Levi Strauss Narrative Theory

Levi Strauss was a French anthropologist who argued all narratives can be reduced to binary opposittes. He believed the way we understand words depends on our understanding of the difference between the word and its opposite.

For example, our understanding of the word 'weak' depends on the difference between that and 'strong'. Within the media, binary opposites can be used to signify two extremes as they emphasise eachothers difference, its particularly used in fantasy genres as we see the difference between 'good' and 'evil', or in horror films when we see the difference between 'sanity' and 'insanity'.

HOW DOES THIS THEORY FIT INTO MUSIC VIDEOS?

This theory fits very well into music videos, however we don't always see the binary opposites at the same point... for example, we could see one character who is angelic, and another who is evil OR we could see the evil character then transform into an angelic one.

A good example of this is 'Black Magic' by Little Mix's music video. At the beginning LM are incredibly nerdy and unpopular, and by the end they are the most popular. Also at the beginning of this video, we see a friendship group the exact opposite of Little Mix's nerdy one, which is another way of using binary opposites to create meaning and emphasise the conflicting characteristics in each group.

I think using binary opposites is a perfect way to emphasise and create meaning for an audience, however I personally believe the theory is more suited to the fantasy genre, which is why I most likely won't include binary opposites, or use this theory, in my final product.