G325 Section 1a Theory

Narrative

• Levi-Strauss: binary oppositions
• Todorov – four act structure
• Roland Barthes – cultural, semantic, symbolic, hermeneutic, proairetic
• Goodwin – useful for analysing music videos – 6 key features
• Propp – 8 character roles
• Lyotard – post modern theory against meta narratives, pro micro narratives and fragmentation
• Joseph Campbell – monomyths and journeys

Genre

• John Fiske – genre as ‘convenience’ for producers and audiences
• Henry Jenkins – genre constantly ‘breaks rules’ e.g. evolving hybridization
• John Hartley – genre is interpreted culturally
• Daniel Chandler – genre is too restricting
• Steve Neale – genre as repetition and difference
• David Buckingham – genre in constant process of negotiation and change
• Jason Mittell – industry uses genre commercially
• Barry Keith Grant - on sub genres
• Rick Altman – genre offers audiences a ‘set of pleasures’

Audience

• Jeremy Tunstall – primary, secondary, tertiary audience engagement
• Blumler and Katz – uses and gratifications theory
• Katz and Lazarsfeld – two step flow theory
• Adorno – passive consumption, hypodermic model (frankfurt school)
• David Gauntlett – producer as consumer (prosumer)
• Stuart Hall – audience positioning and dominant, negotiated, oppositional readings
• Stanley Cohen – moral panics
• Martin Barker – challenging moral panics
• George Gerbner – cultivation theory

Representation

• Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory
• Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze
• Carol Clover – last girl theory (horror)
• Stuart Hall – dominant, oppositional and negotiated readings of representation
• Richard Dyer – stereotypes legitimize inequality
• Levi-Strauss – binary oppositions and subordinate groups (see dyer)
• David Buckingham – representation and fragmented identity
• David Gauntlett – “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one” (pluralism but within a hegemonic framework)
• Baudrillard – hyper realism
• Tajfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination and stereotyping (also useful for youth and collective identity)
• Andy Medhurst – stereotyping is shorthand for identification
• Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth
• Judith Butler – queer theory