Narrative

Narrative- defined as ‘a chain of events through a case/effect relationship through time’ by Board and Tompson, Film Art, 1980- is in its simplest form the ‘story’ media text follows.

                All media narratives follow the same basic steps:

Exploration

Development

Complication

Climax

Resolution

But in the case of our music video, cultural experiences are needed to fully appreciate the narrative. Our video uses satire comedy to comment on the election race between the main political parties: Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, at time when Britain is in a recession and there is public unrest- and someone who doesn’t fully understand the culture may not fully appreciate some of the humour.

                The narrative within our video itself depicts us dancing and ‘partying’ to the song. As the party gets wilder through a series of quick edits we take off our jackets and use more creative shot types such as an upwards-crane. Though what our video is really narrating is the election, the economic crisis in Britain and how the new collation government will deal with these problems through cuts that have led to protesting and riots- these are still ongoing and have influenced our video frequently and directly.

                Media theorist Vladamir Propp does not agree with the five basic steps of narrative and suggests all media texts follow the same universal plot consisting of:

A Hero: to lead the narrative

A Princess: a damsel in distress

A Villain: who causes a complication

A Donor: who helps the Hero

An Anti-Hero: who appears good but turns evil

In very broad terms our narrative may fit Propp’s theory of narrative. The economic crisis would be the villain, the princess in distress would be us as a society and the government would make up the remaining four roles of Hero, Villain, Doner and Anti-Hero; how they are cast would be personal analysis of the situation.

                As a student and due to the recent education cuts, I personally may cast David Cameron as the Villain and Nick Clegg as the Anti-Hero, to others they may be the Hero and Doner.

To conclude, the narrative of our video is experimental and reflects the ongoing real-world political events, thus does not follow the conventional narrative rule of:

Exploration

Development

Complication

Climax

Resolution