Week 3 - Structuralism

In this lecture we started off the discussion with the question of what exactly Structuralism was. Yet being hard to define we all agreed that it distinctly resembles a chessboard. There are two sides, all with positions, hierarchies and meanings within the board, each piece has a certain role or function and consequences arise when certain movements are made. Therefore through the interplay of relationships within the board, by different configurations, for example from different movements on the board, the meaning is made possible: structuralism is the grammar that makes meaning possible.
Saussure’s theory of how the signifier+signified= sign, helped us understand structuralism by realising how elements of language or objects can be read. Structuralism can be viewed as a text, visual imagery can be viewed through stereotypes and then work in binary opposites (touching on Levi Strauss theory), like the chess board these meanings can only be produced and work within such structures.
The use of narrative within a text is a structure itself, and the most common of these help us read it. Propp’s Narrative theory gives us a clear indication even today of certain heros, villains, princesses yet in contemporary films they may be harder to find. Disney films are a clear distinction of this which may have seemed a bad influence on children at the time, a naïve representation on a structured society (fantasy or not), expecting women to be vulnerable and having a knight in shining armour to rescue them, when in reality, it is a myth, men on white horses don’t seem to be around the corner very often.
This also draws on Laura Mulvey’s feminist approach we discussed in the lecture, as women were most certainly always used in such narratives as the damsel-in-distress or prize for the male hero, however increasingly since the 1980s luckily more women are becoming heros themselves. It proves that films show an evolution in socio-cultures within society as well as whole cultures themselves.
It also shows how economic statuses have changed in consumerist films such as James Bond films, or in Westerns as we discussed. Such films elaborate Marxist views of celebrating capitalism, consumerism and individualism all together. Films in a sense always have these within their structures, and their purposes are for escapism, identification and consumerism. Through studying structuralism, texts’ pragmatic and semantic meanings are clear. Therefore structuralism is the key that makes such meanings possible.