Fairy Liquid and Narrative Theory

Fairy liquid has been a main household product for decades, and has been advertised on TV since the 1960's. The style of the adverts have changed dramatically after having fairly predictable content up until the 1990's, when there were two stock characters that follow a similar story line. In 2000, Fairy released an advert that showed a young Black mother and son, in an effort of combat problems with ethnicity and sexism throughout their older adverts they have continued this variation in style because of issues about the company giving typical gender roles to the cast.

This is the most recent fairly liquid advert, which was released in 2015. It shows three different characters two of which fit their own character functions. The main character in the advert is a young boy that wants to use the fairly liquid bottle. This typical way of showing a child (wanting to play) could be considered the hero role from Vladimir Propp's theory of different character roles, because we are hoping he is given the prize (princess) which is the bottle. The father gives the prize to the hero at the end of the advert. While there aren't an of the other character profiles throughout the ad, the mother is included so the advert isn't deemed sexist, but the father also does washing up for the same reason. This is different from older adverts when it was seen as the woman's job to be in the kitchen, which is why this advert from the 1970's only shows the mother and daughter. 

As it is a different style of advert, it fits with a different narrative theory, this time from Todorov, who explains that there are five different stages of a plot line. In this advert, the equilibrium is the mother and daughter talking and playing, the disruption is when the audience realise there are dirty plates. The problem is that the daughter has the fairy liquid, but the mother needs it to clean the dishes. The forth point is restoring the order, when the girl gives her mother the fairy liquid, so she can clean the plates and then finally the fifth point, the new equilibrium, is that the dish is clean. The rest of the advert is still very different to the it's modern counterpart. In the 70's there was a much more defined level of gender roles which is why there are no male actors in the advert. In the modern advert, the story line is predominantly male actors, but it includes a woman washing up so it cannot be labelled sexist. The selling point of the product has also changed. In 1970, what made the product stand out is that it is kind to the hands of the person washing up, however, now most cleaning products are so it can no longer be considered a USP. The new selling point is that it lasts for much longer, which is what the advert focuses on.

Narrative Theory

There is a distinct difference between a narrative and a story. A story is a sequence of events, which are also called the plot of the story. The narrative is the way that those event are put together to be presented to the audience. This would suggest that every bit of media has a narrative, they could be long TV programs or a one paragraph newspaper story.

Vladimir Propp

A Russian theorist, Vladimir Propp, used fairy tales to help create a theory that analysed the generic content of every Fairy tale he read. Using this theory he systematically managed to decipher Russian Folklore and fairy tales. He created 31 different functions that each tail would follow after the initial story is depicted. While some of the functions may be slightly different, the premise behind each function is the same. Propp also believed that all the characters could be included into 7 broader character functions and relationships. This could be; The Villain - an evil character that creates struggles for the hero. These roles can sometimes be distributed among several characters or one character could engage in more than one role as the story develops.

Tzvetan Todorov

A Bulgarian-French historian names Tzvetan Todorov created a narrative theory that states, most story's or plot lines follow the same pattern of five separate stages. The first part is the equilibrium, which is when everything seems normal and the majority of characters are content. There is then a disruption that begins to effect the happiness of the characters. The realisation from the characters that there is a problem. The forth point is restoring the order from before by fixing or solving the original problem and then the final part is another equilibrium, when the problem is fixed and life can resume as normal.

Levi Strauss was a French anthropologist that thought of a lot of different theories in his lifetime. For narrative theory, he believed that we see the world, people and places by forming Binary Oppositions. His theory states that in all narrative, the stories are arranged around conflict between opposites. Some examples are;

Levi Strauss

Good vs Evil

Men vs Women

Light vs Dark

Technology vs Nature

War vs Peace

Age vs Youth

Strong vs Weak

This can typically only be applied in creative texts such as films and fairy tales as in reality, the two character types will not directly oppose each other. In a film where the Hero is Kind and thoughtful, whereas the villain is horrible and thoughtless.

Roland Barthes was a literary theorist from France, who is credited with producing his own narrative theory. He believed that the main difference between media text was that some had an open and others had closed meanings. An open meaning, is a story that's meaning is open to interpretation from the audience. A story with a closed ending has a single very obvious meaning to it. This wasn't the theory he was best known for. His best known theory was that there were 5 different narrative codes, that are integral to interpreting media narratives. He believes that every story has at least one of these narrative codes.

Roland Barthes

Enigma Code - A mystery or hook that is to be solved by or for the audience.

Action Code - Includes action and suspense, is used traditionally for escapism to entertain the audience and entertain them with the text.

Semantic Code - Elements of the text which imply, suggest or refer to additional meanings in the media text (Extra meaning aside from the literal denotation).

Symbolic Code - This code is about the eponymous (giving a name to something) symbols which can be found in media texts. e.g. calling someone the hero of a story.

Referential Code - This code relates to references within a media text to an external area of knowledge, such as historic, scientific or cultural references.