Vladimir Propps Theory:

Russian Vladimir Propp (1895-1970) analysed many of his country's folk tales and identified common
themes within them. He broke down the stories into morphemes (analysable chunks) and identified 31
narratemes (narrative units) that comprised the structure of many of the stories.

Archetypes:

1. Hero – main character who eliminates the evil and wins the princess (prize)
2. Dispatcher – invited the hero to eliminate evil
3. The Helper – helps the hero to fight the evil by providing physical presence
4. Princess/ Prize – character that needs to be saved/ best friend/ object/ reward
5. Donor – provides objects that help the hero (or object)
6. Villain – figure that forces the hero to act and fights the hero
7. False Hero – figure that changes perception during the plot and turns out evil

Characters:

 Frodo Baggins – Hero

 Gandalf – Dispatcher and mentor/ father and Hero
 Smaug - Villain
 Sam - Helper
 Gollum – false hero
 Arwen - princess
 Aragorn – Hero and helper
 The ring – Princess
 Lord Elrond – dispatcher
 The Necromancer – villain
 Tzvetan Todorov

Suggested that the main goal of the story was to reach a certain goal that characters have to solve by
going through a series of stages in a linear narrative where events follow a chronological order.

1. Equilibrium – happy start

2. Disruption – something goes wrong and problem is provided
3. Realisation/ Climax – when everyone realises the problem and it is chaos.
4. Restore Order – characters attempt to repair the damage and restore the problem.
5. Equilibrium (again) – happy ending for the characters

Films that follow Todorov’s theory are; Lord of the Rings, Titanic, Hunger Games etc.
Films that do not follow Todorov’s theory are; Pulp fiction, Kill Bill, Batman begins and the
Godfather.

Claude Levi Strauss

Binary opposition

 Man vs. Society (1985)

 Man vs. Nature (Revenant)
 White vs. Black (Fences)
 Good vs. Evil (Harry Potter)
 Man vs. Religion/God

He showed that culture is a system with underlying structures that are common to all societies
regardless of their differences. Through his analyses he showed that patterns of structures including
behaviour and thought are universal to all societies, and rejected the concept of primitive and modern
mind, arguing that all men have the same intellectual potential.
He believed that the conflict is based around the binary opposites and that this opposite is the central
climax of a narrative structure.
 Roland Barthes

Codes Theory:

 The hermeneutic code (HER.) – refers to any element in a story that is not explained and,
therefore, exists as an enigma for the reader, raising questions that demand explication.
 The proairetic code (ACT.) – refers to the other major structuring principle that builds interest or
suspense on the part of a reader or viewer. The proairetic code applies to any action that
implies a further narrative action.

These first two codes tend to be aligned with temporal order and thus require, for full effect, that you
read a book or view a film temporally from beginning to end. Barthes at one point aligns these two
codes with "the same tonal determination that melody and harmony have in classical music"

 The semantic code (SEM.) – points to any element in a text that suggests a particular, often
additional meaning by way of connotation. This is typically done in the use of antithesis, where
meaning arises out of opposing and conflict ideas.
 The symbolic code (SYM.) – symbolic code is as a "deeper" structural principle that organizes
semantic meanings, usually by way of antitheses or by way of mediations (particularly,
forbidden mediations) between antithetical terms.
 The cultural code (REF.) – designates any element in a narrative that refers "to a science or a
body of knowledge". In other words, the cultural codes tend to point to our shared knowledge
about the way the world works, including properties that we can designate as "physical,
physiological, medical, psychological, literary, historical, etc."

An Enigma Code is when the movie puts hints on something that’ll be more important later in the story
(poster of a missing girl etc.)

An Action code signals to the audience that a narrative will take place. (Mounting a horse to get
something, starting an action)