The battle of good versus evil, and the triumph of truth and light over darkness, is a theme used time and time again in the media. Movies like The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Superman, Batman, and The Lord of the Rings are all based on these simple concepts; however, audiences consistently respond positively to and embrace these movies.
[Walter] Fisher sought to establish that his conception of drama, which he termed narrative, was the paradigmatic mode of all human communication. Fisher believed that the world was best understood as a series of stories that compete for our attention and adherence. Fisher believed that human beings are, by nature, tellers of stories, and just as we learn to tell stories to one another, so we learn to evaluate them via a process of socialization rather than through training. The narrative or “story,” for Fisher, is broadly understood as any communicative account that has a beginning, middle, end, and characters.[1]
Fisher’s narrative paradigm theory explains that “people create different stories to explain the same event or events and that these explanatory stories compete with one another for our attention and support of the public. People evaluate these competing stories by assessing their narrative rationality. Fisher conceived of narrative rationality as including narrative probability and narrative fidelity.”[2]
Narrative probability refers to our tendency to evaluate a narrative as a story. In other words, does the story have all of the elements we expect to find in a story? Can we recognize it as a story? Do the characters in the story act as we would expect them to behave? Narrative fidelity refers to the process of evaluating the truthfulness of the story. In other words, does the story ring true in the mind of the receiver? Does the story fit in with our personal experiences? Does the story contain good reasons (tell us who we should be and how we should behave)? If so, we are more likely to accept the story as being correct.
he appeal of The Chronicles of Narnia is easily explained using this theory. Narrative probability is represented because there is a beginning, a middle, and an end; it’s easily recognized as a story; and the characters act the way we expect them to. There is a “good guy” (Asland the lion), a “bad guy” (the evil witch), as well as normal characters such as children and animals. The Art of Narrative Teaching by David Larsen states that “a story tells about something that happened, starting with a point of tension and leading up to a satisfactory resolution of that tension.”[3]
The Chronicles of Narnia is an entertaining and articulate story that ends with the triumph of good over evil, thus resolving the tension in the story. Narrative fidelity is represented because the ultimate triumph of good over evil, even in the face of adversity, rings true with audiences. It gives hope to our every-day lives, even though the story is fictional and sensationalized. Movies can take our realities and make them aesthetically pleasing to glorify the mundane. We look to this type of media to help explain or look for meaning in our lives; therefore, good, wholesome, and moral media portrayals can appeal to and have a positive effect on general audiences.
Works Cited:
[1] John R. Baldwin, Stephen D. Perry, and Mary Anne Moffitt, Communication Theories for Everyday Life (Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004), 96.
[2] Ibid, 97.
[3] David L. Larsen, Telling the Old, Old Story: The Art of Narrative Preaching (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2000), ix.
