week 2

Question 1

Narrative: 4 elements

Answer 1

• A character
• An event
• Temporality
• Causality
  “The king died and then the queen” is an informative statement.
  “The king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot, a narrative, that focuses on causality.

Question 2

Exposition is less effective than narratives:

Answer 2

• Exposition: A comprehensive description and explanation.
• Narratives: Easier to comprehend, more engaging.
• Individuals pay more attention to and are more likely influenced by examples than by base-rate data.

Question 3

Narratives reduce reactance to persuasive content:

Answer 3

• Reactance: audiences react against being persuaded with facts through critical analysis or counter arguing.
• As long as the persuasive intent remains concealed, the default outcome of exposure to narrative messages is acceptance.
• Fictional narratives often contain truthful or realistic elements and users
  readily apply information from fictional stories to answer questions
  about reality.

Question 4

Why are narratives effective?

Answer 4

• Narrative transportation: the feeling of being lost in the world of a narrative, immersed in a story, leaving the real world behind.
• Leading to beliefs, attitude, and intention changes.
• A convincing Film paradigm: set up, (plot point) confrontation, (plot point #2) resolution.

Question 5

Storytelling structure (academic)

Answer 5

1. Setup (act1)
2. Complicating structure – difficulties are introduced (act2)
3. Development (act3)
4. Climax (act4)

Question 6

PSI – parasocial interaction

Answer 6

A kind of psychological awareness experienced by an audience member in their
mediated encounters with performers in mass media.

Question 7

PSR – parasocial relationship

Answer 7

A one-sided, interpersonal relationship in which the viewer knows and understands a
media persona or character.

Question 8

Experiencing characteristics:

Answer 8

• Identification – forgets own reality/becomes the character.
• Identifiable characters enhance narrative transportation because users
  vicariously experience characters’ beliefs and emotions, empathize with them,
  and become engrossed in the story.

Question 9

Hero & Villain Matrix

Answer 9

protagonist, ends up positive: hero
antagonist, ends up positive: Anti-villain

protagonist, ends up negative: anti-hero
antagonist, ends up negative: villain

Question 10

ADT (affective disposition theory):

Answer 10

entertainment users make moral judgments about character that affect their enjoyment of the narrative.

Question 11

Plot armor:

Answer 11

We hope for good things to happen to liked protagonists, and fear that bad things may happen to them. But if there is no fear that bad things actually happen, suspense dissipates, and enjoyment suffers.

Question 12

Ugly Antagonists

Answer 12

Physically attractive individuals are assigned more favorable qualities and personality
traits compared to an unattractive person.

Question 13

Protagonist becomes Hero:

Answer 13

• The ordeal or crisis is the crux of the movie, it shows the essence of the hero
  and her heroic power.
• The resurrection or apotheosis is the climax of the movie.
• Narratives where the protagonist experiences a fall followed by a rise, tend to have more worldwide cinematic success.

Question 14

Deuteragonist

Answer 14

The person second in importance to the protagonist in a drama.

Question 15

Narrative design:

Answer 15

• Chekhov’s gun: details within a story should contribute to the overall narrative
• Foreshadowing: provide a warning or indication of a future event

Question 16

MacGuffin:

Answer 16

an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.

Question 17

Episodical narrative vs Serial narrative

Answer 17

Episodical narrative:

• Typically ensemble cast
• Narrative closure per episode
• Familiar setting

Commercial Breaks

• Ellipsis
• Cliffhangers
• Fade in/out Serial narrative:

Serial narrative:

• Sequential narrative development
• No narrative closure per episode
• Accelerated exposition starts episode
• Cliffhangers
• Ongoing Narrative
• Multiple plots
• No definitive closure
• Minimal exposition

Question 18

Anti-heroes: Who are they?

Answer 18

Anti-heroes are protagonists whose conduct is at best morally ambiguous, questionable and at times unjustifiable.

Question 19

Moral disengagement cues

Answer 19

• Reasons/cues to rationalize our liking: e.g. He does it for his family!
• Anti-heroes also have villains: Someone who is even WORSE (morally) than our anti-hero.
  Which is another CUE to like the anti-hero.

Question 20

1. Which step ends Act I and signals the start of Act II? Which step ends Act II and signals the start of Act III?

Answer 20

This turning point is often referred to as the “Inciting Incident.”

Question 21

Shafer and Raney (2012) argue that Affective Disposition Theory is sometimes not sufficient to explain the enjoyment of antihero narratives. Why do they suggest this?
Highlight the relevant sections in the Intro/Theory sections of the paper.

Answer 21

• Affective disposition theory (ADT) states that entertainment users make moral
  judgements about characters in a narrative which in turn affect their enjoyment of the narrative .
• Moral judgement: concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior. Is the character virtuous, good, righteous, honorable, honest, just, or otherwise a decent (human) being.

Question 22

2. What is moral disengagement and how does it help explain enjoyment of anti-hero narratives?

Answer 22

• As a supplement to the ADT model, Shafer and Raney (2012) proposed that viewers apply moral disengagement.
• Viewers look for narrative cues that allow them to put aside moral scrutiny, or overlook moral failing. They actively seek out narrative elements that allow them to reduce the role of morality within their evaluation of anti-hero characters.

Question 23

Villians

Answer 23

The stronger the villian, the more courageus and heroic the hero.
* The mirror villain: a dark example of what the hero could be. The hero uses his abilities for good, whereas the mirror villain uses those same abilities for evil.
* Pure villains: often not human, no sympathetic characteristic traits, no positive motives of backstories.

Question 24

Leitmotiv

Answer 24

can recognize hero or villian
A recurring element (often music) that is associated with a person or idea.

Question 25

Emotional response:

Answer 25

• Parasocial relationship
• Empathy
• Liking
• Similarity
• Identification

Question 26

Logline:

Answer 26

One or two sentences that describe the narrative of a movie. Ideally, it
contains the subject, a goal, a setting and a conflict.

For jurasstic Park: “during a preview tour, a group of survivors struggle to escape from a dinosaur wildlife park after a power outage sets its clone predators free.”

Question 27

Naratology

Answer 27

is the study of stories and story structures and how they affect our perception, cognition and emotion.

Question 28

Narrative Mechanisms

Answer 28

• Red herring is a clue to the plot which is intentionally or unintentionally misleading.
• MacGuffin is a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist is willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to pursue, often with little or no narrative explanation as to why it is considered so desirable.
• Deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem
  is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected
  intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. “god made it happen”

Question 29

Why we watch (broadcast) TV

Answer 29

• Social surrogacy
  For some viewers, television programs provide them with the experience of belongingness.
• Social grease
  Points to a pleasure in talking about a shared television experience with others (e.g.,
  colleagues, friends) the day after.
• Perception of indeterminacy
  Live unscripted television experiences unfold in ways that are not decided beforehand. This makes them more exciting than equivalent determinate experiences (such as watching recorded broadcasts of those events)

Question 30

What we Watch

Answer 30

Selective exposure is a theory refers to individuals’ tendency to favor information
which reinforces their pre-existing views while avoiding contradictory information.

Question 31

Series VS Serials

Answer 31

Ongoing narratives, which leads to lack of definitive closure and minimal exposition.

Series traditionally have stories that conclude in each individual episode.

Whereas in a serial the story develops sequantially and does not come to a conclusion during an episode.

Question 32

Exposition

Answer 32

refers to the background information the audience needs to know for the world of your story to make sense.

Question 33

Structured around Commercial Breaks

Answer 33

• Instead of increasingly intensified action, an episode of a television series applies
  segments with miniature climaxes interspersed with commercial breaks.
• These segments are marked by fade-outs, and fade-ins with musical cues and a shot
  of a familiar locale as lead-ins to the resumption of the narrative.
• A Cliffhanger features a main character in a precarious situation, or confronted with a
  shocking revelation or difficult dilemma before a commercial break.
• An Ellipsis is a narrative device of omitting a portion of the sequence of events. TV
  series use ellipses to accommodate for commercial interruptions within the overall
  structure to remove unimportant or routine events from the narrative.

Question 34

Protagonists and Storylines

Answer 34

• Most series feature an ensemble cast, consisting of five or more regulars, all of
  whom are granted a considerable amount of attention within an the series.
  The main function of having multiple protagonists is to permit a variety of plots
  within the same environment
• The use of multiple storylines requires the show to shift the viewer’s attention
  between characters after nearly each scene. By moving quickly between plots,
  the narrative gives the impression of considerable density.
• Redundancy is a distinctive feature of episode narratives with multiple storylines.
  After a break, storylines are often re-established by having the characters restate
  their problems or goals.

Question 35

Successful Series

Answer 35

• Spin-off is a tv-series derived from already existing series that focuses on
  similar details, characters or the same fictional universe as the original work.
• Crossover is an event where characters from one series appear in another,
  adding to the complexity of the universe created in these series by weaving
  their characters and their worlds into a coherent fictional universe.

Question 36

Cultivation Theory

Answer 36

High television exposure cultivates the acceptance of values that are present in the reality
portrayed in the media. Because TV contains so much violence, people who spend a lot
of time watching television develop an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world.