Roland Barthes
Barthes (1915 – 1980) was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, anthropology and post-structuralism. His theory on Media-Codes was important to the media in structural terms.
The Hermeneutic Code (HER)
The Hermeneutic Code (or Enigma code) refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained and hence becomes a mystery to the reader. The full truth is often avoided. The purpose of the author in this is typically to keep the audience guessing, arresting the enigma, until the final scenes when all is revealed and all loose ends are tied off and closure is achieved.
The Proairetic Code (Action code) also builds tension, referring to any other action or event that indicates something else is going to happen, and which hence gets the reader guessing as to what will happen next.
The Hermeneutic and Proairetic Codes work as a pair to develop the story's tensions and keep the reader interested. Barthes described them as:
"...dependent on ... two sequential codes: the revelation of truth and the coordination of the actions represented: there is the same constraint in the gradual order of melody and in the equally gradual order of the narrative sequence."
Barthes’ theory suggests that by not fully explaining something and creating a mystery, it keeps the audience guessing about what will happen. By not explaining certain scenarios, shots and plot lines it leaves the audience to try and work out what the film is about and thus would be encouraged to go and see the film.
Bulgarian theorist, Tzvetan Todorov, suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure. They begin with equilibrium, where everything is balanced, progress as something comes along to disrupt that equilibrium, and finally reach a resolution, when equilibrium is restored.
His theory suggests that all tales need equilibrium at the beginning, something normal within the context of the story. Then it is distributed and must be amended before a new equilibrium is restored. In trailers, the restored equilibrium is never shown as this would give away the ending and there would be no point in someone going to see it. Instead they often show only the first two stages which peaks curiosity as to how it will be resolved and encourages viewers to watch the film. Sometimes a trailer will start with a disruption, especially in action/crime films, to captivate the attention of the audience from the beginning. This could be a crime or action shot e.g. and explosion, which initially sets the genre.
For example, in the trailer for the movie Fight Club, equilibrium of mundane, everyday life is established, and reiterated through dialogue and shots showing this. This is the beginning equilibrium and is soon to be disrupted by the introduction of a new character (Tyler at 00:32). The music changes to indicate the importance of this characters introduction. The disruption that the character causes is shown to be conflicting pain and disturbance and so we can expect the main character who throughout the clips is shown to become more and more uncomfortable with this disruption to set about trying to fix it with a resolution. However, because it is a trailer we are not shown the resolution or restored/new equilibrium as this would lead to the ending being given away and the suspense and curiosity is what gets people to go to the movie.
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