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Understand genre conventions and hybridity alongside Todorov's and Propp's theories of narrative structure.
Genre is a way of categorising media products that share similar conventions, such as characters, settings, themes and narrative patterns. For example, a horror film might conventionally use dark lighting, a threatening antagonist and tense music. Recognising genre conventions helps audiences know what to expect from a product before they even begin consuming it.
Genre hybridity occurs when a media product combines features from two or more genres, such as a romantic comedy blending romance and comedy conventions. Producers often create genre hybrids to appeal to a wider audience, by blending familiar conventions with something fresh and original, helping a product stand out in a crowded market.
Tzvetan Todorov proposed that narratives typically follow a five-stage structure: a state of equilibrium (a stable, ordinary starting point), a disruption (an event that disturbs the stability), a recognition of the disruption, an attempt to repair it, and finally a new equilibrium (a new stable state, often different from the original). This structure can be applied to films, adverts, and many other media narratives.
Vladimir Propp analysed traditional folk tales and identified a set of recurring character roles that appear across many narratives, including the hero (who resolves the story's problem), the villain (who creates conflict), the helper (who assists the hero), the donor (who provides an important object or information), and the princess or prize (the goal the hero seeks). These roles can still be identified in many modern media narratives.
A narrative can be linear, told in the order events happened, or non-linear, using flashbacks or a scrambled timeline. Claude Levi-Strauss argued that narratives are structured around binary oppositions, such as good versus evil or civilisation versus nature, which create meaning through contrast. An enigma code is an unanswered question that keeps an audience engaged, wanting to find out what happens next.