A narrative is either a spoken or written account of connecting events - meaning a story. Barthes narrowed down any action in texts into five categories which he called 'codes' of any narrative.
Hermenutic or Enigma Codes
The function of this code is to make the reader question the narrative or to delay an answer to a question the same way a cliff-hanger would. Specifically, enigma codes set puzzles in the story as well as solve them.
The idea behind this code is that the delay between the audience asking the question and the film revealing the answer will drive the audience to continue watching.
In the picture above, the enigma code is being used by setting us a puzzle, its showing us that a fire has been set and two men are running from it with one appearing to carry a can that could possibly be flammable. It makes the audience ask the questions 'did these two men start the fire?' 'why and how was the fire started?' and 'have these men just escaped from this fire?'
The purpose of this code is to keep the audience guessing, it is the way the story avoids revealing all truth straight away - or maybe even at all.
Semantic Codes
This is the way in which setting, characters and objects take on and portray different meanings. Its the way how an image is presented to us that will make us believe its a certain thing; place, creature, genre, etc.
- The darkness in the picture suggesting the film will be dark, this is one of the generic conventions of a horror film as it sets an intense atmosphere as even in real life, anything will appear to be scarier in the dark.
- The eye with no pupil, this shows abnormality and immediately shows us that this person may have no real sight of life and could be possessed.
- The blood and shards of glass appearing to come out of the girls face, this tells us the film has a gory element where people will be hurt - something that usually occurs in a horror film.
- The girl screaming also shows that she is unhappy and scared, this can be used to mirror how the audience may feel as they watch; tense and possibly frightened.
These signify 'binary oppositions'. These are themes, settings, characters, emotions or any object or thing that are opposites for example a boy/girl or happy/sad.
In the example above symbolic codes are used to show good vs evil, both sides are playing chess which signifies a game or competition, one hand is light and has the sun light surrounding it with the players had appearing elegant and gentle and the other is dark has dark clouds/a storm surrounding it with a hand that look aggressive and violent as if it is going to attack the other. These are the opposites I mentioned above, it is an effect used to emphasise the difference between things - in this case, people or teams.
Action codes
These are signs to us that something is about to happen, for example a man putting on his seatbelt - we would know he was about to drive, or a student putting up their hand in class, we would know they were about to ask a question. In films, this is often used to build tension, for example a man loading his gun (the image below) would tell viewers that he was aiming to either defend himself, or kill someone.
Cultural codes
This code refers to anything that is founded on some kind of real information or law that cannot be challenged and is often use as a base for finding truth. This usually involves science and religion as the majority of people would class either one of these as the 'truth'. In fantasy stories magical truths may be involved such as 'after midnight magic wears off' such as in Cinderella, in the image below you will see the big tower clock in this film that signifies that Cinderella has to run off, or else the prince will see who she really is. There is a branch off the Cultural Code called 'The Gnomic Code'. This typically refers to sayings, cliché's and any other common meaningful word sets. It basically looks at wider cultural knowledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment