Blog 3: Method of Choice

          The method that I will be applying to the critical perspectives term paper is Narrative Criticism. Narrative criticism was developed by theorist Sonja Foss and is based upon the notion that the stories people tell help us make meaning out of our daily interactions and experiences. According to Foss, narratives can be found in “short stories, graphic novels, comic strips, films, plays, and songs.” In addition, Foss believes narratives take place in our “dreams, conversations with friends, interviews, speeches, and even artifact such as paintings and quilts.”

Before one can begin to analyze a narrative, four criteria must be met to determine if the artifact is, indeed, a true narrative. Most importantly, a narrative must be comprised of two events. These events can either be “active (expressing action) or stative (expressing a state or condition).” The second characteristic of a narrative is the specific order of the events taking place. Although the events do not have to be in chronological order, they must be sequential order. The third characteristic is the prevalence of a causal or contributing relationship between the events in the narrative. According to the text, if one event leads to another, this must be accounted for and mentioned in the story in order to provide a clear depiction of what took place. The last requirement for a narrative is that it has to be about a unified subject. This means the narrative should create a, sometimes intimate, connection between the storyteller and the audience.

After these four requirements have been met, the selection of the artifact can be made. Once the artifact has been chosen, the analysis will ensue. During the analysis stage, one must identify the objective of the narrative, identify the features of the narrative, and assess the narrative. When identifying the objective, one is hoping to locate the “situation or condition the story is addressing. According to the text, an example of some objectives are to socialize into a community, to challenge perceptions of a situation, or to comfort or bring relief.

For the purpose of identifying the features of the narrative, Foss constructed a guide that provides questions one might ask themselves when analyzing the artifact. The key choices that are used by the storyteller when deciding how to develop their story are setting, characters, narrator, events, temporal relations, causal relations, audience, theme, and type of narrative. Links should forms when discussing these key choices, which will help in finding the objective of the story.

Lastly, one may or may not decide to assess, or evaluate, the narrative. This may be completed by scrutinizing the objective to determine if it is or is not appropriate and assessing the “strategies used in the narrative to see whether they accomplish the objective and allow it to work in the world in the way in which the objective suggests. The concluding steps will be to formulate the research question and to write the essay.

I believe that the theory of Narrative criticism will be appropriate for applying to my artifact and discussing in my term paper because the meme I am using is derived from a story. The specific meme is a still frame from a scene in the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. In the still frame is Boromir, a character from the film, warning the hobbits of the extreme complexity of entering into Mordor by saying, “One does not simply walk into Mordor.” I believe I can apply each of the narrative criticism components to the meme, such as determining the objective and identifying the features. Although I will have to be creative when determining the events of the meme, I am confident that I will be able to support my ideas. It makes sense to me to use a theory that is based on storytelling to discuss an artifact that began as a story and developed into a film.

My second choice for a theory applied to my artifact is Ideological Criticism. This form of criticism is my second choice because it is specifically concerned with finding traces of ideologies in an artifact and exposing the dominant ideology in order to locate the suppressed or silenced ideologies. According to the text, the “primary component of an ideology are evaluate beliefs---beliefs about which there are possible alternative judgments.” I think that if I can determine the overall ideology of my meme then I will be able to analyze it intelligently.