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

Classic Hollywood Narrative is a term which is used to refer to the classic style of Hollywood movies that was established during the 1920’s. Many movies today go against this; however it is still accepted as the style of Hollywood movies today. We studied Bulgarian structuralist Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the Classic Hollywood Narrative. He suggested that the stories would begin with an equilibrium, this means that all opposing forces are equal, this would then be disrupted by an event (which would lead into a series of events) causing enigma, the problems would be solved and bring a new equilibrium at the end of the film. I think that looking at the Classic Hollywood Narrative is very useful when trying to understand media texts as its breaks them down into four simple stages. Halloween follows the classical Hollywood narrative because at the start of the film everything is as normal, then Mike Myers escapes and returns to the city (this is the break in the equilibrium), he then torments Lorrie throughout the film until she kills him at the end, resulting in a new equilibrium. It challenges the classic Hollywood narrative because usually a male would be the hero at the end of the film.

Russian critic Vladimir Propp examined hundreds of examples of folk tales to see whether they shared any structures, from this he identified eight character roles and thirty-one narrative functions. The eight character roles are:

• The Villain(s)
• The Hero
• The Donor
• The Helper
• The Princess
• The Father
• The False Hero

Looking at these character types is useful when looking at media texts because it can help us understand the genre, however I don’t not find it useful when trying to understand the narrative. In Halloween, almost every character type is present. Laurie is the hero, Michael Myers is the villain, Laurie's girl friends are the princesses', although instead of being a 'prize' for the hero, they are killed by the villain, so seemingly more a prize for him. The detective/doctor character who looked after Michael when he was younger could be seen as the helper. 

Binary oppositions are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts, for example good is the opposite of evil. We studied Claude Levi-Strauss for this theory, he was not so interested in looking at the order in which events happened, and instead he looked for deeper arrangements of themes. Although this is helpful when identifying a genre, I didn’t find looking at binary oppositions useful when trying to understand media texts because you can almost find opposites with everything you see. Five examples of binary opposition within the film are: good and evil, male and female, strong and weak, light and dark, positive and negative.

Bordwell and Thompson defined narrative, in their book ‘Film Art: An Introduction’, as “a chain of events in a cause and effect relationship, occurring in time and space”. Cause and effect means that one event causes a chain of events, some of these are shown in the film, and some we know happened but do not see, and these events take place in time. There are three distinctions of time within a film: the screen duration (the time the film takes to show), plot duration (the length of time the plot covers), and story duration (the length of time the story covers including all the inferred events we bring to it).

• ·         Two examples of events in the film that caused anouther event to happen could include Mike Myers murdering his sister, this happens at the start of the film and sets up the plot line for the rest of the film. Anouther example could be when Laurie puts the key under the doormat of Mike Myers house, this is when Mike Myers decides that she will be her next target.
• ·         Two examples of events in the film that we know happened but we don’t see could be the theft of Judith Myers’ gravestone, or the coundelling of Mike Myers whilst the detective/doctor was looking after him.