Narrative Theory

The narrative of a music video or film etc. is the story and the plot. The story is what happens in the narrative, whereas the plot is how we are shown what
is happening in the story. This description was done by Bordwell and Thompson.



Tim O'Sullivan- 1998
- Argues that all  media texts tell us some kind of story.
-Through careful mediation, media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves: not usually our own personal stories, but the story of us as a culture or set of cultures.
- The Narrative Theory sets out to show that what we experience when we 'read' a story is to understand a particular set of constructions, or conventions, and that it is important to be aware of how these constructions are put together.
Kate Domaille-2001
- Every story ever told can be fitted into one of the eight narrative types. The original story upon which the others are based.

• Achilles- The fatal flaw that leads to the destruction of the previously flawless or almost flawless person e.g. Superman, Fatal Attraction.
• Candide- The indomitable hero who cannot be put down e.g. Indiana Jones, James Bond.
• Cinderella- The dream comes true e.g. Pretty Woman.
• Circe- The chase, the spider and the fly, the innocent and the victim e.g. Smokey and the Bandit, The Terminator.
• Faust- Selling your soul to the devil may bring riches but eventually your soul belongs to him e.g. Bedazzled.
• Orpheus- The loss of something personal, the gift that is then taken away, the tragedy of loss or the journey which follows the loss e.g. The sixth sense, Love Story.
• Romeo and Juliet- The love story e.g. Titanic.
• Tristan and Iseult- The love triangle, Man loves woman, unfortunately one or both of them are already spoken for, or a third party intervenes e.g. Casablanca, Twilight.

Example of an Abstract Narrative:

Street Spirit- Radiohead 

- Filmed in Black and White (artistic choice)

- Slow motion, mixing it with real time; this creates an aesthetic. 

Sven Carisson-1999

- Suggests that music videos in general fall into two rough groups: Performance clips and Conceptual clips.

- When a music video mostly shows an artist (or artists) singing or dancing it is a performance clip.

- When the clip shows something else during its duration, often with artistic ambitions, it is a conceptual clip.

A Performance clip is a music clip which contains mostly filmed performance. Also if the vocalists in the video are shown in one or more settings. 

A Narrative clip contains a visual clip that is easy to follow and there is no lip-synchronized singing involved. 

An Art clip contains no perceptible visual narrative and contains no lip synchronized singing.

Bordwell and Thompson offer two distinctions between story and plot:

• Fabula (Story)- The chronological sequence of events in a narrative. 
• Syuzhet (Plot)- Is the re-presentation of those events (camera angles etc.)

The structure of a classic narrative system:

- According to Pam Cook (1985) the standard Hollywood narrative structure should have:

• Linearity of cause and effect withing an overall trajectory of enigma resolution.
• A high degree of narrative closure. 
• A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence. 

Equilibrium of Diegesis:

Boy and Girl+Disruption= Quest --> Resolution or Re-Equilibrium 

(Cause and Effect) Tzventan Todrov- 1977