week7: Visual Narrative and the Media

Narrative is popularly used in various media now and the use of narrative in advertisement is very common now. The advertiser carefully edits the storyline in order to shape the meaning of the advertisement. According to Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, narrative can help to “invite the re-thinking of the concept, term, or method” and may bring “unsettling effect”. Therefore, when we see a narrative advertisement, it may lead to our re-thinking of certain concept in order to achieve the advertiser’s advertising purpose. By analyzing the narrative in advertisement, we can know how the narrative affect the way we think and successfully persuade the audience to buy the product.

Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s (1981, 228) definition of narrative is very simple and easy to understand: “Someone telling someone else that something happened”. Here is the video I found in youtube. It's a very creative video and gives me a lot of inspiration about the visual narrative. Briefly speaking, the video shows that the “wind”man tells the audience that how he finally be accepted by someone. To give a further analysis of this video, I’ll analyze it in paradigm and syntagm.

Paradigm:

       Genre: Commercial

       Character: The "wind "man. He is the speaking subject and the subject of the speech.

       Discourse: social-identification, Energy Company

Syntagm:

Syntagm means storylines here. In this ad, the wind is personified as a man. The ad tells us how people are annoyed at the "wind" man. Thus, the “wind” man gets upset about that because he doesn’t know why. And finally, a man accepts him and invites “wind” man to see next to him.

In the first 1min20s, I feel pity for this man. He sounds pathetic and looks lonely and sad. But afterwards, there is a point that re-constructs my thinking. A man is willing to be his friend and I see the smile on the “wind” man’s face. He feels that he is finally accepted by someone and not that lonely anymore. Actually, the “wind” man is the representation of the EPURON, an energy company. Every coin has two sides. Wind can have harmful effect to human but, if it is used properly, it can also bring us benefit. What the advertisement try to tell us is that we everyone has its own potentials. The advertisement appeals the audience to trust their company so that it can develop its potential and do something good for people.

Robert Scholes mentions that video “excel all other narrative media in its rendition of material objects and the actions of creatures, is the closest to actuality, to undifferentiated thoughtless experience.” Therefore, the success of this TV commercial lies in its detailed narratives, which makes the audience feel the sincerity of EPURON. What’s more, the paradigms and syntagms construct a touching stories and arouse the audience’s thinking and identification.

References:

1.      Smith, Barbara Herrnstein 1981. Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories. In W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.),On Narrative. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

2.      Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan 2006. The concept of Narrative. In Matti Hyvärinen, Anu Korhonen & Juri Mykkänen (eds.). Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 1.Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. 10–19.

3.      Robert Scholes.1982.Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven and Lonon: Yale University Press. Pp.57