Narrative Threorists.

In our Media Studies Lesson we have been looking at four Narative Theorists, Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss and Bordewell and Thompson. We have explored these theories, and seen what evidence from their theories we can find in 'The Shining.' A Classic 1980's Horror Film.

The first Theorist i will be exploring is Vladamir Propp. His theory basically was that a character has a function and is not a person. He said that a character falls into one of these genres of characters. The villian, the donor, the helper, the princess, the dispatcher, the hero or victim, or the false hero. When analysing the Shinning baised upon what Propp said, i found that his theory was least helpful, as many characters fall into the same categories, with in different parts of the story. Through the story you could find that the character changed roles, like the princess could be Danny or Wendy, or the helper could be Hallaren or Wendy, or some other characters. Propp also said there were 31 functions organised into broader narrative groups showing their place in the development of the plot. Some of these functions where useful, mostly the ones from the genre Preperation, Complication and Transference. The other three, Struggle, Return and Recognition had hardly any or no appearence in the story. For these reasons i feel that Propp's theory has some intersting idea's to compare to the Shinning, but as a broad topic, it was not very helpful.

Claude Levi-Strauss looked at the idea of Binary Oppositions, where we only understand some thing, from understanding its opposite. For example, good and bad, happy and sad, love and hate. In the film the Shinning, there are examples of this theory, such as the two young twins girls, where you would recognise them to be sweet and inocent, because of the denotation of their gingham dresses, and their pig tale hair styles, but then Danny gets flashes of them being brutaly murdered, and seeing them surrounded by blood. This is a good example of a binary oposition, where its the idea of innocence and evil. I feel that Claude Levi-Strauss's idea is quite relative to the plot of the Shinning as the young girls become a big part of the story, and show how twisted the story can become, it also makes the film be the unexpected, as you see incocence and evil.

Bordwell and Thompson's theory is a very complicated theory about cause and effect, where 'a chain of events in a cause-effect relationships, occuring in time and space.' This involves technical techniques like replays of action, slow motion, speeding up, jumping between places and times. This is shown in the Shinning by the mixed up dates, where they jump from months to weeks to just days apart, which makes time dismantled and confusing, to show how the story gets mixed up. They also show a few replays or action, where the blood flies through the elivator doors and when the twin girls are seen around the hotel, holding hands, whereing the same outfits. Through the film we get jumping between scenes, when the Shinning is happening with Danny and Hallaren, we get to see their reactions, even though they are many miles apart.