Genre Research/Claude Levi-Strauss - Safia Shafi

Claude Levi-Strauss’s Theory:

Claude Levi-Strauss suggested that we make sense of the world, people and events by seeing and using binary opposites everywhere. He observed that all narratives are organised around the conflict between such binary opposites.

Examples of binary opposites are:

·      Good vs. evil

·      Black vs. white

·      Boy vs. girl

·      Peace vs. war

·      First world vs. third world

·      Domestic vs. foreign/alien

·      Young vs. old

·      Protagonist vs. antagonist

·      Man vs. woman

·      Strong vs. weak  

Claude Levi-Strauss’s narrative can be applied to our opening sequence because he looked at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions such as man vs. women which we have in our opening sequence, Rebecca vs. Tom.