Narrative theory, Halloween and The Crazies

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

‘Classical Hollywood Narrative’(CHN) is based on a narrative structure based on Todorovs ideas, where an equilibrium is set up to start , it is then disrupted causing disequilibrium and then resolved into a new equilibrium by the end of the tale. Personally, looking at the 'CHN' isnt that good for understanding media texts, only because the structure doesn't fit all films. For example, the film Halloween (1978) hasent got this narrative structure for a few reasons. The start goes straight into a disruption in to disequilibrium so has no equilibrium, also at the end there is no equilibrium as nothing is settles and no 'happy ending' Overall as a horror film there was no settles equilibrium as most of the film had the audience on their toes as it ends on a cliff hanger.

Propp is a Russian critic who examined who examined 100s of folk tales and identified 8 character roles and 31 narrative structures to see if they shared any structures. The 8 character roles he identified included; The villian, The hero, The donor, The helper, The princess, Her father, The dispatcher and the false hero. These character types are very stereotypical with most of them featured in film (at least a villian and a hero). However all films are different and some may no have some of these character types and some may have mixed character types ( the princess may also be the helper). Halloween is evident to have these character types but no overall in conventional roles. For example the hero is a girl (Laurie) which isnt normally conventional (usually a boy), There is a obvious villain (Michael Myers). The other characters arnt that obvious to what character types they are but there are features that they have which the character types may also have. For example the doctor at the end help Laurie therefore may be called the helper of the film. All the other character types arnt as obvious in the film.

'Binary opposition' is a term that Claude Levi-Strauss looked at as a narrative structure. This contains sets of contrasting themes which reveal the structure of media texts. For example,  good being the opposite of evil. This is more of a overall arrangement of theme rather than the order of event arrangement in the film. Binary opposition is useful in a way that it separates two opposite value themes and therefore helps to gather the structure of the movie and gives a overall sense of comparison and understanding to the audience. Having two opposites also makes the other seem stronger. In Halloween there are a few examples of binary opposition-
Good/Evil Laurie the hero and good girl, Michael Myers the evil murderer.
Day/Night Having a mixture between day and night gives a contrast in times of day, making night time being more of a scary time.
Safety/Danger There are mixed moments in the film where the audience may seem more comfortable inn watching such as day time moments with Annie and Laurie in the car in day this is a strang contrast between the scary night time 'killing' scenes of the film.
Known/Unknown  There are different parts of the film where there are moments which the audience are unknown what is exactly happening. A good example is the very first scene, Where you can see the killers point of view and you are unknown who it is. This makes the audience even more on edge.
Virginal/ Promiscuity There is a clear difference between Laurie being innocent, and Judith and Annie being examples of characters who are promiscuous. The sexualised characters seem to be looked down upon from Michael Myers as he kills them.


Bordwell and Thompson theory defined narrative as 'a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occurring in time and space' This is made up of interesting ideas they have made to sum up narrative.
To them narrative starts with a situation, a series of changes occur conforming to pattern of cause and effect; lastly a new situation emerges bringing it to the end of the narrative. Most of this is to do with how people strive to associate the events to make sense of whats happening such as looking at a image of a house then a room and automatically connecting them together thinking the room is in that house. This is useful when looking at media texts as it helps us understand how narrative is to do with situations causing other events to happen and how humans make assumptions that producers think about carefully when planning narrative for a film.
Examples of causes in the film that make another event happen is again the idea of how the sister had sex is to why the brother killed her. And later examples of this carry on with how he wants to kill the promiscuous characters first. There is also an example of a phallic symbol (Jabbing of knife) which enhances the thought of the idea of killing being linked to sex.
Another example is when Laurie thinks she kills the 'boogeyman' (Mike Myers) ,this makes the audience feel even more scared especially when you can see him get back up from behind her and she is oblivious to him coming towards her from behind. This therefore causes another situation to happen.

There are situations in the film that the viewer doesn't actually see happen but we know it did. For example how Michael had gone to a hospital. We know he had done though through other characters.
Another example is where he had escaped from the hospital and we knew he had escaped as he was seen in a car from the court/ sheriff. We automatically assume he has escaped from a institute as we bring the connections together.