In what ways is the narrative important to the success of a music video? Refer to the narrative theory you have studied and examples of music video to show how stars sell their image through narrative.

Narrative helps to keep the audience interested in the story and its plot.  All narratives demonstrate structure, causality and agency.

Todorov, a Bulgarian academic, proposed 5 stages of narration in the narrative structure: Equilibrium, Disruption, Acknowledgement, Resolution and New Equilibrium.  The  new music video of ‘ Last Friday Night’ by Kate Perry would be a perfect example to illustrate Todorov’s narrative structure.

In the beginning, we have a wide panning shot of a newspaper boy giving out newspaper while cycling around the neighborhood on a nice day.  It is establishing or implying ‘normality’ of how everyday is. This is called equilibrium. Then we see a shot of the singer who just woke up in a state of shock when she finds out that her room was in a mess and this is the disruption as it introduces conflict and drama into a narrative.  Then we have a medium shot of a guy opening the door and telling her about how cool she was LAST NIGHT.  This is an acknowledgement as she found out that there was a party in her house last night. This then lead to resolution where she tries to figure out what really happened last night and it showed in the music video where the video was dissolved to indicate that it was her flashback. Lastly, we are cut back to the first shot of her in a messy bedroom and her parents are here. This is the new equilibrium as her parents did not have a problem with her about the party last night and she was able to sleep in peace again.  So the new equilibrium is that everything has returned to normal.

This video had applied Propp’s theory.  Propp uses morphology of the folk tale as he studied European and Russian folk tales and he identified 32 basic categories of action and they often have 8 broad character types or roles.  These character types or roles are villain, donor, helper, princess, father, dispatcher , hero,  and false hero.  In this video, the Katy Perry is the princess (the reward for the hero) although she is main character as she gets the most screen shots. This is to signify that the story was told from her point of view and this is also to promote as a star image as she is different from other videos where she was pretty and cute and  this is a contrast of her where she looked very geeky and has braces.  The hero is the nerd who served her drinks later at the end of the scene. He is the hero because he was fighting with the villain (the jock) who is good looking as he is only interested in Katy for her new transformation. We also have Rebecca Black as the helper who is like a fairy godmother as she transformed her from a unattractive geek into a preppy pretty girl.  We also have the father as her father.

Propp’s theory is useful as it helps understand the structure better.

Lastly, we have an enigma code when we see a shot of her waking up feeling shocked about her messy room. This is the enigma code as the video made us audience to draw attention to the storyline of the music video by making us to wonder about big questions like ‘ Why was her room in a mess?’ .  “What happened last night?”Etc. And the proairetic code would be the tiny details in the shot such as the mess in her room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyXNRrsk4A