Roland BarthesNarrative Codes

Roland Barthes was a semiologist; basically he was paid to look at ‘texts’ and decipher how they were put together.

If you imagine a text is like a ball of string, can it be unravelled in one way or in many ways?

Narratives like a ball of string

Open or closed?

• All you need to know, again, very basically, is that texts may be 'open' (i.e. unravelled in a lot of different ways) or 'closed' (there is only one obvious thread to pull on).

• Barthes also decided that the threads that you pull on to try and unravel meaning are called narrative codes and that they could be categorised in the following five ways:

The 5 codes

• Action code - applies to any action that implies a further narrative action. For example, a gunslinger draws his gun on an adversary and we wonder what the resolution of this action will be.

The 5 codes

• Enigma code - refers to any element in a story that is not explained and, therefore, exists as an enigma for the audience, raising questions that demand explication.

The 5 codes

• The semantic code - any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning by way of connotation.

The 5 codes

• The cultural code - any element in a narrative that refers "to a science or a body of knowledge". In other words, the cultural codes tend to point to our shared knowledge about the way the world works.

The 5 codes

• The symbolic – annoyingly difficult to explain. You will only understand it if first we look at binary opposites.

Binary opposites

• Levi Straus believed that the world was split into a series of ‘binary opposites.’ Essentially one thing can only be defined in relation to something it isn’t. e.g. a hero is only a hero if there is a cowardly option.

Ideology

• An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things, a belief which helps explain the world around us.

Now watch this

• Try and work out what the ideology behind this film is.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNnX6XRQBec

Making notesDuring this screening you need to make notes on the following headings

Narrative (open/closed)Action codeEnigma codeSemanticCulturalSymbolic

Binary opposites

Audience

Now answer this questionNow answer this question

How are Mac and PC represented in the advertisement?

Explain your answer referring to Roland Barthes narrative theory and Levi Straus’ binary opposites. Try to also identify the ideology behind the advert.

Denotation/Connotation exercise

Below are a list of words. Change them for one with the same meaning but more ‘connotations’

E.g. Nanny – Au pai