antagonist and sticking up to him is a subtext that every teenager should stand up to their bullies. In the future for my next group trailer I will be sure to include them in my horror genre to make it more conventional. In conclusion narrative has been explored by many theorists that created different explanations about the horror genre. After analysing their theories against my own summer trailer I feel it has helped me improve on my previous work in time for my future work. I now won’t make these mistakes that are identified through the theories and it will therefore improve my grade for the future. Looking into these theories it has also helped me realise that I may not need to do all of them to keep it at a high grade and creative horror.