Barthes' Narrative Codes

Barthes is a French critic who created the theories about different codes which are used in thrillers to make them effective. He used different codes to show different ways in which thrillers engage audiences.

One of these codes is an Action Code, this is what is used for the audience to recognise the next logical step in the narrative, for example if two people with fast cars are waiting at a traffic light, the next logical step is they would race. Or another example is if someone is packing a suitcase then it will indicate that they will be going somewhere. These codes are used to make the audience understand and guess what the narrative will progress into before the narrative actually does this. This would add a sense of dramatic irony or possibly suspense.

Another code is the Mystery Code (alternatively known as an Enigma Code) which is designed to add a sense of mystery into the thriller which would intend to draw an audience in as they would like to know an answer to the film. An example of this is if an attack on someone happens but you do not know who caused the attack, you would be incline on watching further to be able to find out who the attacker is.

The Semic Code is a code in which the use of a sign is designed to show you a meaning of the thriller. Examples of this is a knife or a firearm would be used to show violence or the use of the sun may be used to show the meaning that the narrative is set on a sunny day. A Cultural Code is also used to in the narrative to make sense to an audience which is aware of the culture or social aspects. It makes reference to the real world that the audience would recognise, such as Aston Martin cars may be recognised for its roles in James Bond films or Owls and Wands in Harry Potter.

 

The Code of Oppositions is referred to a narrative which is dependent on binary opposites such war vs. peace or male vs. female. Thriller videos may use this to show the protagonist and antagonist where a protagonist would mostly have bright colours on etc. whereas the antagonist would where darker colours.

In our preliminary video, we used multiple Barthes' narrative codes to make the thriller preliminary task to be effective. One code that we used was a Semic Code, we used the code when Max was using the gun. This was effective as it made the audience know that the narrative would have been a violent one as the gun symbolises violence. The Action Code was used with this as the gun being used on camera would have lead to the audience thinking someone would be killed which happened when Max shot Andreas. Another code we used was the Mystery Code, it was used when Max was aiming at Andreas and we tried to provoke the question as to why and then it was all answered when the flashback had happened.

We could have used a Cultural Code if we chose a more relevant location like a dark basement or a disused factory to show how rough and gangland/mafia/hitman it could have been, this could have been improved by the characters dressing more appropriately. The Code of Oppositions could have been used by the protagonist and antagonist being binary opposites through how they acted and what they wore to clearly identify the narrative and who the characters were in terms of who the antagonist and who the protagonist were.