Structuralism - Levi-Strauss

 

Levi-Strauss painstakingly analysed the structure and narrative content of hundreds of mythic tales he collected from around the globe. From the tribal stories of the Amazonian rainforest to the ancient myths of Greece he sought to uncover the invisible rule book of storytelling in order to diagnose the essential nature of human experience; he believed that any common themes or motifs located in those myths would reveal essential truths about the way the human mind structures the world.

All stories, Levi-Strauss ultimately concluded, work through oppositional arrangements - through the construction of characters or narrative incidents that clash or jar. Moreover, stories and storytelling, in Levi Strauss's view, perform a vital societal function: oppositional presentations are resolved to outline societal taboos and socially acceptable behaviour. 

Concept 1: Binary oppositions

Levi-Strauss outlines the key academic ideas used to explore media products in his 1962 book, The Savage Mind, in which he suggests that a subliminal set of structural rules inform myth production. Individual cultures might speak different languages, he argues, but all stories told across the globe and throughout history employ a remarkably simple but stable formula. Myths, Levi Strauss infers, universally explore human experience using polarised themes: birth has to compete against death, success against failure, wisdom trades blows with innocence.

The Old Testament, for instance, suggests that the Earth was formed from a series of oppositional constructs - God separated light from darkness, the sky from the sea, the land from the water. In fairy tales, the innocence and youth of Little Red Riding Hood takes on the greed and cunning of the big bad wolf.

Levi-Strauss infers further that the universal use of these oppositional forces to organise stories is prompted by humankind's innate bias towards organising the world using binary thinking. Pre-modern man's need to distinguish poisonous from edible foodstuffs, Levi-strauss argues, embedded a cognitive blueprint that directs human beings to read the world using oppositional descriptors.

Humans do not do ambiguity, Levi-Strauss tells us. We simplify the world around us using an age-old bias towards binary thinking. Certainly, binary labels and binary thinking are evidenced aplenty in today's complex world. We continue to label ourselves as female or male, masculine or feminine, despite the multiplicity of gender choices at play in Western Society. 

Simarly, our political government is polarised as left or right wing, while human morality is packaged up in deeds that are categorised in good and evil.

Media based binary oppositions

Levi Strauss did not allude to the structure of contemporary media products directly, but if we buy into the idea that binary thinking is a universal feature of storytelling then it stands to reason that media narratives are organised using the same structural blueprints as those offered in myths.

Oppositions in media products might be inferred through the following

Character oppositions

Audiences expect villains to battle heroes. Oppositions, too, might also centre on secondary characters, with contrasts constructed in terms of youth or maturity, strength or intelligence, masculinity or femininity. Character oppositions can be found in real world products too: newspapers deploy stories in which criminals exploit victims, while documentaries depict innocent subjects who fall prey to anonymous corporations.

Narrative oppositions 

Media stories, too, are orgnasiede to construct moments of opposition. Print and television advertising, for instance, transforms failure into success through simplified binary presentations. TV narratives conventionally culminate in a grand narrative collision so that they might deliver a finale of story excitement for their audiences. 

Stylistic oppositions:

Media producers also encode products using juxtaposed stylistic presentations. Camera work might change from quiet stasis in one scene to a frenzied set of whip pans in another. Transitions of this kind can reinforce wider character-oriented oppositions or are deployed to create aesthetic interest. 

Genre driven binary oppositions

some binary oppositions are so deeply entrenched within genres that they become a convention or expectation of that genre. Sci-fi products regularly offer 'technology versus humanity' driven narratives; crime dramas routinely deploy 'law enforcer/law breaker' character stereotypes; romances resolve in romantic couplings.

The function of oppositions in media products

Media makers, moreover, deploy binary oppositions to create a range of audience-oriented effects. The potential functions of binary oppositions in contemporary storytelling are used for the following reasons:

To clearly explain ideas. binary oppositions can be used to simplify viewpoints or make complicated ideas understandable for viewers and readers. News stories, for instance, often explain complex topics by referencing interviewees with oppositional viewpoints to generate simplified overviews.

To create compelling narrative. the inclusion of binary oppositions inevitably creates conflict. Audiences are more likely to engage with a media product if they are presented with the promise of a narrative clash.

To create identifiable character types. Audiences can quickly gain a sense of the direction of a story once oppositional characters are introduced - we implicitly understand that the hero has to fight the villain or that the good guy will win over his girl. The use of clashing characters can also produce a range of other gratifications - comedy, fear and so on.

To create audience identification. Binary oppositions prompt audiences to identify with one central character or viewpoint. An advert, for instance, that contrasts humdrum reality with the sparkle of an advertised product clearly positions the audience to empathise with the brand promoted.

Concept 2: binary oppositions and ideological significance 

Myths, according to Levi-Strauss articulate a version of the world around us, generating, culturally specific cues that define acceptable or unacceptable social norms. Those cues Levi-Strauss infers are created as a result of the way that story oppositions resolve - in the way that select oppositions are disregarded in favour of their counterparts. Narratives, in this sense, provide audiences with a set of privileged behaviours or ideals that they are encouraged to copy or adopt

Levi-Strauss proposes, for instance, that a principle function of primitive myth was to describe incest taboo and the rules of marriage.

For example, Sophocles famous Oedipus myth illustrates the dangers of unnatural sexual relationships. The binary oppositions constructed in the story centre on the masculine energy of Oedipus and the femininity of Oedipus's mother. Famously, he blinds himself when he finds out he has accidentally married his own mother - his shame in transgressing natural incest taboos is so deeply felt that he can no longer bear to look upon the world. The resolution of the male/female oppositions presented convey a clear warning to the myth's readers and listeners - don't have sex with your own mother.

Likewise, cultural products - art, literature and the media - do not just present conflict in their narratives; they offer resolutions to those oppositions. In film James Bond always crushes the terrrorist plot. The Avengers inevitably destroy their seemingly undefeatable enemies, while the supernatural presence that terrorieses us in horror films is terminally exorcised in time for the end credits to roll. 

Narratives resolve oppositions, and that resolution process allows media products to play a significant role in promoting an explicit set of values and ideologies. James Bond's triumph over the forces of evil privileges a quintessential sense of Britishness. 007 not only fights bad guys, he reinstates democracy, moral decency and English tradition at the expense of totalitarianism, capitalist greed or religious fanaticism.

Oppositional resolutions in News Products

The news, too, resolves stories in a manner that privileges one set of oppositions. Newspapers teach us that criminal are caught, that corrupt politicians lose elections or that wayward celebrities have to endure rehab hell. The news does not just represent the chaos of the world, nor does it merely order the chaos into neat binaries - news stories are crafted in ways that reinforce cultural or editorial biases, and the resolutions that publications craft privilege those cultural biases to their readerships.

A news product reporting a terrorist attack, for instance, might outline the suffering and death inflicted by the incident, but those losses are often offset by coverage that emphasises the everyday acts of heroism that surround the incident. Police officers and fire crews step into the fray when bombers attack, innocent members of the public sacrifice themselves to save others and, when the terrorist dust has settled, the incdeient news cycle inevitably concludes with follow-ups that articulate the ongoing solidarity and defiance of the communities affected by the bombing.

Yes, the news articulates oppositions to create conflict and to sell more editions, yet, much like fictional media, news narratives construct resolutions to forward editorial viewpoints and to reinforce cultural norms.