Essay to examine the narrative structures of two broadcast fiction texts.

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Daniel Nixey 12s

Essay to examine the narrative structures of two broadcast fiction texts

To complete this essay I will use the content from within the American comedy Friends and the English mocu-mentary The Office.

To start the storylines of friends are usual utopian and are always set in a very calm equilibrium at the start and the end of the show/series.  It uses very basic narrative structure with equilibrium ---> disequilibrium---->new equilibrium, and uses this during most of the series.  It does this so that it can appeal to a large mass audience to create a profit from the highly expensive studio sets.

On the other hand the office does not need to do this, as it was cheap to make as it was created on location, and because of this uses a vastly different narrative structure.  It uses a realistic storyline were nothings perfect, and it shows the negatives about life not just the positives, and as it is shot as a documentary it adds to the realism of the program creating more interest from other audiences (such as female).  

What’s similar about the two programs is that they both use enigma codes to good effect to keep the audiences interest during not only an episode but also a whole series, it is also able to do this simile by never resolving all of the characters goals.  Firstly they both use enigma codes that have an element of romance in, which is conventional for Friends but not so conventional for The Office.  For example in one of the series of friends they use the enigma code of will Joey & Rachel get together, simile The Office uses the enigma code of will Tim and Dawn get together, this is conventional for Friends as it is mainly female orientated but not so for The Office as it seems to be mainly aimed at the male audience, it has done this so that it can also create a larger audience. What’s more is the same is that they both use a mixture of closure and continuing narrative plots. Furthermore both programs use binary opposites to add interest to them, as the audience can see good prevail against evil, an example of this is in The Office of the Swindon branch versus the Slough branch.

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Also Friends and The Office use dramatic irony and hyperbolic characters just to add that much more interest need to entertain the audience.  For example the hyperbolic characters like Joey (Italian) and Phoebe (blond), these two characters add a lot of humor to Friends.

Something that’s seems to be extremely different between the two narrative structures is how it deals with ethnic issues, with Friends mainly orientated around the white population, and to a complete contrast we have The Office touching on the issues a few times each episode whether it is to do with a ethnic character ...

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