Vladmir theory

Vladmir theory. 

Vladimir Propp's narrative theory was created in the early twentieth Century. It involved the analysis of Russian folk tales, breaking them down into their simplest and irreducible narrative forms. After analysing 100 folk tales, he discovered that all of the evident characters could be categorised into 8 broad types of different characters:

1. The Villain - Struggles against the hero.

2. The Dispatcher - Character who informs the hero on lack and sends him on his quest.

3. The (magical) Helper - Helps hero during quest.

4. The Princess/Prize - Hero deserves to marry her, but cannot throughout the film because of the villain, often the quest is ended with the Hero and the Princess getting married.

5. Her Father - Gives Hero task and identifies False Hero, Propp noted that the Princess and the Father cannot be clearly distinguished.

6. The Donor - Prepares the Hero

7. The Hero or Victim/ Seeker Hero - Reacts to the donor and gets married to the Princess

8. False Hero - In order to marry the Princess, he takes credit for the Heroes actions to impress her.

Despite clearly stating the different categories of characters found in tales, Propp did not state that these had to apply to every one separate character; the villain could also be the father etc. Using Propp's theory, when a character has been correctly identified within a story, it is always predictable to what that character will do throughout, as each character has a sphere of action. After the initial situation is depicted, any story can be broken down into 31 different functional sections that supposedly incorporated all of the plot components that a story needed. According to Propp, a cohesive story can be created by the use of these 31 functional sections.

This can be applied to a horror movie as the character types are ones which fit into the general stereotypical movie.