Todorov's Narrative Theory

Todorov's Narrative Theory

• In a typical narrative is tends to follow a three part structure
• Equilibrium- The three part structure normally begins with the equilibrium, where everything is balanced and normal and there are not really any problems.
• Disruption- Something bad happens and the hero has to sort it, by going to some kind of quest and something needs to be done. The hero might have to save someone, sort his life out etc. It will be the main part of the narrative and it will disrupt the equilibrium.
• New equilibrium- You get the happy ending. 
• It's hard to apply it to a print text, but you can look for narrative elements of disruption. 
• In a news story you can look the written and visual code that are normally disruption as it is more likely to draw in the reader. For example the presidential election the Mirror had a cover full of disruption whereas The Times had a cover that was more of an equilibrium as they didn't want to show it as a bad thing, showing political bias.
• Not every media product will follow this structure. It might start with a disruption like in Trapped. Challenging the structure for a reason. 
• Be familiar looking at media products for equilibrium and disruptions. Then look at why has this been done for the audience, are they enjoying it for the typical structure or because it goes against it. 

Evaluate the relevance of Todorov's theory of narrative for long Television drama 

Through watching Season 1 of Homelands, it became evident that Todorov's narrative theory could apply to individual episodes, much like films, and the season of a whole. I think that Todorov's narrative theory is very relevant to the success of this popular crime drama because the way the director/writer followed Todorov's narrative ensured the audience was entertained (Blumer and Katz, 1973) by the rise and fall of the suspense and tension.

Todorov's narrative theory argues that a successful narrative uses; equilibrium, disruption, resolution and new equilibrium to progress the narrative and engage the audience, my research into long term TV drama has shown me that this theory can be applied but in a different way that I have previously experienced with Hollywood films. This is because the way these texts are consumed is different, a film can easily follow Todorov's narrative theory in a short space of time (between 1 and 3 hours) whereby a box set may continue over a number of episodes of a season. What I noticed this resulted in way Todorov's theory being applicable to individual episodes but also the season as a whole, another key difference being a viewer was rarely left with a sense of satisfaction from a resolution at the end of an episode, or season, because the nature of the product needed to leave the audience on a cliff-hanger (disruption) in order to sell future episodes or seasons. 

Specifically, in terms of Homelands Season 1, unlike a Hollywood film that may have two-three disruptions, there were 41 disruptions to the narrative during the season averaging 3-5 disruptions per episode; in terms of the relevance of this long term TV drama having this many disruptions was necessary to the success of Homeland because it was a crime drama that needed to keep building tension and keep giving new red herrings to explore. Also equilibrium's and resolutions were used to allow the tension to drop in order to make new disruptions more tense.

Homeland episode 1 started with the equilibrium of Jessica believing her husband, Brody to have been killed in Iraq and she is shown to be moving on as she is in bed with Brody's best friend Mike.; this later proves to be a disruption as it is revealed Brody has survived. Parallel editing shows another equilibrium, Carrie, using  her intel guy for information; quickly a disruption shows this intel guy getting killed. In short, Todorov's narrative theory is used to create tension an suspense at every turn to engage audiences who want a tense crime drama narrative with lots of twists and turns.

As a season as a whole I believe that Todovo's narrative theory is used to build suspense gradually throughout the whole season. For example in the first episode Pilot there was only a few disruptions that are there just to set the scene but the final episode of the season it is full of dramatic scenes with very few equilibriums or resolutions. The relevance of this is to make sure that the audience are engaged. An example of this is that in the first episode Brody is telling a women about her husband died this is interesting to the viewer and is suspense form how upset she and Brody are about his death. It makes the audience want to watch on as Brody is giving a sense of lying. This scene is important as the death of Tom Walker is a massive sub plot of the season. In comparison to the last episode of the season there are many huge disruptions that cause extreme suspense and tension for the views. Such as when Brody is about to blow up the bomb jacket but in then doesn't explode. The relevance to Todorov's theory to this is that the whole build up to this episode is huge and shows how Todorov's theory is effective to get the audience to keep watching the whole season. This last episode is a further disruption and leaves hundreds of more questions that can be solved in the following season.

To conclude I think that as the season progresses, the main aspect that link to Todorov's narrative theory is disruption with few equilibriums. Just as a disruption is resolved it is then quickly disrupted again leaving the audience then wanting to keep finding out if the disruption will ever be resolved. Since Homeland is a crime drama it is vital for the disruptions to never be completely resolved as the disruption ask more and more questions for the audience that they want to guess and find the answers they watch on. The more views that every episode get the more gross profit is being made.