Media language

Question 1

Semiotics - Roland Barthes

Answer 1

• Media products communicate a complex series of meanings to their audiences through a range of visual codes and technical codes – these codes can broadly be divided in to proairetic, symbolic, hermeneutic, referential, and so on
• After many years of codes being repeated, their meaning can become generally agreed upon by society – for example, a scar on the face of a character can function as a hermeneutic code, indicating to the audience that they are ‘the villain’

Question 2

Narratology - Tzvetan Todorov

Answer 2

• Todorov’s theory of narrative equilibrium is based around a three act structure. Firstly, a state of balance or equilibrium is established
• This balance is disrupted or broken in some way, which leads to a liminal period or period of disruption
• This second stage typically takes up the majority of a narrative
• Finally, a typical narrative will conclude with a partial restoration of the equilibrium or new equilibrium, which will see the world of the narrative return to some sense of normality
• Therefore, Todorov suggests that narratives move from one state of equilibrium to another, with the majority of a narrative focusing on conflict or imbalance
This structure can be summed up as:
• Equilibrium
• Disequilibrium
• Partial restoration of the equilibrium
• All narratives share a basic structure that involves a movement from one state of equilibrium to another
• The idea that these two states of equilibrium are separated by a period of imbalance or disequilibrium
• The way in which narratives are resolved can have particular ideological significance

Question 3

Genre theory - Steve Neale

Answer 3

Producers rely on audience’s desire to see both repetition and difference of genre conventions:
• Seeking out the familiar, while also seeking something vaguely new and different
• Over time, genres change (generic fluidity), combine with one another (generic hybridity) and form entirely new genres and subgenres
• Genres are useful for producers from an industrial perspective, as they allow for the precise and specific targeting of certain specific audiences

Question 4

Structuralism - Claude Lévi-Strauss

Answer 4

• All media products have an underlying structure, and knowledge of this structure helps us to analyse them
• One of the fundamental ways that we make sense of not only media products but our lives in general is through the idea of binary oppositions, or two diametrically opposed concepts that end up defining each other (good luck trying to explain to someone the concept of day without using the concept of night!)
• Binary oppositions and the way they are used by producers in narratives demonstrate their ideological significance

Question 5

Postmodernism - Jean Baudrillard

Answer 5

• In postmodern culture the boundaries between the ‘real’ world and the world of the media have collapsed and that it is no longer possible to distinguish between what is reality and what is simulation
• In fact, it really doesn’t matter which is which!
• Therefore, in this postmodern age of simulacra, audiences are constantly bombarded with images which no longer refer to anything ‘real’
• Because of this, we are now in a situation that media images have come to seem more ‘real’ than the reality they supposedly represent – this concept is referred to as ‘hyperreality’