Narrative Theory

Narrative theory is how the story line of a media is represented to an audience.

Vladimir Propp suggested that each character in a film can be clarified and what they are meant to represent:

The Hero
The Villain
The Donor
The Dispatcher
The False Hero
The Helper
The Princess
The Father

Propp also stated these situations that may occur throughout a story line

1.        The villain — struggles against the hero.

2.        The donor — prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.

3.        The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the quest.

4.        The princess and her father — gives the task to the hero,identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.

5.        The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.

6.        The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.

7.        [False hero] — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

Tzvetan Todorov theorised that the world where the story is set starts off in equilibrium and the protagonists are generally happy or normality. The normality can be then changed by antagonists into a new disequilibrium where everything is turned on it's head, but can be changed again into  a new equilibrium where everything is good again.

Roland Barthes stated that narrative theory works with 5 codes:

Action
Enigma- teasing/puzzling the audience, wanting the audience to guess
Symbolic- connotation
Semic- Denotation
Cultural - Audience can recognize cultures and time settings 

And finally Claude Levi-Strauss examined how binary oppositions are shown, such as black and white and rich and poor and how they are represented.