Thursday, 21 October 2010

Who was Vladimire Propp

File:Vladimir Propp (1928 year).jpg

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp ( 17 April 189522 August 1970) was a Russian structuralist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. He was born in St. Petersburg to a German family. Propp attended St. Petersburg University (1913-1918) majoring in Russian and German philosophy, then after graduating he taught Russian and German at a secondary school and then became a college teacher of German.

Character theory's are useful for analysing and understanding media in which people take on the role of an actor or social actor.Propp developed a character theory for studying media texts and productions, which indicates that there were 7 broad character types in the 100 tales he analysed, which could be applied to other media:
  1. The villain (struggles against the hero)
  2. The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)
  3. The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)
  4. The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)
  5. Her father
  6. The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)
  7. The hero or victim/seeker hero, reacts to the donor, weds the princess
  8. False hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess
In analysing these 100 folk tales, Propp also was able to discover 31 different narrative structure units that occur in a story which were:
  1. ABSENTATION
  2. INTERDICTION
  3. VIOLATION of INTERDICTION
  4. RECONNAISSANCE
  5. DELIVERY.
  6. TRICKERY
  7. COMPLICITY
  8. VILLAINY or LACK
  9. MEDIATION
  10. BEGINNING COUNTER-ACTION
  11. DEPARTURE
  12. FIRST FUNCTION OF THE DONOR
  13. HERO'S REACTION
  14. RECEIPT OF A MAGICAL AGENT
  15. GUIDANCE
  16. STRUGGLE
  17. BRANDING
  18. VICTORY
  19. LIQUIDATION
  20. RETURN
  21. PURSUIT
  22. RESCUE
  23. UNRECOGNIZED ARRIVAL
  24. UNFOUNDED CLAIMS
  25. DIFFICULT TASK
  26. SOLUTION
  27. RECOGNITION
  28. EXPOSURE
  29. TRANSFIGURATION
  30. PUNISHMENT
  31. WEDDING
Vladimir Propps Ideology can be usefull while creating my music video and analysing other music videos. For Example the video Goodbye Mr A  - The Hoosiers is a good example of how Propps theory related to media as it follows his idea of the conventional media story. In terms of The key characters it features the villian, The hero and the fake hero/villian. It also follows to some extent the narrative features throughout a media text or clip, with the hero defeating the villians, the hero being put in need by another villan, who then poses as the fake hero in order to become the new super hero, helping children and old people, however the fake heros are not revealed in the end they become the new superheros, meanwhile the real hero has been defeated. lost and forgoten about. Using Vladimir Propps example helps us to analyse the conventions of a music video and, if filming a music video that would fit this type of story line, shows us the conventional storyline that could be used in it, and the layout to follow.

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