Roland Barthes was a semiologist, meaning he studied texts for a living. He believed that when a story is being told it has either an Open Narrative or a Closed Narrative.
An open Narrative is when a story can be taken anywhere and can leave the audience wanting to watch more, a good example is a TV drama or soap which play on different stories to attract viewers, many stories can also happen at once.
A Closed Narrative is when there is only one string to pull on, there can be only one obvious outcome to a story, usually seem in children's TV programmes, usually teaching children a moral which are always summed up at the end of an episode. Children would not be interested in a series of episodes which continues for a long time, this is why it is the perfect narrative for this genre of media.
Codes in Media
Action code - For example, if someone draws a gun during a film, you, as an audience, know somethings going to happen, a murder perhaps. The rule is that if A happens, B must follow.
Enigma Code - An element in a story that's not explained therefore exists as an enigma. An enigma makes the audience want to find out what happens next, it is usually an unanswered question.
Semantic code - An element that often suggests an additional meaning by way of connotation.
Cultural code - ALWAYS REFER to any narrative that refers to a science or body of knowledge.
Symbolic - Levi-Strauss' idea of binary opposites for example, good and evil, the thing in between is what matters e.g. War is Peace, theres no one without the other. It is often known as the 'grey-area' of two binary opposites, for example, if a rich businessman was stood smoking a cigarette next to a poor starving child, we, as an audience, would wonder why this has happened.
Matt. The symbolic is often the 'grey' area between binary opposites. You could think of a rich businessman stood smoking a cigar next to a poor starving child. We'd think how and why has this happened?
ReplyDeleteSimilarly if you think back to the Eisenstein montage with the bongs and bings played whilst religious iconography is displayed in the background we inferred a symbolic meaning that religion was bad.