Narrative Theory in relation to Halloween (John Carpenter,1978) and The Crazies (Breck Eisner,2010)

Narrative Theory in relation to Halloween (John Carpenter,1978) and The Crazies (Breck Eisner,2010)

Classic Hollywood narrative is the typical conventions of narrative in the Hollywood film industry, the person who discovered this theory is Tzvtan Todorov. He believes that a story starts with an equilibrium (Peace) that equilibrium is then disrupted by some force or action and there is an attempt to fix the equilibrium and restore peace, then a new equilibrium or the old equilibrium is restored. For example Red Riding Hood the child is walking to her grandmas (Equilibrium) ,she is then stopped by the wolf who eats her grandma (Disruption), Red Riding Hood then discovers that the wolf ate her grandma gets the wood cutter who kills the wolf and saves Red Riding Hood and her grandma and restores the peace (Restored Equilibrium) Personally I feel this theory can still be used with most films but it is often subverted and broken and new narratives are made than the typical, the theory helps split the films into sections to look into more depth. Halloween does follow the typical conventions except at the end I feel there is no equilibrium made or there is but it’s a broken equilibrium with Mike Myers still alive but peace restored.

Propp’s character types includes

The Villain The antagonist or "Baddie"

The Hero (Or Heroine) The protagonist, victor or "The Goodie"

The Donor Who provides an object with some magic property

The Helper Who aids the Hero

The Princess (The sought for person) "Reward" for the hero and object of the villains schemes.

Her Farther Who aids the hero

The Dispatcher who sends the hero on their way.

The False Hero The double agent who hinders the hero rather than helping him.

Propp discovered on his list on character types by looking at hundreds of folk tales to see if they shared any structures and characters. He wrote a book "Morphology of the folk tale" in 1928 showing his findings.When he did this he found 8 character roles (As listed above) and 31 narrative functions.
I find that when looking at media texts using propp's character types can be very useful because it helps us as an audience separate characters so that we can understand them better but I also feel that in modern media texts character types tend to be less conventional and have different features,but on a basic level propp's character types are very useful,for example if you wanted to use propp's character types on a modern film it could still be done. for this example ill use Pirates Of The Caribbean.

The Villian is Barbosa because that is who Jack is up against
The Hero is Jack Sparrow because he is the protagonist and the narrative agent
The Donor is Comodore Norington because Jack steals his ship
The Helper is Will Turner because he helps Jack and acompanies him
The Princess/Reward is the Black Pearl because thats Jacks reward
The Farther is Barbosa who supplys the Black Pearl
The Dispatcher is Jack himself
The False Hero is either Will or Jack

This same Theory can be applied to Halloween

The Villian is Mike Myers because he wants to kill people
The Hero/Heroine is Laurie because is the protagonist
The Donor is the Dr because he "kills" Mike at the end
He is also the helper but so could the boy Laurie is Looking after because he sees Mike
The Princess isn't in Halloween there is no reward except living
The Farther is also not in Halloween
The Dispatcher is the Dr who lets Mike Myers escape
The False Hero is not present
so as you can see not all character types are present in the film Halloween



Binary Opposition are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts,an example would be good and evil; we understand the concept of good as being the opposite of evil,. The theory is not about narrative but more about deeper ideas and themes,for example if you look at science fiction films we can identify a series of binary opposites which are created in the narrative.

Earth/Space
Good/Evil
Humans/Aliens
Past/Present
Normal/Strange
Known/Unknown

Claude Levi-Strauss was the theorist who looked at this and wrote about it as mentioned above he was interested in the themes and ideas made by the narrative then the narrative itself.
Strauss's theory can be very effective when used on media texts,media texts always have binary opposites that compliment each other and it helps us categorise and understand certain genres for example Sci-fi as shown above.This Theory could also be applied to Halloween.

Good/Evil
Pure/Impure
Lust/Chastity
Sex/Celibate
Life/Death



Bordwell and Thompson described in Film Art: An Introduction that narrative is "A chain of events in a cause-effect relationship". This quote means that for Bordwell and Thompson a narrative begins with one situation,a series of changed occur according to a pattern of course and effect;finally a new situation arises that brings the end of the narrative,for them narrative shapes materials in terms of space and time - it defines where things take place,when they take place,how quickly they take place. Narrative,thus uses technical techniques to manipulate our awareness of time and place; e.g. flashbacks,replays of action,slow motion,speeding up,jumping between space and time. Editing shows us this.
This is a effective theory and can be applied to most films,most of the time when two scenes or two shots come after each other we assume they are in the same time unless shown otherwise this theory basically shows us that,as well as how flash forwards and flash backs shape the narrative for example in Inception there are allot of flash backs and flash forwards that change the narrative.
Halloween does this in these ways.

The scene where she calls up the house and Mike Answers we assume happen at the same time due to how they are edited next to each other.
The scene when the boy Laurie is looking after spots "The Boogy Man" outside a house,meanwhile we cut to Myers looking at the house.

Bordwell and Thompson also said that the narrative doesn't generally start when the media text begins,for example in Halloween;

Mike Myers lived inside a mental asylum for years but we don't see that but it still happened
They also buried Mike Myers sister who he murdered but we did not see that but it still happened.