Technical Codes (Topic Specific)• Camerawork

• Lighting

• Sound

• Codes and Conventions

• Editing and sound for audio-visual media and graphic design elements for print-based and interactive media

• What work is being done by the sound track/commentary/language of the text?

• Language use

•Editing

Symbolic Codes• What are the denotative and connotative levels of meaning?

• What is the significance of the text’s connotations?

• What are the non-verbal structures of meaning in the text (e.g. gesture, facial expression, props etc)?

•What is the significance of mise-en-scène/sets/settings?

• Semiotics

Representations• Who is being represented?

• In what way?

• Mediation

• The role of selection, construction and anchorage in creating representations

• How the media uses representations

• The points of view, messages and values underlying those representations.

• The Reflective view of representing

• The Intentional view

• The Constructionist view

• Stereotypes/Countertypes

• Hegemony

• Pluralism

Audience• To whom is the text addressed? What is the target audience?

• What assumptions about the audience’s characteristics are implicit within the text?

• What assumptions about the audience are implicit in the text’s scheduling or positioning?The ways in which audiences can be categorized (e.g.,

gender, age, ethnicity, social & cultural background, advertisers' classifications) – Class,Young and Rubicam’s Four Consumers, LifeMatrix

• How media producers and texts construct audiences and users

How audiences and users are positioned (including preferred, negotiated and oppositional responses to that positioning).

• Ideology

• Uses and gratifications

• Adorno

• Mode of address

• Pleasures – Dahlgren & Stam

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Genre• To which genre does the text belong?

• What are the generic conventions within the text?

• Who creates genre?

• Hybrids

• Themes and Ideology

• Frank McConnell

• Post-modernism

• Intertextuality

• The cast and genre associations

Narrative• What are the major themes of the narrative?

• How is the narrative organised and structured?

• How is the audience positioned in relation to the narrative?

• Propp

• Todorov

• Barthes

• Levi-Strauss

• John Ellis

• Single/Two Goal Plot

• Genre/Cultural/Internal Repetition

• Segmented Narrative

Textual Analysis Grid

Institutions/Ideology• What is the institutional source of the text?

• In what ways has the text been influenced or shaped by the institution which produced it?

• Is the source a public service or commercial institution? What difference does this make to the text?

• Who owns and controls the institution concerned and does this matter?

• How has the text been distributed?

• What are the major values, ideologies and assumptions underpinning the text or naturalised within it?

• What criteria have been used for selecting the content presented?

RECAP: PROPP’S CHARACTER ROLES

The hero (seeks something)

The villain (opposes the hero)

The donor (helps the hero by providing a magic object)

The dispatcher (sends the hero on his way)

The false hero (falsely assuming the role of hero)

The helper (gives support to the hero)

The princess (the reward for the hero, but also needs protection from the villain)

Her father

TZVETAN TODOROV

Bulgarian literary theorist

Suggests most narratives start with a state of equilibrium in which life is ‘normal’ and protagonists happy.

This state of normality is disrupted by an outside force, which has to be fought against in order to return to a state of equilibrium.

This model can easily be applied to a wide range of films.

EQUILIBRIUM DISEQUILIBRIUM NEW EQUILIBRIUM

TODOROV’S SUGGESTED NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

Roland Barthes was born on the 12th November 1915 and died at the age of 64 on the 25th March 1980. He was a

French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician (study of cultural signs and symbols). He

explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools.

Roland Barthes

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..." (S/Z - 1974 translation)

Codes Theory

The text is like a tangled ball of threads

The thread needs to unravelled

Once unravelled, we encounter an absolute wide range of potential meanings.

We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text.

You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle and create an entirely different meaning.

What he meant …

“Barthes said that texts

may be ‘open’ or

‘closed’”‘open’ (unravelled in a lot of different ways)

‘closed’ (there is only one obvious thread to pull on).

BARTHES’ CODESFive Codes which are woven into any narrative:

Action – a narrative device by which a resolution is produced through action, e.g. a shoot-out.

Enigma – a narrative device that teases the audience by presenting a puzzle or riddle to be solved. Works to delay the story’s ending pleasurably.

Symbolic – (connotation)

Semantic – (denotation)

Cultural – a narrative device which the audience can recognise as being part of a culture e.g. a “made man” in a gangster film is part of the mafia culture.

Really

important

ACTION CODE

This code contains sequential elements of action in the text.

‘Action’ elements add suspense to the text.

ENIGMA CODE

This code refers to mystery within a text. Clues are dropped, but no

clear answers are given.

Enigmas within the narrative make the audience want to know

more.

Unanswered enigmas tend to frustrate the audience.

SYMBOLIC CODE

This code is about symbolism within the text.

It exercises opposites to show contrast and create greater meaning, creating

tension, drama and character development.

SEMANTIC CODE

This code refers to parts within the text that suggests or referes to

additional meanings.

Elements of the semantic code are called Semes.

The seme has a connotative function in the text. It has an extra layer of

meaning in addition to its literal meaning

CULTURAL CODE

This code refers to anything in the text which refers to an external body of

knowlegde such as scientific, historical and cultural knowledge.

IN TERMS OF MUSIC VIDEO

Barthes’ Enigma Code can be found in a majority of music

videos.

The narrative will establish enigmas (puzzling imagery or

occurrences) or mysteries as it goes along.

Essentially the narrative functions to first establish then solve.

EXAMPLE OF ENIGMA CODE

Katy Perry – Wide Awake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0BWlvnBmIE

NARRATIVE DECODED

Why does it start with the ending of a song?

Strawberry

Suddenly moves from dressing room to weird

Child – young – innocent (why is there suddenly a child who’s invisible

in the mirror?)

Walls moving, floor giving way

Being pushed in wheelchair by child

Why is there magic elements, light

People with bull heads confront them

Prince – only after her because she’s famous

Star comes out of chest

Bull masks – mental aura – maybe guards

End with another song

Cat with crazy eyes – curiosity

Based on Alice in Wonderland

Why based in Labyrinth/Maze/hospital/on shoot/dressing

room/forest/garden

Paparazzi other side of mirror – couldn’t see their faces.

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

Social Anthropologist.

Studied myths of tribal cultures.

Examined how stories unconsciously reflect the values, beliefs and myths of a culture.

These are usually expressed in the form of binary oppositions.

His research has been adapted by media theorists to reveal underlying themes and symbolic oppositions in media texts.

+ CLAUDE STRAUSS He believed that the way we

understood certain words

depends not so much on any

meaning they themselves

directly contain however but by

our understanding the different

of the word and it’s ‘opposite’.

He then produced the theory

binary opposites.

+ EXAMPLESBinary opposites are very

frequently used in films,

especially in the horror genre,

many of the films include

binary oppositions in their

plots. The understanding of

the work ‘villain’ depends on

the difference between that

word and the opposing word

‘hero’.

Good and evil is the most

common binary opposite

shown to the public through

the media field on different

platforms. Sane and insane,

rational and irrational and

human and supernatural are

also common binary opposites

known to the public.

FOR EXAMPLE…

Binary Opposites are usually the basis of our understanding of a story

as it is a conventional narrative and enables an equilibrium.

Binary opposites are used in films to help plots, they are also used in

music videos as part of a narrative to reinforce song lyrics.

Levi Strauss’ theory links heavily with our ideological values of how

we feel we should ‘perceive’ the world. E.g. what is an ideological

view of a mother?

BINARY OPPOSITIONS

A conflict between two qualities or terms.

For example 1970’s Western films:

Homesteaders Native Americans

christian pagan

domestic savage

weak strong

garden wilderness

inside society outside society

26

Examples of binary opposites• Good vs evil

• Black vs white

• Boy vs girl

• Peace vs war

• Civilised vs savage

• Democracy vs

dictatorship

• Conqueror vs

conquered

• First world vs third

world

• Man vs nature

• Protagonist vs antagonist

• Action vs inaction

• Motivator vs observer

• Empowered vs victim

• Man vs woman

• Good-looking vs ugly

• Strong vs weak

• East vs west

• Humanity vs technology

• Ignorance vs wisdom

• Domestic vs foreign/alien