Todorovs Narrative Theory

Tzveten Todorov born in 1930 in Sofia came up with a really intresting media theory.He's a Franco Bulgarian philosopher,and has written many books and essay about theorys. In his work on narrative theoys from the 1960's onwards,he suggested eveyr story begins with an equilibrium or status quowhere any particular opposing forces are in balance.This si then distruped by some event,wheich then sets the path of another series of events to occur.Problems are later restored so order can be set in the world of fiction.

He suggested the conventioal narratives structures are in these 5 stages:

• A state of Equilibrium (stablilty) at the start
• A disruption of the equilibrium by some action
• A recognition that there has been some disruption
• An attempt to repair the disruption
• A reinstatement of the equilibrium

This type of narrative structure is evry similiar to nowadays,and can be applied to many mianstream film/music video narrartives.

Although this theory is over 50 years old i still think its apprant for today.I feel his theory works well in explaining the series of events that always occur in order to make the film/music video exciting.By highilighting these sections hes reinstaement the importance of each stage,allowing the audeince to understand if something was missing or diddnt occur it probably wouldnt hold the same value as it would if it did.For me,his theory makes sense.Before knowing his yheory iw ouldnt of looked at each section of a film in this way,i didnt relaisde there was a though process in planning before its even shot.To help me understand more,i went onto Youtube and had a look at some msuic videos,and short films and every stage was apprent within them.So it concluded for me that Todorovs narrative theory does work,and it still aprrent so many years on.