The Game

I and my partner Kabir decided to do our narrative based on football. The protagonist within the story is someone called Conrad Garcia. Who is half English and half Spanish. Conrad Garcia is a footballer who plays for Barnsley in the championship. This is when the equilibrium is put in place. It is the Championship playoff final and the winner of the match will get promoted into the Premiership. Unfortunately Barnsley lost on penalties, however Conrad who is a striker did score a goal during the match and converted his penalty and was also named man of the match. Due to his performance in the final and throughout the whole season a host of premier league clubs were tracking him when eventually Tottenham signed him for 7 million pounds. It was middle of the season and Conrad hadn’t played many games due to the quality of players within the Tottenham squad. Tottenham were playing a home match against Manchester United they were losing 1-0. Andre Vilas Boas the Tottenham manager needed to make a substitution quickly. He decided to take their star striker Soldado off and bring on Conrad, the Tottenham fans were booing and getting very abusive.. Until the 90^th minute where Conrad was fed in one on one he shoots he scores!

That one goal changed his life completely, now Conrad would get noticed everywhere he goes, sponsorship deals you name it. But more importantly he was starting instead of Soldado the best player at the club. Due to the fame and his big step up Conrad wanted a new contract worth a lot of money, however his agent who had been his agent since he first started playing football professionally told him he should wait. Conrad didn’t like what his agent had to say and this resulted in conflict between the pair and eventually he sacked him and hired a new well known agent, who was also the agent of Soldados. The disequilibrium is now being introduced. Has Conrad has with many premier league footballers personal life was beginning to take a toll on his image has he was always partying and cheated on his girlfriend who he had been with from a young age. He got the lucrative contract he wanted but at a cost has he had lost all his friends and lost respect from the people closest to him. You could see this wasn’t affecting him on the pitch has he was still scoring goals. However Soldado didn’t like Conrad due to him taking his place in the team and had a word with his agent, has Soldado was the agents’ favourite client he decided to help Soldado. It was the penultimate weekend of the premier league and Tottenham were going for 4^th place, they were up against Sunderland. Lee Cattermole another one of this mysterious agents clients was playing. During the match you could see Cattermole was man marking Conrad and towards the end he had fouled and injured Conrad this caused a fight between the two payers causing Conrad to get sent off and also injured for a large amount of time. Cattermole then looked to the stands where the agent was and winked and just Conrads luck his replacement Soldado scored the winner.

After long rehab, Conrad decided to try fix things up with the people closest to him, this worked and he eventually re hired his ex agent and forced a move away from Tottenham and joined Arsenal their rivals.. His career was back on track but for how long...

Villain: New agent

Donor: Mum

Helper: Close friends/ girlfriend/ old agent

Princess: Girlfriend

Dispatcher: Mum

Hero: Conrad Garcia

False Hero: New team mates and agent

Good Vs Bad

Hope Vs Fate

Top Boy

I have decided to analyse episode 4 of series 2 of the street/crime series which is ‘Top Boy’. To summarise what happened in the final episode of series 2 of Top Boy is that Dushane who is the protagonist throughout the whole of the series gets caught up into many situations. One of those situations is where he is trying to plead not guilty to killing someone as well has helping a friend whose son is getting bullied by a man from China. Dushane has an uneasy friendship and partnership with a former close friend Sully but in this episode they join forces to get money off of these Albanians who are said to be everyone’s rivals. Within all of this Dushane whose girlfriend is a solicitor gets caught up in Dushanes world has to try and protect Dushane from the police. By this she could be risking her job eventually Dushane and Sully get the money they want but at the end one of Dushanes so called apprentices gets killed by the Albanians by getting thrown off the top of the flats.

Theories and codes

Throughout the episode you could see many action codes developing but the main action code was towards the end of the episode in which Michael (the young kid who eventually gets killed) was in the room with the Albanians but they didn't know he was there, you could sense that something was going to happen has they were searching around the house until Michael ran out to try and protect Dushane from he got thrown off the flats balcony. This then progressed has the Albanians found out where Dushane was and tried shooting him.

I’d say that the storyline goes in a non linear narrative where things seem to not go in order. Has it was the last episode of the series you would expect a happy ending after where Dushane and Sully get their money back from the Albanians but as we know it doesn’t end there and Michael eventually dies and Dushanes life hangs in the balance. This is the opposite to a linear narrative where the conflict and problem has already occurred and everything is over with. This then in turn creates an enigma has it has created mystery of what is going to happen next. You could also say that a multi strand narrative is being done in the Top Boy episode has Dushane just doesn’t have the Albanians to consider has he also has that ‘China man’ to deal with and also his case against Kumali who he killed but yet is pleading not guilty. This could be a multi strand narrative however it is all to do with one person so at the same time it might not be.

Todorovs theory includes equilibrium, disequilibrium and a new equilibrium. But this doesn’t go to plan in Top Boy has there is really no equilibrium taking place due to the many problems Dushane was encountering. But there were many disequilibriums which were taking which I have explained: Albanians, China man, court case. Throughout these events Dushane took part in many conflicts affecting the lives of his closest friends as well has his girlfriend and family. A new equilibrium does take place for a short while where Dushane gets his money back from the Albanians however this is short lived due to his former best mate Sully saying he doesn’t want to come back to Dushanes ‘gang’ and then when the Albanians kill Michael which sends out a message to him that they are coming for him.

Propps theory includes the role of characters within story lines. There are many villains within Top Boy you could say that the Albanians are for what they did to Dushanes money, the police for causing chaos for Dushane and his ‘gang’ you could even say Dushane was a villain in many ways has he broke the law many times. There are many helpers within Top Boy also, Sully for one who helps Dushane get his money back and his girlfriend also who helps his case and fights for him many times. The donor could be Michael has he helps Dushane before he dies by shouting Dushanes name and therefore risking his own life. The princess in this storyline could be Ra’nell and Gem who get saved by Gems dad has the China man was doing bad stuff towards the kids. So you could say they got saved by a so called hero even though he stabbed him. The dispatcher would be Ra’nells mum who gives Dushane the task of sorting out the China man even though Gems dad got there first. The hero you could say was Gems dad for saving the kids but at a price and also Dushane for getting his money back for him and his ‘gang’. The false hero could be Dushane has you could say he is doing all of this stuff just for himself for e.g. having the solicitor has his girlfriend just so it helps him stay out of prison also calling back Sully to help get his money back and not really care for him. But you could also say Michael was the false hero has in the other episodes he told the police about what Dushane had done to kill Kumali (their so called rivals), but he also helped Dushane at the end by shouting out his name to warn him the Albanians were there and by doing so got killed.