Media Theories

Media Theories

1.The Enigma Code by Roland Barthes

The Enigma Code is interpreting story lines in different ways.

Bathes says that all narratives share structural features that are brought together in different ways. Although there are differences between individual narratives, they all have a limited number of organisational structures that affect our reading of texts - these are called 'Narrative/Enigma Codes'. According to Barthes,there is always more than one way to read the text. Barthes theory of the five codes is a way of grouping signifies according to the role they play in the text.
These are categorized as :

• The Hermeneutic Code - keeping the audience in suspense and questioning (the voice of truth)
• The Proairetic Code - leaving the audience wondering what is going to happen (the voice of empirics)
• The Sematic Code - keeping the audience guessing if there is another meaning behind the story line (the voice of person)
• The Symbolic Code - very similar to The Sematic Code acts in a wider level, organizing sematic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning.(the voice of symbol)
• The Cultural Code - movie cannot be interpreted in different way as the facts are in the movie (the voice of knowledge)

2. Todorov's Narrative Theory

In 1969 Todorov produced a theory which he believed to be able to be applied to any film.

Todorov believed that all films followed the same narrative pattern through various stages.

There are five stages the narrative can progress through:

• A stage of equilibrium,
• A disruption of that order by event,
• A recognition  that the disorder has occurred,
• An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption,
• A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium.

3. Binary opposites by Levi Strauss 

Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist. He believed that human's brain relates every term with other that has an opposite meaning.  This means that when a term is said, human's brain automatically thinks of an opposite one to give the term an easily understandable meaning. For example, a term 'bad' has its opposite which is 'good', 'short' is opposite to 'tall', 'cold' is opposite to 'warm', etc.

In movies, binary opposites can be a little harder to recognize as they are not that obvious, however there are usually some. For example, in a movie 'North by Northwest' By Alfred Hitchcock there are binary opposites between the main character Roger  O. Thornhill and his seeker Philip Vandamm. Roger O. Thornhill is a hero in the movie and Philip Vandamm is a villain, Also, one less obvious difference between the two is that the villain is wealthier that the hero as the villain own more recources as well as power than hero. This is a common binary opposite in thriller genre.



4. Vladimir Propp - Character Types

Vladimir Propp analysed a lot of different folk tales which defined all the main character of ANY narrative into 8 broad character types. The 8 Character types are:

• The hero - (AKA victim/paladin/winner.)  Reacts to the donor, wed the princess.
• The villain - Struggles against the hero.
• The donor - Prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
• The dispatcher - Character who makes the lack known, sends the hero on his way.
• The false hero - Falsely assuming the role of hero, perceived as good character in beginning but emerges as evil.
• The helper - Gives support to the hero/ helps the hero in the quest.
• The princess - The reward for the hero, but also needs to be protected from the villain/ the character that hero marries.
• Her father - Gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero.

5. Laura Mulvey - The Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She is currently a professor of film and media studies. She believes that women are materialized and sexually objectified in movies as their bodies are always in a first place. 

• Women viewed as the objects of male erotic desire - in film and audience
• Men are presented as active, women - passive
• Women do not have agency - they do not move the plot forward
• The audience is forced to identify with male gaze as the camera shots and angles are showing women as sexual objects
• Cinema reflects patriarchal (male dominated) society
• Patriarchy and phallocentrism linked - phallus (penis) a symbol of power - e.g. in cinema guns = phallus = power.