Narrative Theory

We applied the theories and ideas of 4 narrative theorists to the 1980 film The Shining.

The first theorist we looked at was Vladimir Propp whose thoery after examining hundreds of folk tales was that all stories somehow followed a structure with 8 character roles, like the villian and hero, and 31 narrative functions fitting into 6 sections of preparation, complication, transference, struggle, return and recognition. Propp's ideas do not fit very well with The Shining. A few of the character roles and narrative functions do fit with the film although they cannot be simply applied and require a lot of push. Many of the character functions could be applied to numberous characters, eg. The Hero could be either Danny or Wendy, or even Halloran to some extent as if it wasn't for him Danny or Wendy wouldn't have made it away. The obvious character for the villian role would be Jack but it could also be the Hotel itself. Danny and Wendy would also fit into the role of the princess (the sought for person) and her father  which doesn't really work if they are meant to be the heros. There also doesn't appear to be a false hero in this film which shows that the film doesn't have every character function. The narrative functions that Propp suggests fit even more loosely to The Shining than the character functions do. The last two sub-headings of the 31 narrative functions, return and recognition, do not seem to fit with this film at all and the film ends at function 19 'The initial misfortune or lack is set right' being the last function that fits with the film chronologically. This would be when Danny and Wendy are able to escape and Jack freezes. One of the narrative functions is 'The villian harms a member of the family.' which in The Shining would be when Danny get hurt by an old woman/apparition in room 237. There are a lot of the 31 functions that do not fit with this film so this makes Propp's theory not work very well and doesn't help a lot with our understanding of the film.

The second theorist we looked at was Tzvetan Torodov who put forward the theory that all stories being with an equilibrium, which is then disrupted by an event and causes a series of events to occur, and the story ends with the problems being solved and the equilibrium returning. This theory does fit with The Shining. The initial equilibrum would be Jack, Danny and Wendy living a normal life. We see Danny and Wendy at home at the start of the film. The disruption to this equilibrum would be when they move to the hotel and Jack evntually goes mad and tries to kill his family and they cannot get away, aswell as the apparitions which appear. The story does not return to the initial equilibrum but at the end of the film the problem of Jack trying to kill Danny and Wendy and them being stuck in the hotel is resolved by them escaping from the hotel and Jack freezing. We could assume that Danny and Wendy would then get back to the initial equilibrium of the film when they get back to there home. At the end of the film we see a picture from the 1920's and Jack is in the picture. This goes away from Torodov's theory as something is left open and closure isn't completely reached. This theory fits more closely with the film The Shining than Vladimir Propp's theory.

The third theorist that we looked at was Bordwell and Thompsons. They defined narrative structures for film as "a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occuring in time and space." and even though this isn't a full theory it does provide interesting ideas. They said that a narrative typically begins with one situation and then a series of changes occur according to a pattern of cause and effect. Then at the end a new situation arises and brings the end of the narrative. They also said that there are three distinctions of time within a film: Screen duration, plot duration and story duration. This theory could be applied quite well to The Shining but not perfectly. The screen duration of The Shining is 1 1/2 hours, the plot duration is 6 months and the story duration is around 60 years. Time is a big part of the film. Many things that happened in the past come back and have effects on the present, but not in ways that would be normal. For example, the caretaker who killed his family and himself in the 1970s appears to Jack and tells him to kill his family. The event that sparked this cause and effect sequence would have been the caretaker killing his family and then killing himself. However when the caretaker appears to Jack he seems to be from the 1920s which is strange as he died in the 70s. Time in this film is quite confusing and the apparitions from the past make it more so. Throughout the film we are given title screens saying the day and how much time has past. At the beginning of the film the screens say time periods such as '3 months later' but by the end of the film they say days of the week so that we cannot really keep track of the time passing. Overall I feel that this thoery does fit quite well with The Shining makes us think about the time element of the film and things that have occured in the past having an effect on the present.

The last theorist that we looked at was Claude Levi-Strauss. He looked 

at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions, which are sets of opposites that reveal the structure of media texts. For example good and evil would be an example of binary opposites. There are a number of binary opposites that could be said to be present in this film. They are past and present, cause and effect, good and evil, natural and supernatural, community and isolation and lastly sanity and insanity. As a whole this theory does work well with helping to understand the media text. It gives insight into what the film is about and allows us to think more about the film. In The Shining the good is Danny and Wendy and the evil is Jack and the hotel. The theme of sanity and insanity would be that jack was sane at the start of the film and he becomes insane, also Danny and Wendy are sane throughout the film. There is the supernatural element of the film because of the apparitions that appear. This could have been a figment of Jack's imagination however Wendy also sees them and Jack somehow gets out of the food storage room so we know there must be some form of supernatural element to the film. We also have Danny who can, in the words of Hallaran, "shine".

Overall the theorys that work the best with The Shining and help us to understand the film the most would be Claude Levi-Strauss' and Bordwell and Thompsons. These two theories provide more insight into the film itself.