Researching the narritive ways of Todorov and Propp

To begin with Todorov and Propp are both structuralists that examine the way narratives are structured, left out, ordered, or selected.

According to Todorov there are five stages that every mainstream film goes through – balance,  disruption of that balance, recognition of that disruption, attempts to fix it, and ultimately  balance again but in a different way (enhanced equilibrium).

Propp’s discusses the  eight key functions by which characters and their actions are categorized by:  firstly, we have the hero; secondly, we have the dispatcher who finds a quest for the hero and then sends him away on it;  the villain who is always in opposition or in the way of the hero; the false hero who pretends all the time to be the real deal; the donor who provides the  the hero with some object of  incredible power allowing the chosen one to harness its power and defeat the ominous villain; the helper who in terms is like a sidekick – always aiding the hero; the princess – the helpless damsel in distress who’s waiting for the hero to return and save her from the clutches of evil; and ultimately – the generous father who, at the end of the story, rewards the hero for his brave actions.

These are the concepts of  Todorov and Propp by which most media objects, especially mainstream movies, proceed. In this week’s individual task I am asked to present three media objects supporting the key concepts of  both structuralists. I have chosen a factual print based media newspaper story, a music video, and a Disney film.

For the print-based media objects I have decided to  get an actual news story that follows in a way Todorov’s main five stages. It is about a mine in New Zealand and how 29 people are  trapped under the debris. It might sound like it has nothing  in a relation to the five stages but it most certainly does.

Minesite at New Zealand

The first stage is the equilibrium, the moment before the explosion where everything is going as usual. The second stage, however, is the moment of explosion where the balance is disturbed. The moment of recognition is when the CCTV  captures the image and immediately reports it back to the supervisors. Having recognized the damage and making  attempts of rescuing the miners in where the forth stage begins. The final phase is where the miners are rescued and thus the balance is once again restored.

My second choice is a music video of Lady Gaga named Paparazzi. It covers a story about two rich people deeply in love until one of them betrays the other. It goes on about revenge and retaliation. Nevertheless, this media object  again follows Todorov’s five main stages of narrative structure. First we have the balance part where everything is serene and ordinary followed by the disruption,  made by the male lover when pushing its ‘love’ off the parapet. The moment of recognition is the moment when the paparazzi shot the incident and the moment when lady gaga falls to her death realizing she was betrayed.  She answers in an attempt of getting her revenge by killing her boyfriend. Ultimately, the equilibrium is  again created, even though it’s different from the one before.

I would like to say that a media object like a music video could rarely covered  Propp’s key functions. There are videos that doesn’t have a story line ( for example, a live performance) or are full of  random shots of the singer dancing and/or seducing and cannot possibly covered neither of the structuralists’ narrative ways. Also, I don’t think the audience would understand the message of randomly inserted pictures on the media object  but then again, the whole idea of the music video is the song and the singer.  However, there are such video like  California Girls – Katy Perry that meet some of Propp’s  fundamental  functions but still these videos as well as the objectives are too little.

Before I go on to my last media object I just want to point out that almost every movie that originated from Disney can be a prime example of the two narrative ways of  both Todorov and Propp. Also, any fairy tale based movie could best explain those eight key functions of Propp.

Anyway, I have chosen the movie Shrek 4D. The film is made by Disney corporations. This last part , however, doesn’t seem to cover all the key functions unlike  previous Shrek movies. Still, all of Todorov’s five main stages are present in this movie as well as  most of the key functions of Propp.

Nevertheless, the movie has its own plot –  a main hero, a princess, and a helper.  As always a villain would pop out of nowhere and would try to kidnap the princess. But eventually the villain would be defeated and the hero (and helper) would save the day.

The movie is short and straightforward but is definitely different from its precursors. Some of the key functions do not exist in this film such as the false hero or the donor, or the father. In addition, I  think they can be omitted as a whole unless the story develops more in depth and needs more support.

However, I don’t think any of  Todorov’s stages could be omitted because a media object needs a complete look and, in my opinion, it can  be only reached by going through all of  Todorov’s phases.