Page 52 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

FORMULAIC ANALYSIS

Table 3.1
Structure—Genres

Soap operas
Stage 1 Opening scene—hook
Brief musical introduction
Narrator opening the day’s episode with a recap of what
happened before
Stage 2 Two segments of action separated by a commercial break
Rising action at end of episode (to carry audience to view
next episode)
Stage 3 A closing word from the narrator suggesting the problem
ahead
Local television news
Stage 1: Introduction Top story—hook
Voice-over
Music
Kicker
Stage 2: News Lead story—most important
In descending order
Final story—uplifting, of human interest
Stage 3: Sports
Stage 4: Weather

each subplot ultimately works according to the order/chaos/order structure, it
does not occur within a single episode. One subplot may be at the inception
stage, two others may be in the process of unfolding, and a final one may
be at a point of resolution. Taken collectively, this model has the effect of
unfinished stories that are carried over to the next episode.
Vladimir Propp’s morphological analysis is useful in identifying the
unifying structure in a genre. A morphology focuses on the structures—
the systems, relations, and forms—that make meaning in any cultural
activity or artifact. Propp did not look for meaning in individual texts
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but rather through the structural patterns that characterize these texts.
No single item in such a system has meaning except as an integral part
of a set of structural connections.
Propp dissected the fairy tale, divesting it of its individual embellish-
ments in order to identify its skeletal formula. He then traced the sequence
of elements in a story to identify the basic structure common to this genre.
Propp found that the number of structural elements, or “functions,” in the
fairy tale is limited and complete. Thus, despite the distinctive embellish-
ments of individual stories, the essential structure of genres is uniform,

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