Structuralism

LEVI STRAUSS – Concept 1: Binary oppositions

Myths and stories throughout history universally explore human experience using polarised themes, e.g. Birth vs Death or Success vs Failure. Strauss believes that oppositional forces are used to organise stories prompted by our innate bias towards organising the world using binary thinking and that we read the world with oppositional descriptors. He also believes that we do not do ambiguity and in doing so we use our binary thinking and binary labels. For example, we label ourselves as female or male, masculine or feminine – despite multiplicity of gender choice at play.

• Character oppositions: Heroes vs Villans, Young vs Old, Strength vs Intelligence and Masculine vs Feminine
• Narrative oppositions: Print and television advertising transforms failure into success
• Stylistic oppositions: Encode products using juxtaposed stylistic presentations. Camera changes from a calm scene to a crazy scene can also reinforce character oppositions
• Genre oppositions: So commonly used they become the convention/expectation for the genre, e.g Science fiction: technology vs humanity

Media makers deploy binary oppositions to create a range of audience orientated effects. These are for the following reasons:

• Clearly explaining ideas – simplify viewpoints
• To create compelling narratives – creates conflict which makes it more engaging
• To create identifiable character types – audience gain a sense of direction
• To create audience identification – audience will choose which character or viewpoint they identify with. They see themselves represented

Concept 2: Binary oppositions and ideological significance

By utilising binary oppositions, it can generate culturally specific cues that define acceptable and unacceptable social norms. Media provides audiences with a set of privileged behaviours or ideals that they are encouraged to copy or adopt. Cultural products, such as, art, literature and the media, offer solutions to the narratives conflict. For example, heroes saving the world – this promotes an explicit set of values and ideologies.

News- stories are crafted in ways that reinforce cultural or editorial biases to their relationships. Meaning they create conflict by articulating oppositions and sell more editions. They also construct resolutions to forward editorial viewpoints and reinforce cultural norms, conforming to the hegemony.