Sunday, 19 January 2014

Todorov's Theory




Todorov in 1969 produced a theory which he believed to be able to be applied to any film. He believed that all films followed the same narrative pattern. They all went through stages called the equilibrium, disequilibrium, acknowledgement, solving and again equilibrium.

 Conventional narratives are structured in five stages:

    "The narrative structure of the text can be understood by considering Tovorov's theory.
    The extract begins with the protagonist waking up at home in bed with his wife to the sound of his son playing in the other room -  the mise-en-scene of natural lighting and diagetic sound creates a sense of equilibrium. A disruption is soon introduced in the form of a huge CGI spaceship (another convention of the action genre) arriving and hovering over the city. After the dramatic climax of the film a new equilibrium is established as we see the protagonist reunited with his family successfully defeated aliens."

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