Levi-Strauss and Barthes

Levi Strauss: (taken from Nick Lacey's Narrative and Genre: Key Concepts In Media Studies.)

Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist who argued that films follow the rule of binary oppositions.

Good - Bad
Heroes - Villains
Helpers - Henchmen
Princesses (love objects) - Sirens (sexual objects)
Magicians - Sorcerers
Donors of magic objects - Preventer/hinderers of donors
Dispatchers of heroes - Captors of heroes
Seekers - Avoiders
Seeming villains who are good - False heroes/heroines who are evil.

Claude Levi-Strauss also argued that the opposites can be found through the looks of the hero and the villain, the hero tends to be good looking and the villain is normally ugly or deformed.

Barthes:

Describes a text as being; "a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." (S/Z - 1974 translation found on http://www.mediaknowall.com/alevkeyconcepts/narrative.html).

This means that a text is a jumbled mess, that needs to be sorted out in order to see things clearly, to understand it and appreciate what it is telling us.

Barthes believed in Narrative Codes, such as:
The Enigma Code - asking questions or waiting for information.
Symbols and Signs.
Points of Cultural Reference.
Simple Description/reproduction.

Barthes' enigma code introduces a mystery or a puzzle into the narrative, and then eventually the plot unravels the mystery and everything is revealed. However, in some cases, the mystery is not revealed entirely, like the film Premonition starring Sandra Bullock, where the film ends leaving some questions unanswered.