In September 2025, I had to create a presentation on one of the set A-level theorists. I was assigned Levi Strauss and have attached screenshots of my findings on his theory of binary opposites in the media. Since then, I have done further reading on his theory using the Mark Dixon textbook and learnt the following information:
- media products may also use stylistic oppositions where the camera work may switch from stable and steady to a series of frenzied whip pans. This technique is used to maintain audience interest and reflect narrative opposition between moments of calm to distress, loss to gain, or poverty to affluence in montage sequences.
- Genre driven binary oppositions can be so deeply entrenched they become a genre convention. For example technology vs humanity in science fiction.
- Binary opposites can be used to simplify complicated themes and ideas by using blatant contrast to make them more digestible. Therefore, they can also speed up audience understanding
- Furthermore, they can make narratives more compelling by promising an entertaining narrative clash
- Narratives resolve themselves in a way that privileges one set of oppositions- for example newspapers may teach us that criminals are caught and justice prevails, or that corrupt politicians loose elections to suggest that justice will always win. News stories are hence crafted to reinforce cultural or editorial bias. By extension, binary opposites are used to reinforce societal norms and values.
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