Inside Storytelling

Theories and Praxis for Communication and Management

Into the Portal

Ubiquity of stories and need to deep dive into them

Storytelling Futures

Applications in media and entertainment & gaming industry

What

will

you

learn?

Module 1: Once Upon a Time

Traditions and Frameworks of Storytelling

Unpacking the application of theories in Marvel, DC, Disney, and Elder Scrolls (Films and Video Games)

Module 2: The Plot Thickens

Elements, constituents and adaptations: Image, Music, Text, Game

Tracing the above in the market (hip hop/Hellblade/Ghibli/Portal)

Re-tellings and re-rememberings: The Afterlife of a text (From Shakespeare to Superbowl)

 

Assignment 1 (30%)

Case Based Mid-Term Examination to test familiarity with concepts and theories discussed in Module 1 and Module 2. The student will apply the theories learnt in these modules to analyze business scenarios.

Module 3: Perpetual Possibility

New media industry: Ergodic text, game studies, intertextuality (Limbo, Disco Elysium, Dark Souls)

Storytelling Futures: Transmediality, Immersion, Narrative Universes (LoTR, Witcher, Potter)

Assignment 2 (30%)

This assignment will focus on the emerging narrative market (OTT, Gaming, AR/VR Narratives).

The student will learn to apply new media concepts discussed in this module to decode emerging narrative markets and their behavior. Students will choose one narrative and examine its performance, impact on the industry and reception, both critical and popular. The submission can be in video/audio/text format.

Structuralism

 

Culture through Language: Saussure

Meaning through Structures: Linguistic Relativity

No natural sign?

Arbitrary and Differential

Belatedness and Freedom: Signified

Reality/Concept: Third, Mediating Order

Inter-relationship: Definition through absence?

Structuralism

 

Structuralism emerged in the early 20th century as an intellectual revolution across linguistics, anthropology, and literary theory. Its core insight is that human culture, language, and thought are not built from isolated entities, but from underlying relational systems.

Phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure

Structuralism

 

Ferdinand de Saussure transformed linguistics with his radical ideas. He proposed that language (langue) is an abstract system of signs, while parole (actual speech) is the performance.

Saussure highlighted three enduring principles:

• Arbitrariness: There is no natural connection between signifier (sound/image) and signified (concept).

• Differential Meaning: Words gain meaning only in relation to each other—“hot” means what it isn’t: “cold,” “warm.”

• Synchrony over Diachrony: Structural analysis privileges systems as they exist in a moment (synchrony), rather than their historical evolution.

Structuralism

 

Saussure’s ideas were adapted beyond language. The Russian-born linguist Roman Jakobson helped carry structuralism into anthropology and literary theory. His work profoundly influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss, anthropology’s key structuralist.

Lévi-Strauss applied linguistic structure to myths and kinship. In Elementary Structures of Kinship, he showed that kinship practices across societies are variations of a few underlying relational patterns

He introduced the concept of the mytheme—a minimal narrative unit—and demonstrated how myths structure around oppositions such as raw/cooked, life/death.

Structuralism

Arbitrariness of the Sign

The Idea

Saussure insisted that there is nothing “natural” about the connection between a signifier (sound-image, e.g., the spoken word tree) and the signified (the concept of tree).

“The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.”
— Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

This means any sound could serve for the concept, provided a community agrees. French speakers say arbre, Bengali speakers say gachh—all equally valid.

• It broke with the classical idea (going back to Plato’s Cratylus) that words somehow naturally “fit” their objects.

• It freed linguistics from chasing origins (why tree means tree) and focused it on how systems of meaning work now.

Structuralism

Differential Meaning

The Idea

For Saussure, meaning comes not from positive essence but from difference.

“In language there are only differences, and no positive terms.”
— Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

“Hot” means hot not because of some essence of heat, but because it is not “cold,” not “lukewarm.” Words only gain value in relation to other words.

Why It Mattered

• This was the structuralist breakthrough: the system, not the element, determines meaning.

• It overturned the assumption that words refer to pre-existing stable concepts.

Structuralism

Synchrony over Diachrony

The Idea

Saussure distinguished two ways of studying language:

• Diachronic: language through time (historical evolution, etymology).

• Synchronic: language at a given moment, as a system of relations.

He insisted linguistics must focus on the synchronic system—like studying a chess game in progress, not its history.

“Language is a system whose parts can and must all be considered in their synchronic solidarity.”

Why It Mattered

• Linguistics became a science of structure, not history.

• This gave rise to structuralist methods in anthropology, literature, and social sciences—studying systems in their present state.

Structuralism

 

1. Reaction to Empiricism: After centuries of focusing on individual events (historicism), structuralism demanded that we look beneath surface phenomena to the rules that order them.

2. Search for Scientific Rigor: Structuralism aimed to render the humanities more systematic—applying rigorous analysis, not merely interpretation.

3. Intellectual Context: Structuralism grew as existentialism waned in mid-20th-century France. It offered a method to analyze systems instead of sole reliance on subjective experience.

4. Cross-disciplinary Utility: Beyond linguistics, structuralism became foundational for anthropology (Lévi-Strauss), literary theory (Roland Barthes), Marxist critiques, and psychoanalysis (Lacan).

Structuralism

 

Structures in cultural products - market?

Binary oppositions arranged hierarchically

Overt power and covert power

Crafting narratives through social structures

Duality of structure: Structuration (Giddens)

Structure/Agency; Micro/Macro

Signification - Legitimation - Domination

Base and Superstructure

Structuralism

 

Structures in cultural products - market?

Binary oppositions arranged hierarchically

Overt power and covert power

Crafting narratives through social structures

Duality of structure: Structuration (Giddens)

Structure/Agency; Micro/Macro

Signification - Legitimation - Domination

Base and Superstructure

Identify structuralism in brand narratives - organisations, individuals, companies. 

Understanding binary oppositions - structure of thought. 

Need to dismantle?

If there is a pair, a binary, can the two components ever be equal?

In pursuit of meaning.

What is meaning? How is meaning made? Who makes meaning? How much agency do we have in meaning making?

There is an universal anxiety - and therefore, a need to find a structure - and imposing it. Are we then, really free? Should we be?

Narratives help us bring order to our world - to construct a comfortable reality for ourselves. That construction is essential for markets to function. But all of us have a right to know that most things are indeed constructs.

Then we can choose - which construct to follow, to believe, to play, to act. But - the ability to understand the construct, the markers of the narrative - the recognition - the first step of anagnorisis - that is the skill we try to acquire through criticism and art.

 

Joseph Campbell sought to bring that order. Vladimir Propp did too. And we will try their methods today - we will 'play'.

 

Vladimir Propp - the plot engineer.

\

Morphology of a Folktale: 1928 (translated much later in 1958)

 identifies these 31 functions as typical of all fairy tales

Propp also concludes that all the characters in tales can be resolved into seven abstract character functions:

The Centre Cannot Hold

 

1960s France: Derrida (1966: Structure, Sign and Play)

Need to decenter intellect

Barthes (1967): The Death of the Author 

Birth of the Reader (Current context?)

Metalanguage: Orders of language and meaning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuhmymKHonA)

The Centre Cannot Hold

 

Was the Author always dead?

Death of God - Nietzsche

Modernism - creation of a new world

Ownership, Authorship and Propriety

Copyright issues?

Owning a narrative

Who tells the tale?

Which teller is important?

 

The Centre Cannot Hold

Endless significations - how do we order narratives?

Does structuralism give us a template?

Is the structuralist system regressive?

Parts and the whole: a hermeneutic web of significance

Death of the Author: Marvel/DC Case Study

New Market Cultures

The Centre Cannot Hold

Endless significations - how do we order narratives?

Does structuralism give us a template?

Is the structuralist system regressive?

Parts and the whole: a hermeneutic web of significance

Death of the Author: Marvel/DC Case Study

New Market Cultures

How wisely did Nature decree

With the same eyes to weep and see!

That, having viewed the object vain,

We might be ready to complain

 

Thus since the self-deluding sight

In a false angle takes each height

These tears, which better measure all,

Like wat'ry lines and plummets fall.

First of all, I didn't say that there was no centre, that we could get along without the centre. I believe that the centre is a function, not a being - a reality, but a function.

-- Jacques Derrida

Vladimir Propp: Morphology of a Folktale

Not a description of the psychology, morality of characters

Developing a notation for plot

Characters become characters only by having a certain function in plot

Function: Pattern

 

Vladimir Propp: Morphology of a Folktale

Each function is a morpheme - a grammatical entity

Rules of combination, syntactic regularities, narrative syntax

Each individual folk tale is analogical to an utterance at the level of the parole

Deprivation - Restoration

 

Sholay

Indian, Bombay 'masala' film

Grammar of Western folktale

Some functions stable across culture and media

Are films the folktales of today? Same meaning in pre-print societies?

Modernity? Is only the technology of presentation changing?

 

Sholay

Chronology of events/Order of presentation of events

Two different orders

Fabula: (L. 'making') - order of events

Syuzhet: Order of representation

Sholay

The narrator changes the story - mediates it

Narrator is the filter through which we know the order of events or the fabula

Propp: If we look beyond the minds of characters - a new mode of narrative analysis is available

Functions rather than individuals

Functions have a differential definition 

Differential is the structure of narrative

Sholay

Who is the hero?

Who is the helper?

Splitting functions

Proppian Spheres of Action: ​dramatic personae

Identification of spheres through action, not meaning

Syntactic arrangement of function and sphere of action

Semantic organisation

Todorov: Equilibrium, Disruption, Recognition, Repair, New Equilibrium

Politics of narrative?

Production of meaning - intent of producer of meaning

Ideology of the narrative

What causes disruption? And protagonist - Binary

Marvel Case Study: What are the elements of the fiction? Multiverse - Time-travel - fantasy: Why so popular?

Emerging area in management studied: brand activism ​(Kotler and Sarkar, 2017)

Ethics for profit? But what happens to narrative ethics?

Narrative: Oppressive and empowering possibilities

Proliferation of superhero content in the market in recent times, signals a ‘possibility relationship’ (Holzkamp 1983; Brockmeier 2009)

Potential to challenge and subsequently dismantle existing power structures (Stacey 2013; Hooks 2008; Kristeva 1982)

 

Possibility of alternative imaginations also bestows in the audience a narrative agency, which thereby creates a narrative expectation from the stories that they consume (Barthes 1957)

 

‘brand activism’ – the emergence of a new audience who are more invested in sociopolitical and cultural habitus (Bourdieu 1977), thereby claiming narrative agency and expressing narrative expectation that challenges existing norms (Champlin et al. 2019; Feng, Chen, and He 2019; Kotler and Sarkar 2017)

 

Fiction ‘cultivates our moral sensibility, our capacity for empathy and solidarity, and our powers of self-invention’ (Meretoja 2017)

Why is time-travel content banned in China?

And why are re-incarnation movies so popular in India?

What's with the ubiquity of superheroes?

 

Marvel - parallel universes - Time travel - why so popular in USA - not in china - banned - communism - dialectical materialism - india - reincarnation - trope of fantasy - a different life - capitalism - individual can do anything - free will - fix time - market

Ustad Bismillah Khan on Music:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Rhpqvg194

What happens when we listen to music?

 

Is music a sign system?

 

Stephen Davies: “Appearance emotionalism” - music expresses emotion without feeling it

 

Listeners’ perceiving associations constitutes the expressiveness of music

 

Music’s expressiveness is response dependent, realised in the listener’s judgement

 

Expressiveness is an objective property of music

 

Jenefer Robinson: Process Theory

 

Process of emotional elicitation begins with “automatic, immediate response that initiates motor and autonomic activity and prepares us for possible action, causing a process of cognition that may enable listeners to name the felt emotion”

 

Emotions may blend and transform into one another

 

 

Structural Features

 

Tempo - Speed or pace

Mode - Type of scale

Loudness - Strength and amplitude of sound

Melody - Musical tonality (harmonies)

Rhythm - Recurring beats or pattern

Major-minor

Music enhances, contrasts, builds conflict

Music helps us associate an emotion with a character

Music signals defeat, triumph

Music trains our brains to respond in a specific way to certain scenes

 

Memory, hence product recall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spB4ezsQ6II (Sony Bravia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVEkx-XFL1A (Kindle Taj)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evVPV2jyX08 (Apple R D)

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lC1lRz5Z_s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQxFL6Ce-XM 

 

2. Nirma

 

3. Kingfisher

 

4. Many more!!!

Music and Market Trends: What kind of music works and why?

Identification, subjectivity and universalisation

Which trends do listeners subscribe to?

Contemporary: TikTok, Reels - 10 s music

Case Study: Genre as overture - Rap

History: 1970s, Bronx ghetto culture (precursors - funk, jazz, blues)

West Coast/East Coast

Late 1990s - Bling era

Protest music

Voice genre

Pop culture sells products

Narrative of desirability

Travis Scott/McD; Cardi B/Reebok/Pepsi; Post Malone/BudLight

The 'tanning' of American psyche

Cultural imagination through narratives

The 21st C 'American Dream'

Niche narrative arc - dominant/mainstream

Analyze three texts:

 

1. Gully Boy 

2. Warli Revolt/Krantikari

3. Mantra 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VmTuStjcbo; https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=KEWqgcUJPlc)

Identify for each video:

 

Three types of audience - their demographics

Three themes in each song

Musical influences

Which emotions do they target?

 

Context of Market: All three released in 2019

Which paroles do they target?

What collective unconscious does it achieve?

What is the narrative of rap in India? How many can you identify?

How does the market use existing tropes to sell their products?

Hip-hop: From niche to mainstream

Which tropes are these?

How is the story adapted to the music?

Performativity of a genre

Is appearance emotionalism applicable to rap?

How do brands leverage appearance emotionalism through music?

How does Puma/Myntra leverage the 'rap' narrative?

Analysing the trend of rap

Process theory: emotion dictates purchase? Of thought, product, idea?

Politics of rap and market - Is it appropriation?

How is one genre an overture? 

Discuss - music genres and customer segments

Genre dictates type: Structures again!

How does understanding genre help in identifying the right story for a market?

How is a genre popularised?

What are the metrics of genre popularisation?

Algorithm of taste 

Constructs of listening

Image economy - Intangible web of significance

Hermeneutic analysis of markets

What is the sound of a certain market? 

Which styles work where? And how?

The 'Pasoori' phenomenon (400 mn YT; Times 100)

Distinctions - popular/mainstream/niche

Leveraging story through sound: Hellblade 

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Ninja Theory, 2017)

'Indie' AAA genre 

Norse lore, Celtic culture

500K sales in 3 months; ~$26 mn revenue

 

Problem: How to tell the story of psychosis?