Narative

Barth's Codes - " a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifields" Barth is basicly saying that text is a tangled ball of threads which need unraveling so we can seperate the colour. Barth has three main codes: Action, Symbolic and Enigma. In the opening scene of the prestige we see these three codes. The first thing we see is a magic trick which shows a man and a bird disappear. this creates action because they are both suddelnly gone. This brings on the enigma code and we think, are they okay? Where have they gone? How did they do that? Finally we see the symbolic code like the birds can be a symbol for young life and the clothing is a symbol of the era in which the film is set.

Todorov - The disruption of the equilibrium is when a character comes in and messes up everything and changes normality.

Propp - Propp is a Russian who studied Russian folk & fairy tails and he then decided that every single character in any narrative has been used before. He narrowed these characters down to 8 main types :-

1. The hero
2. The villain
3. The donor
4. The dispatcher
5. The false hero
6. The helper
7. The princess
8. The princess father

In the film the prestige we see a few of the above characters that Propp discovered. We see the villain who doesn't rescue the magician who falls into the water, we also think we saw the hero who we think is the monition in the water.

Levi-Strauss - Believes that after studying hundreds of myths and legends and he observed that we make sense of the world, people and events by seeing and using binary opposites. some examples of binary opposites that we see every day are:

1. Good and evil
2. Black and white
3. Old and young
4. Wealthy and poor