The video I am analysing is by popular RnB artist Rhianna for her latest single 'Man Down.' I will be specifically be focusing on the narrative theories by Todorov and Propps.
Firstly, this video certainly does not follow Todorovs typical narative structure, but rearanges the different stages which is quite unconventional and rare in a music video. By this I mean the video starts with the reperation, where we see Rhianna shoot someone. This is done because it imediately shocks the audience, leaving them wondering why she would do it and making them want to watch the rest of the video to find out.
After that stages one to three continue as normal. Meaning the normal state of equilibrium where the performer seems happy and is going through a normal day, to a distruption of the equilibrium where the audience see Rhianna being followed and then subdued by a person she met in a club, who is also the man who is shot by her in the beggining, and thena recognition that the disorder has occured when the audience realised that the man must have rapped her. Finally, the audience doesn't see the new equilibrium as frankly the video is long enough to add this. In my opinion this is a very intelligent way of rearanging Todorov's narrative model as I believe it adds to the emotional impact of Rihanna shooting the man and the man raping her because at first the audience may have felt negatively about rihanna shooting that man, like she was the antagonist, but after the audience see what happen they may feel guilty or upset feeling that way before watching the whole video.
In this video I can only identify two of propps characters. Rhianna is the hero and the rapist is the villain. Altough again as we see Rhianna shoot the man at the beggining for no apparent reason the audience may suspect her to be the villain. Again, this shows how intelligent this video is as it makes the audience think twice about labbeling the characters without seeing everything first.
There are is no intertextuality in this video.
Time is represented in a way in which different times of the day represent different things. For instance when we see Rhianna during the day time she is happy and positive, as day time is usually perceived as safe and when people feel happy, wheras we see Rhianna in the nightclub and being abused at night by the rapist. This could be because night time is often ascociated with partys and danger, especially for women.
This is a good attempt to engage with the narrative theories. You have shown that you cannot always apply narrative theory to a media text, as we see here we start at the reparation step of Todorov's classic narrative and then are taken back to the equilibrium through flashback editing. Why do we only see two Proppian characters? Are there any binary oppositions and why are these important? Please check your spelling as there are frequent errors.
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