10.57647/

Watching Film Through Literary Theories: A Structuralist Reading of Rocky, Kickboxer, Kill Bill I & II, and Southpaw Movies

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  • Zeinab Nasiripour*1,
  1. Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, Tehran Branch, University of Tehran, Tehran,

Published in Issue 2024-01-01

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Nasiripour, Z. (2024). Watching Film Through Literary Theories: A Structuralist Reading of Rocky, Kickboxer, Kill Bill I & II, and Southpaw Movies. Journal of New Trends in English Language Learning (JNTELL), 3(3). https://doi.org/10.57647/
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Abstract

Structuralist film theory focuses on how the meaning is conveyed through films, while the
significant originates from the elements lying in the "system" or "structure" of a movie.
Tzvetan Todorov introduced his narrative theory consisting of five main steps: equilibrium
(happy beginning), a disruption (a problem comes up), realization (chaos), restored order
(repair the damage), equilibrium again (normality). As Scholes noted that the study of literature
must involve the study of communicative process in general—or semiotics—and in particular
the development of the codes that govern the production and interpretation of the major kinds
of literature, and the subcodes that inform the various genres that have developed in the course
of literary history. This paper aims to investigate the narrative module, and the structure of
action films finding some of the verbal and non-verbal codes in Rocky, Kickboxer, Kill Bill I
& II, and Southpaw movies.

Keywords

  • Structuralism,
  • Tzvetan Todorov’s Theory,
  • Semiotics,
  • Action Films,
  • Narratology
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