Tztevan Todorov (Tripartite narrative structure):

A really good way to think about NARRATIVE STRUCTURE is to recognise that most stories can be easily broken down into a BEGINNING / MIDDLE / END.

• Equilibrium
• Disruption
• New equilibrium

Vladimir Propp is a good starting point for thinking about narrative structures, as his work (based around an analysis of fairy tales) suggests that stories use STOCK CHARACTERS to structure stories.

1. Hero
2. Helper
3. Princess
4. Villain
5. Victim
6. Dispatcher
7. Father
8. False Hero

binary opposites.

Roland Barthes: Proairetic and Hermenuetic Codes

• Proairetic code: action, movement, causation
• Hermenuetic code: reflection, dialogue, character or thematic development
• Enigma code: the way in which intrigue and ideas are raised – which encourage an audience to want more information.

Peripeteia – a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in reference to fictional narrative

Anagnoresis – the point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character’s true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances.

Catharsis – the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

Structure – Define Postmodernism -> Define key concepts & theorists -> Link the CSP to postmodernism and it’s concepts

Simulacrum & Hyperreality – Baudrillard

Individuals focus on, understand, can cope with and are knowledgeable about surface and style. As opposed to substance, content, meaning and truth.

Creates a world built around uncertainties and half truths, its a virtual world.

First define / explain postmodernism —> Then define the key concepts and who’s said them. —> After that mention the print product and how it relates to the key concepts[Futuristic, dystopia, individualism, escapism ] —> Lastly, express thoughts on postmodernism itself.

 Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality.

1. Pastiche – imitating previous work.
2. Parody – Imitating previous work in a joking and funny manner.
3. Bricolage – something constructed or created from a diverse range of things.
4. Intertextuality – the relationship between texts, especially literary ones.
5. Referential – containing or of the nature of references or allusions.
6. Surface and style over substance and content –
7. Metanarrative
8. Hyperreality – the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality.
9. Simulation (termed by Baudrillard as ‘Simulacrum’) 
10. Consumerist Society
11. Fragmentary Identities
12. Alienation
13. Implosion
14. cultural appropriation
15. Reflexivity – acknowledging your role in the research.

How valid are Baudrillard’s ideas of simulation and hyperreality to understanding the media?
You should refer to the Close Study Products Score and Maybelline to support your answer.
[20 marks]

Jean Baudrillard – Simulation, Hyperreality; Baudrillard observes that the contemporary world is a simulacrum, where reality has been replaced by false images, to such an extent that one cannot distinguish between the real and the unreal.

Essay Structure:

Define Postmodernism, define simulation and hyperreality, Take out examples from the example, then a concluding sentence saying what you think Postmodernism has come to.

definitions: Hyperreality – Being unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Postmodernism –

1. Deliberately playful, intertextual, reflexive
2. Fragmentation, disorder, displacement
3. A disconnection between cerebral and physical (ie mind and body Descartes – The Cartesian dilemma)
4. A lack of coherent time and place creates a world built around uncertainties and half-truths = a virtual world
5. A lack of knowledge and understanding
6. Lack of Metanarrative – the new postmodern world is structured and built upon complex and sometimes contradictory layers of organisations, instructions, ideas and individuals.
7. Individuals struggle to make sense and meaningful connections with this postmodern world.
8. No rational explanation, for cause and effect.
9. A loss of faith in scientific, empirical evidence.
10. Emphasis on repetition = Simulation – a series of simulated events, sequences and characters
11. Lack of overall Truth or coherent meaning
12. Memento represents a world of nobody’s living in nowheresville!
13. Individual and community alienation Individualistic / isolated narrative
14. Results in individuals becoming isolated and vulnerable
15. So individuals on focus on (understand, can cope with, are knowledgeable about) surface and style. As opposed to substance, content, cohesion, meaning, truth.
16. Individual personal pleasure and gain is the only significant motivating factor
17. Role of big organisations in dividing up society and individuals
18. pastiche (re-makes of familiar genre, Film Noir, Thriller or Who dunnit?) re-make
19. Fractured / split / multiple identity
20. hypperreality – it seems real, but unreal? exaggerated reality? an un-reality?

• Individual and community alienation Individualistic / isolated narrative
• Results in individuals becoming isolated and vulnerable
• So individuals on focus on (understand, can cope with, are knowledgeable about) surface and style. As opposed to substance, content, cohesion, meaning, truth.
• Individual personal pleasure and gain is the only significant motivating factor
• A disconnection between cerebral and physical (ie mind and body Descartes – The Cartesian dilemma)
• creates a world built around uncertainties and half-truths = a virtual world

STRUCTURE(9 marker)

first define/explain postmodernism

then define the key concepts and who said them

after that mention the print product and how it relates to the key concepts.(Futuristic, dystopia, individualism, escapism)

lastly, express thoughts on postmodernism itself.

Simulation-when reality is replaced with signs and representations.

hyperreality- where audiences cant tell the difference between simulation and reaslity

what is postmodernism?

what is the truth and knowledge behind it?

Structure – Define Postmodernism -> Define key concepts & theorists -> Link the CSP to postmodernism and it’s concepts

Simulacrum & Hyperreality – Baudrillard

Individuals focus on, understand, can cope with and are knowledgeable about surface and style. As opposed to substance, content, meaning and truth.

Creates a world built around uncertainties and half truths, its a virtual world.

First define / explain postmodernism —> Then define the key concepts and who’s said them. —> After that mention the print product and how it relates to the key concepts[Futuristic, dystopia, individualism, escapism ] —> Lastly, express thoughts on postmodernism itself.

Postmodern movies aim to subvert highly-regarded expectations, which can be in the form of blending genres or messing with the narrative nature of a film. For example, Pulp Fiction is a Postmodern film for the way it tells the story out of the ordinary, upending our expectations of film structure.

1. Pastiche =  a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist.
2. Parody =  an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.
3. Bricolage = the process of improvisation in a human endeavour
4. Intertextuality = can be a reference or parallel to another literary work, an extended discussion of a work, or the adoption of a style.
5. Referential= of, containing, or constituting a reference
6. Surface and style over substance and content= although someone looks immaculately dressed or styled, behind the façade, there is no substance or content.
7. Metanarrative=  concerns narratives of historical meaning, experience or knowledge and offers legitimation of such through the anticipated completion of some master idea
8. Hyperreality= the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality
9. Simulation (sometimes termed by Baudrillard as ‘Simulacrum’) 
10. Consumerist Society= a society in which people often buy new goods, especially goods that they do not need, and in which a high value is placed on owning many things.
11. Fragmentary Identities= multidisciplinary collaboration, involving visual communication, performative arts and fashion
12. Alienation= a withdrawing or separation of a person or a person’s affections from an object or position of former attachment
13. Implosion=  a situation in which something fails suddenly and completely, or the fact of this happening
14. Cultural appropriation= an inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
15. Reflexivity= the fact of someone being able to examine their own feelings, reactions, and motives
16. Deconstructive postmodernism = deconstructionism is a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text.

Postmodernism can therefore be understood (more than other creative movements) as deliberate, intended, self-conscious play (about play?), signs about signs, notes to notes? 

 It may even be ironic, joking, or literally, ‘just playing’. However, it is always a deliberate copy (of the old).

 clearly entails a recognition (a nod and a wink) to what it was and where it came from.

INDIVIDUALISM’

, it may be possible to identify the extent to which our economic experience is now characterised by what we buy (consumption) than what we make (production). 

there is an argument that postmodern culture is a consumer culture

 the extent to which the UK and much of Western Europe has shifted from manufacturing economies to consuming economies – ie we are structured around consuming things more than making things.

it is possible to link postmodernist cultural expression with broader shifts in society, specifically around economics and politics.

Postmodernism:

Postmodernism says that there is no real truth. It says that knowledge is always made or invented and not discovered. Because knowledge is made by people, a person cannot know something for sure – all ideas and facts are ‘believed’ instead of ‘known’.

• It’s an approach towards understanding, knowledge, life, being, art, technology, culture, sociology, philosophy, politics and history that is REFERENTIAL  (in that it often refers to / copies other things)
• RE-IMAGINING= To recreate or form a new conception of by recreation
• PASTICHE=A work of art, drama, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist.
• PARODY= A work or performance that imitates another work or performance with the use of irony and humour.
• COPY
• BRICOLAGE= construction of media with a diverse range of available things ‘involves the rearrangment and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’(Barker & Jane, 2016:237)

Narrative theory:

• Structure: beginning, middle, end- equillibrium -> disruption of equillibrium -> equilibrium restored. (freytags pyramid)
• Propp; characters and their roles, the theory that all characters are reimagined from a set of character templates ~(hero, villian, helper, princess, false hero, father)
• Turner makes clear that the roles aren’t specific to a singular character as one character can fit into more than one of these templates; and it is determined by their functions and SPHERES OF ACTION
• Chatman splits narrative and plot into two main structures; satalights and kernels, kernals being something absoluetly essential to the plot to make sense or for the audience to know. Satalights being something not essential to the plot that can be taken out- yet are important for subtle progression such as character development/ non-essential background context
• Barthes talks about the different type of codes through the narrative. Proairetic code: action, movement, causation Hermenuetic code: reflection, dialogue, character or thematic development Enigma code: the way in which intrigue and ideas are raised – which encourage an audience to want more information. We can relate chatmans Satalight ideaology to hermenuetic code as development.

Denouement – the final part of a play, film, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved

Exposition – it is the background information on the characters and setting explained at the beginning of the story

Tomb Raider:

The main character of tomb raider is a female who partakes in violence which is not a common theme throughout older generation games/films. Lara Croft is represented in exposed clothing to appeal to heterosexual men – Laura Mulvey ‘Male Gaze’

Metroid:

Metroid cover displays a dominant signifier of a ‘male’ looking character which is the gender opposite of Tomb Raider. As you progress throughout the game it is revealed that under the suit the character is a female.