Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp was born in 1895 and died in 1970 (aged 75), he was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analysed the basic plot components of Russian Folk Tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. There are 31 functions in the narrative structure of a tale according to Vladimir that can be placed into the structure of a story. There are four elements to a story, first, the introduction, second, the the body of the story, third, the donor sequence, fourth, and finally the hero's return.

A music video that I believe follows the theory of Vladimir is "The Hoosiers, Goodbye Mr A", because the video is mainly about hero's and a villain with the four main elements involved. The beginning of the video starts off with a little cartoon sketch in the style of a comic strip identifying the characters and what they are to do with in the song (The introduction), (The body of the story) is shown with the band in a secret HQ underground with the fake hero tied up over what looks like acid and the band saying "Your number is up" and pushing a button, which lowers Mr A towards the acid, next (The donor sequence) is shown first by the papers reading "Who will save the world now?" and the band becoming the hero's by putting the heroic costume from the comic strip on and showing plans of destroying the villain by sending Mr A into space on a rocket, saving a cat from a tree, stopping robbers, being given the key to the city and finally sending Mr A into space tied to a rocket. (The hero's return) is shown by the band in their costume on the front of the Times magazine being regarded as the greatest superheros of our time and by singing off Mr A while he goes into space.

To see the video please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjyxIEtARPQ&ob=av2n