Structuralism Thinking Activity

Hello Readers!

Structuralism is a method to study various structures of culture, literary theories and narratives, linguistics, history and many other discourses. It can be compared to the skeleton of the body. It is majorly a study of narratives and structures. It focuses upon how a story moves ahead, and what structure it follows. Here as a student of English literary theory and criticism, one is set to apply the methods of structuralism observed by various critics and structuralists. Ferdinand de Saussure, Gerard Genette, Roland Barthes, Claude Levi Strauss were the critics who have worked on Structuralism.

Each work of art has the basic structure. Similarly, literature follows some structure. Be it prose or verse, performed or presented at theaters. Literature is nowadays seen in a wider context tearing the veils of pages and books, it has come afar towards TV shows, web series, movies, advertisements, posters are also mentioned as literature. Just like books they are also subject of reading, studying and critiquing. Structures play the vital role in literature. Different narratives are interwoven in and around the structure of literature.

Here is the unit ending thinking activity in which students are to apply the theory to various works of art like movies, TV shows, web series, advertisements, literary text which majorly connects with larger narratives. Click here to visit the source blog of Dr. Dilip Barad.

* Being a structuralist critic, one can analyse and apply Structuralism in Bollywood movies. Here, the application is to be seen as a literary theory and criticism, a sub branch of Structuralism. Going deeper from particular to general viewpoints. These movies may lead us to study the larger narrative or a generalized method of narrative, widely accepted.

Dil Dhadakne Do (2015)

Movie: Dil Dhadakne Do (Let the Heart Beat)
Release Year: 2015
Director: Zoya Akhtar
Production: Excel Entertainment and Juglee Production

* This movie can be analysed from many viewpoints by asking some simple questions like

* Who is narrating a story ?
- Here we see something different yet very interesting in narration that it's an animal. A Bullmastiff dog named Pluto is narrating the whole story. He introduces all the characters and carries the load of some fragments like highlighting human nature with a view point of animal. The narrator is Homo-diegetic in film. It is also a character as well as narrator in the movie.

* What structure does the movie have ?
- Structurally, the movie follows this pattern: Story begins with the sailing of the ship or a cruise, at the day time, which is quite good omen but here the cruise is full of businessmen so one can predict that events will have some complications. Along with the cruise, the narration also moves ahead and story unfolds.

* Order - The story follows this order. A1 - The beginning of day, sailing the ship boarded with businessmen, B1- Kabir meets Farah, love at first sight, they hide their meetings C1 - Kabir's father wants to make partner with a rival businessman, tries to make family relations by marrying Kabir to Naina.

* Can we find any other narrations and structures like this movie ?
- A 1997, movie Titanic also has the same structure of love.

* Duration ? - Round about a week.
* Frequency - As the movie has many small events and incidents, they occur just after the completion of their adjacent ones. Though the narration voice sparks frequently in between the two events.

Gully Boy (2019)

Movie: Gully Boy (Street Boy)
Release Year: 2019
Director: Zoya Akhtar
Production: Excel Entertainment and Tiger Baby

Going from particular to general viewpoint, Chasing the dream is a prime structure of this movie, and then story moves in and around the narrative. The struggle of managing for living and earning can be seen as the meta narrative or sub narrative of the movie.

Here we shall see the concept of narratology given by Gerard Genette.

* Order
The order of this movie can be put like this. A1 - An optimistic, average looking guy who seeks for better prospects in music, rap and hip hop song culture. B1 - He loves a girl, they keep their meetings private. C1 - Sky, a music scholar and student of foreign university comes and meets Murad, they make music. D1 - Dream fulfillment, Murad as successful rapper.

* Mood
Mood of the movie is taking pendulum swings, but still it holds the audiences minds.

Structuralism is the vast field to dive into. Indeed this blog would be just a little attempt towards the application of the theory on movies. It can be applied in any literary text, TV series and web series

At the end of the blog, here are some important blogs on Structuralism, you may like to visit.
* Structural Linguistics - A structural study of language.

Thank You!