roland barthes narratives

{Roland Barthes

Concluded that a text has many meanings, or is like ‘a galaxy of signifiers’ which can be interpreted in many ways.The simile he used suggests that a text is like a ball of threads, waiting to be unravelled. You can either pull on one obvious thread or several hence , a text can have many narrative threads/ strands.

Bathes found out a variety of narrative codes, the most used being action and enigma codes.

The action codes helps the audience to interpret and identify what’s about to happen.

But in terms of CSI: Miami – Horato putting on his glasses signifies to the audience that the opening titles are about to begin (action code).

Horatio’s opening line to each episode is serious in the context of each episode, but can also be seen as unintentionally humorous without context and not understanding the narrative structure of the CSI franchise.

The Action Code

The enigma is created by the whole ‘who died and how was he/ she murdered and by whom?’ This is the driving force of the narrative and is what creates tension and satisfies audiences demands.

Combined with action codes, driving the plot forward, audiences know by convention that by the end of the 1 hour episode, Horatio will have this man..

Other Barthes narrative codes: Symbols and signs – identifiers and clues that help the

audience piece together and understand the story. Cultural reference – As UK Media Students, CSI is very

different from an episode of the Bill, but programmes like ‘Walking The Dead’ have similar narratives and stock characters.

The Enigma code

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXWAEX2jlg

This film in the hyperlink above is a great example of how enigmas are used within a film.

Throughout the film there is various amount of clips and shots that picks out information which makes the audience ask more questions throughout the film making them want to watch it more so they find out more information.

Enigma codes in film opening