Lecture 5 'Two Sides to Everything (and a bit in the middle)'

This lecture was about Structuralism and the way people view the world in a system of Binary Opposition. We automatically split the world into opposites and decide what things are by deciding what they are not.

We choose to perceive the world in this way but that is not how the world is. For example we may describe something as being hot or cold, but when does hot stop and cold begin. I might say the waters hot when its at 60 °C but the surface of the sun is around 6,000 °C which is much hotter n makes the water seem pretty cold in comparison. The only example i can think of of two absolute opposites is 'on and off'.

Between the 2 opposites is the zone of indeterminacy where stuff is neither one or the other, its a bit of both; and these things in between are much more interesting and exciting.

For example i find the devil child in The Omen quite a dull character because he is evil incarnate and nothing else, he doesn't even do much. Whereas the possessed child in the exorcist is a good normal child which is taken over by evil, making her a much fuller, more interesting character.



Left- child from 'The Omen'                           Right - Regan in 'The Exorcist'

 You will often find the most boring characters in a story will be those who have an extreme personality. They tend to have quite shallow personalities and become predictable and boring. For example, when i was little i used to watch Winnie the pooh on TV and my favourite character was Pooh, but my friends used to like Eeyore which i couldn't understand. He was always grumpy and sad and had nothing else to his personality; he was boring. Obviously when i was little i didn't read this far into it but i can see now that i didn't like him for that reason.

Pooh and Eeyore

 Bit of contrast in my choice of examples; devil children and cuddly woodland friends, oh well you get the idea.