Narrative Theory

The Classical Hollywood Narrative, or CHN is the traditional story in

modern Hollywood films. It starts with an equilibrium before a disruption
happens which the main characters have to fight to resolve, before a new
equilibrium at the end. This theory is based on the ideas of Tzvetan
Toderov, a Bulgarian linguist. It is useful to look at this when
understanding media texts as a large majority of texts follow it. Halloween
follows the CHN briefly as it starts with a scene prior to the first murder.
The Crazies does not follow the CHN as the opening scene shows the town
in disarray before going to a flashback.
Vladimir Propps character types are: The Hero, The Helper, The
Princess, Her Father, The Villain, The Dispatcher, The Donor and The False
Hero. I think that studying these is very useful as it allows you to connect
different films together and compare characters. Halloween features The
Villain character of Michael Myers, the hero character of Laurie Stroud and
The helper characters of Annie and Lynda. The Crazies features the hero
character of David, the helper/false-hero character of Russell, the
helper/princess character of Judy and the helper character of Becca.
A Binary Opposition is a pair of related ideas and concepts which
are, as the title suggests, opposite. Examples of this would be:
hero/villain, human/non-human, Young/Old and Masculine/Feminine.
Claude Levi-Strauss came up with this theory. It is useful to look at this
theory as it allows you to seek out these differences when watching films.
This means that you can analyse these differences between characters or
scenarios. Some examples of this in Halloween include Good/Evil,
Masculinity/Femininity and Dark/Light.
Bordwell and Thompson are known for their idea that narrative is a
chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occurring in time and
space. This means that events will happen, both on and off camera that
will affect the next events in the film and so on. This is useful as it is very
thought provoking as you do not normally even think about the events
that take place in a different time and space to the one you are viewing. In
Halloween, Bob going downstairs allows Michael to kill him. In The Crazies,
the main characters going to the nursery allows them to be attacked. In
Halloween, we know that Michael was put into a mental hospital but we
never see it happening. In The Crazies, we know that Russell escapes from
the quarantined area but we dont see it.