This is the second of a trilogy of books covering the key concepts of media studies, the first dealing with Image and Representation and the final one on Audience and Institutions. It is aimed at students ranging from the upper stages of secondary to the earlier stages of tertiary education. As Lacey points out, students can undergo a rapid intellectual development between the ages of 16 and 18, and textbooks targeted at this age group are frequently too complex for those students embarking on a media studies course, often with little or no previous experience, or insufficiently demanding for students who are expected to come to terms with, say, complex theories of narrative or critiques of genre theory. This is dealt with this by, firstly, explaining each key concept at a basic level appropriate to students beginning their course and, in later chapters, revisiting the concepts at a higher conceptual level, covering, for example, ideology, semiotics and the more advanced narrative codes. It is an admirable effort at achieving a balance between the complexity of the codes and conventions and the need for accessibility.
The first half of the book gives an overview of narrative theory from Aristotle through to post-modernism. It provides a clear introduction to the theories of Todorov, Propp and Levi-Strauss, recognising that the frequently arcane language used in many of the texts require to be presented in a way that students can understand. It is particularly good on Barthes' Codes, and makes a valid point that, while many media studies textbooks refer to the Codes, actual application of them to texts is exceptionally thin on the ground. Lacey argues that, while the 170 pages Barthes spends analysing Balzac's Sarrasine - a short story of 33 - pages is impressive, it is also 'mad', in that 'the weight of detail can end up deadening the experience of the text'. However, he defends the Codes' usefulness as 'a shorthand way of describing how texts are working', with reference not only to such recent texts as Copycat and Se7en, but to TS Eliot's modernist poem of 1922, The Waste Land. There is a short but useful section on alternative narrative and documentary which uses When We Were Kings to illustrate how documentaries' narrative structures have an underlying similarity to fictional texts. He also shows how narrative analysis can be applied to a still advertisement with a resourceful deconstruction of a print advert for a Hitachi VCR.
In the second half of the book, Lacey turns his attention to the basic schema and conventions of genre, looking in particular at film noir and 'hard-boiled' detective fiction, the TV police-procedure genre and science fiction. He considers the 'repertoire of elements' in relation to setting, character, narrative, iconography and style, and also shows how genre is a dynamic concept, changing over time, and goes on to examine the generic hybridity of post-modernity. In the more advanced section, he goes on to explore Jungian mythical characteristics of genre, the ideology of genre criticism, genre cycles, scheduling in relation to genre and the application of semiotics.
The analyses are exemplified with an original and delightfully eclectic range of texts. He ranges effortlessly between The Searchers and The Tellytubbies, TV soaps and texts from the canon of classical literature, but his most frequent references are to films which not only reflects his own interests but also, he argues, his students'. Many of his references are to texts recognisable to the bulk of students, with detailed analyses of works such as Independence Day, Basic Instinct, Psycho, The Usual Suspects Se7en, Blade Runner, NYPD Blues and The X-Files, but he extends the range to include texts such as Rashomon, Un héros tres discrét/A Self-Made Hero and an excellent section on Godard's Pierrot le Fou.
My only quibble about the book is directed at the publisher rather than the author: the relatively small format of the book fails to do justice to the graphics (which are relatively thin on the ground anyway). The layout, on the other hand, is very helpful, each chapter with an 'Aims of the Chapter' section in which arrows and bullet points clearly signpost the contents.
Reviewing the earlier volume, Image and Representation the MEJ referred to Nick Lacey's 'obvious love and enthusiasm for his subject' and this certainly permeates Narrative and Genre. I look forward to the final volume in the series.
Des Murphy
Bridge of Don Academy
(MEJ 28)
© 2001 Des Murphy/MEJ