Narrative and Genre: Key Concepts in Media Studies

Nick Lacey. Narrative and Genre: Key Concepts in Media Studies. New York: Palgrave, 2000. x + 268 pp. $59.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. Narrative and Genre is the second installment of Nick Lacey's projected trilogy of practical classroom textbooks that respond to the fact that "all individuals experience media as a set of interrelated and interacting systems. " The series is strongly oriented to a very specific rationale, and has a very specific audience and use in mind. It takes its lead from a British Film Institute report's "signpost questions": WHO is communicating, and why? WHAT TYPE of text is it? HOW is it produced? HOW do we know what it means? WHO receives it, and what sense do they make of it? HOW does it PRESENT its subject? These lead to the key concepts of media agencies, categories, technologies, languages, audiences, and representations (1, qtd. from Bowker 5-6). Lacey's first book, Image and Representation (1996), addresses language and representation; this one addresses categories and languages; the third, Media Institutions and Audiences (just published), addresses agencies and audiences. Technologies are dealt with in relation to the other categories. Lacey aims to "give the student the basic skills they require for post-16 [in American terms, precollegiate] education," and also, by emphasizing key concepts, to make his book relevant to any future media syllabus. Narrative and Genre "differentiates between the pre- and post-16 student, a difference that represents not just 20 months of study but, for most, the rapid intellectual development of 16-18 year olds. " It is organized accordingly: "each of the key concepts is dealt with, first, at a basic level, appropriate for students at the beginning of the course. The following chapters introduce more advanced theories, such as ideology and semiotics, which are then applied to the concepts" (1-3). The first half of the book covers the theory of narrative, the second half the theory of genre. Each subject has introductory and advanced chapters, and a "history of narrative" chapter is sandwiched in between the narrative theory parts. Both the strengths and the weaknesses of the book derive from its very distinct practical aim. Its strengths are its clarity of organization and writing, and its coverage of a fair amount of ground in narrative and genre theory. Its style is straightforward, clear, and conversational. The wealth of examples, taken largely but not wholly from pop culture, helps articulate difficult ideas. Each chapter starts with a summary of aims and is clearly sectioned into topics and subtopics. All these things, plus the scattered diagrams, tables, and exercises, recommend it to the beginning student. Its weakness is an overly accommodating, uncritical stance towards the theoretical material it brings together. It manages an uneasy synthesis of broad structuralist generalizations and "new historicist" ideological analysis of texts. Lacey's exposition and application of the terms and concepts and arguments on which he relies does not provide the rigorous scrutiny it should. The result is oversimplification-at worst, misreadings of texts, and general discussions burdened by conventional dogmas. Following Tzvetan Todorov, narrative is seen as a "causal transformation": initial situation > disruption > resolution. Lacey distinguishes story from plot, following Viktor Shklovsky and David Bordwell. He describes Vladimir Propp's narrative structure as "character functions" in a series. The "advanced" chapter integrates Barthesian semiotic and ideological analysis. Genre is undertheorized, compared with narrative, which turns out to be a strength. Instead of a bricolage of theories, we get more examples. The description of the conventions of film noir and other genres in terms of character types, setting, iconography, narrative, and style is quite convincing (136-63). But I often found myself grouching in the margins of related discussions. …