Music Video and Narrative: Propp

Using the propp narrative model, the audience could easily predict how a the narrative will work out. I think this is a very clear narrative, and I prefer it to the Todorov, as it concentrates more on the characters, rather than the scenes in the music video. I will again use the Artic Monkey video ( Leave before the lights come on) to demonstrate this narrative structure.



The character who is portrayed as the 'hero' in this video, is quite clearly the man who saved the woman from jumping off the building. The video then transpires from the fact he saved her, and now she takes a liking to him. Its quite an interesting character take if we use the structure Propp gives us, as in the beginning of the video, the woman to us is obviously a victim of some kind, but after she becomes stroppy and starts stalking the man she becomes a slight villian, as we see her become into an attention seeking, probably crazy lady. In a way, we could even say there is a dispatcher in this video, as the shoe, incidentily sent the man on his quest to save the woman, as without the shoe falling on the ground he would never of known she was up there, but then we remember that we know now that the women purposfully threw her shoe down, hoping someone would save her, so maybe she could be the dispatcher too.
Although its unclear as to which one of the 8 character functions we could place both the man and women in, the producer has made it very clear to identify which character function suits who. They have made it redundant aswell, which helps us even more to identify the fact that the hero is a stereotypical male, and something which we could predict.