Post 5: Narrative theory

What is 'narrative'?

In media, the term 'narrative' refers to the organisation of a series of facts. As humans, we connect events together to make interpretations based upon those connections made; thus humans seek narrative in order to make sense of things. Whether it be life in perspective, a novel or film, human beings seek a beggining, middle and an end. Structure is necessary if the product is to be understood.
Fiske et al defined the difference between story and narrative in 1983-
"Story is the irreducible substance of a story (A meets B, something happens, order returns), while narrative is the way the story is related (Once upon a time there was a princess..)"

David O'Neil's 'Tenner' serves as a good example of where narrative is used effectively within a media text.  The short film opens with attention focused primarily upon the heavy breathing of the male protagonist Hommer.  Hommer abuses a local shop owners buisness by spraying a fizzy drink.  Throughout the short film, a scene of Hommer ridding his bike and a car nearly hitting him interloods into different scenes which creates an enigma as the audience are unable to understand the need for this and what it means.  The film concludes with screening the entire scene whereby Hommer is hit off of his peddle bike by a car, which the driver is revealed to be the shop owner at the beggining.  The asian man walks away and rings the police to report his car to be stolen. 

'Tenner' illistrates Roland Bathes Codes as he described narrative 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..." Here he suggests that a text is similar to a mess of colours, whereby the audience is to seek the meanings by seperating the colours and picking each out and individually recognise their need.  By recognising the colours, the audience is able to explore the countless amount of meanings that could be constucted.

At the beggining of 'Tenner' the audience are positioned to read the narrative through the characters, specifically Hommer as they recieve a negotiated reading why by they cannot understand why this character would demonstrate cruel acts on a innocent shop owner. However through the use of genre, the narrative becomes clear at the end when the audience can begin to understand why Hommer is performing these cruel actions, and that is due to the shop owner running him over and consequenting him a leg.  This also mirrors Levi- Strauss concept of narrative only being able to end on a resolution of conflict, which is what happens within 'Tenner'.