Classical Hollywood Narrative

Classical Hollywood narrative: Mainstream movies

 

In a typical popular Hollywood narrative the opening scene which shows us normality and peace. There will then be something abnormal that happens which disrupts the peace and normality with a shocking event, the characters instantly try to resolve the problem as they go through the film, as they finally resolve the problem, everything seems to turn to normal and equilibrium is restored. The setting tells us what is going on and who the characters are. You then find out how people react to others and their social behaviours such as at the beginning of Halloween you see the young child kill his sister, showing that he is a psychopath and a killer and what Claude Levi-Strauss would call being the bad aspect of the good/bad theory with Laurie being the good side. There will be multiple happenings which will be related together to form the plot of the story and then will lead to a disruption is equilibrium as this then causes conflicts and problems which the characters try to resolve throughout the film. Finally the ending of film would be that the characters have resolved. The theorist for this theory is Todorov which shows a graph of the Normality, to the enigma then the pathway to the solution and finally the resolution. I think it is very useful because this can make the storylines and plots much easier to understand so whilst you’re watching a film you can enjoy it and not worry about what’s going on you know have far into the film you are. I also think it’s useful because after a clear disequilibrium you only have to follow the main characters adventure to then an easy going ending of the villain being defeated. Halloween does not follow the CHN as it starts off at disequilibrium from the young child stabbing his sister, and it does not follow the CHN because there is no resolution and the villain still lives meaning that the characters are only halfway through the resolution when they escape from him. Also the resolution doesn’t begin until Michael is in Laurie’s house and when they are fighting each other.

 

Propp’s character types are based on religious stories and folk tales which is what he really enjoyed and have read hundreds of them. There is a typical and distinct characters being the, Hero, Villain, Donor, Helper, Princess, Father, Dispatcher and the false hero. It is useful to a degree as many older films are based on this character structure and how they interact, but for modern day films there aren’t as distinct character types, such as The Crazies, where there is no distinct Villain. In Halloween there is a villain who is Michael, the hero who is Laurie, and there is a helper which is the psychologist who knew Michael. Propp’s character types for understanding media texts is not very suitable as it can only give an indication on the genre of the film and not the plot and storyline, which gives it limited use when it comes to analysing and predicting what happens in the film.

 

The binary opposition is the narrative structure of good/bad, known/unknown and day/night, such as the hero being the good side and the villain being the bad. The theorist for this is Claude Levi-Strauss, as far as this being useful for narratives; it has moderate value due to it being related to real life history, such as killings in towns created the film Halloween which was made due to the upcoming crime in towns with little protection, as is more close to home and the suburban life, whereas it was usually located in isolated places, With the Villain going after the good Hero, there is a motivation by the audience as they want the Hero to win, such as in Halloween she is very good due to her looking after the children when nobody else will. Also the binary opposites can be used when it is night and day in Halloween such as the bad things happening in the night, when the investigators car got stolen and Michael attacking his victims. Binary oppositions in Halloween:

Day/Night

Good/Evil

Past/Present

Known/Unknown

Revealed/Hidden

 

‘A chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occurring in time and space’ This is where there is one major event which then leads on to more and continues until it is resolved, when a problem arises more of them can occur from the problem which leads into a chain reaction. This is very useful as it can help build a plotline which is follow able as we have some kind of idea what triggered the series of problems and how they link, from these problems you can see what will happen in the future and watch how they solve these problems to create new ones until the main problem is solved. An example of the cause-effect is in The Crazies when Scotty runs out of the barn because his mother got dragged out of the house; this then caused an officer to check to barn to see if anyone else is there. Another example is when the plane crashed, which meant that the virus was being spread through the water and which then lead to an epidemic. Something in the film that we know happened but we didn’t see is the plane crash and what happened to it apart from us seeing the wreckage, we also did not see bill drink from the water supply but we know he did due to him on the field looking infected and holding his shotgun up to shoot someone.