When conducting my further research into narrative within the media, I decided to look at how narratives can be created within a fictional and non-fictional text as this could give an insight into how the real world is manipulated by the media. This is also important as fictional media is often made up of different genres to non-fictional media, for instance television dramas as opposed to news broadcasts. Genres are a key aspect of narrative as this helps build a well-rounded and complete narrative in a purposefully stylised way. One narrative aspect within fictional and non-fictional media is the idea of characters. As stated in the reading from our week on narratives, characters “serve a number of different narrative functions, with one key variable being the relative prominence of any character within the story” (Mittell, 2018) suggesting that not only are characters essential to a narrative, but also that there are different characters within a narrative. Often, these can be split into primary, secondary, and tertiary with each of these signifying a place on a hierarchy of importance to the narrative with primary being the most important and tertiary being the least. This is incredibly common within fictional media, for instance in the classic science-fiction franchise Star Wars, you have all three of these types of character on display. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are the central focus of the series and are therefore primary characters. Han Solo is a character that has his own key plot points, but overall is less important to the overarching narrative, showing him to be a secondary character. Finally, characters such as Lando Calrissian contribute very little to the overall plot other than possibly one or two important parts, making them tertiary characters. This idea of a character hierarchy is intended to give a sense of importance to particular characters over others, and thus create more audience investment and stronger emotions towards them. This can also be seen as the case in non-fictional media. An example of this is in a Telegraph online article about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, focus is drawn directly onto Jeremy Corbyn, even going as far as titling the article “Jeremy Corbyn running ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ Labour Party says damning dossier” (The Telegraph, 2019). The context behind this is that Jeremy Corbyn had an alleged role in an anti-Semitic coverup in the Labour Party amongst other members. However, the fact that Corbyn has been singled out here specifically portrays him as a primary character in the narrative that the Telegraph are trying to present. There is a clear narrative shown here as the article even states that this is based around allegations yet creating a narrative around these allegations is beneficial in two ways. Firstly, it allows the Telegraph to portray Corbyn as anti-Semitic whilst these are, as of right now, just allegations in order to create a sense of Corbyn as an antagonist. This is supported by a recurring theme of anti-Corbyn headlines from the Telegraph such as “A Corbyn victory would be an insult to British soldiers who have fought for their country” (The Telegraph, 2019). Furthermore, the use of a controversial subject surrounding a key figure in the upcoming General Election would, in theory, give the Telegraph a financial boost as this topic is increasingly relevant for those who want more information on who to vote for. There are ethical issues surrounding the use of narrative techniques by non-fiction media texts. Arguably the biggest of these issues is the idea of trust. Typically, non-fiction texts favour the truth rather than storytelling, and adding narrative aspects contradicts this. It could be argued that by adding narrative aspects to portray a certain viewpoint, non-fiction texts may be moving away from the facts and impartiality and more towards a subjective bias, meaning that they might not necessarily be trusted to deliver the most accurate facts. Overall, my further research has shown me that narrative aspects can be used in both fiction and non-fiction media texts with the similar purpose of creating, in essence, a story around events in order to meet an intended purpose by a producer.

References:

Mittell, J. (2018) ‘Narrative’ in The Craft of Criticism. ed. by Kackman, M. and Kearney, C. New York: Routledge. 88-113

The Telegraph (2019) A Corbyn victory would be an insult to British soldiers who have fought for their country [online] available from <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/04/corbyn-victory-would-insult-british-soldiers-have-fought-country/> [5 December 2019]

The Telegraph (2019) Jeremy Corbyn running ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ Labour Party says damning dossier [online] available from <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/05/jeremy-corbyn-running-institutionally-anti-semitic-labour-party/> [5 December 2019]