Binary Opposites: – We simplify the world around us using a age old bias towards binary thinking.
Character opposites: Audiences expect the hero to battle the villain, Narrative Oppositions: Media stories are organised to construct moments of opposition.
Levi-Strauss talks about binary opposition theory, whereby its where there are two people who are very opposite to each other (eg. strong female vampire and the opposition would be a weak male human) creating conflict. This creates an ideology within a piece of media, audiences are encouraged to make a judgment about characters, groups, places etc.
This theory suggests that NARRATIVES (=myths) are STRUCTURED around BINARY OPPOSITIONS eg: good v evil; human v alien; young v old etc etc. As such, it encourages students to understand narrative as a structure of key (oppositional) themes that underpin action and dialogue to develop a set of messages that the audience are able to decode and understand. The use of BINARY OPPOSITIONS also creates an idea of conflict between the two sides for the audience to support who they want.
It therefore creates a dominant message (ideology) of a film, TV programme, advert, music video, animation etc. So in this way audiences are encouraged to make a judgements about characters, groups, places, history, society etc. In this way, texts can be seen to either support the dominant ideologies of a society, which would make it a reactionary text ,or to challenge, question or undermines the dominant ideologies of society, in which case it could be seen as a radical text.
racial otherness – Gilroy argues that the immigrant black community from the outset – constructing them as a racial ‘other’ in the predominantly white world of 1950’s Britain.
post – colonial melancholia – The publics association of these post war immigrants with substandard living conditions produced racial representation.
the story of UK race relations post W.W. 2 – Media stories regarding the black community , Gilroy suggests, intensified fears that immigrant communities might swamp white Britain.
Legacy of the Empire – He suggests that the empire, as such, represents more than the loss of sovereign power. Also a strain on the collective British identity. Empire immigrants and thier descendants, is argued to be visible representation of British power as it once was.
The Search for Albion – Albion England is nothing more than a distracting fantasy that disguises the reality of what Britain is really like – crippled by regional poverty and an ever-widening economic social divide.
