Manipulation Narrative Structure & Social Issues

How does the manipulation of narrative structure and narrative devices allow filmmakers to comment upon social issues at the time of production?

Manipulating the narrative of a film and using certain devices can reflect society and issues of that time period. This is shown in the film Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Narrative device such as using protagonists and antagonists is a basic device of every film and is shown in IOFBS. Miles the protagonist is the main character who moves the story along and as the audience we are positioned with him and feel empathy towards him. Because of the positioning we are getting the P.O.V from Miles and so we are seeing the view of someone opposing the pod people.These pod people being the antagonists who slowly emerge throughout the film, they are fighting and taking over the protagonist, in this case Miles, world.

The protagonist/antagonist device is also a binary opposition itself, another narrative device films use, of good vs evil and there are many more seen throughout the film. Other examples being humans vs others (aliens). One ideology vs another different ideology. These binary oppositions are representatives of James Mccarthy's communist ideologies and the publics ideologies. Binary oppositions lead to conflict between the two which gives the film purpose and every situation can be reduced down to the two possible outcomes between them. In this case either Mccarthy's followers take over or they are stopped.

Throughout the film we can see slowly the representatives of Mccarthy followers taking over one by one and this leads to what was the public majority becoming now the minority to pod people and as mentioned before the fact it is Miles P.O.V it means we have to either accept his P.O.V of the aliens being the invaders, although they're now the majority, and are taking over or reject his beliefs and take a negotiated reading and that now because the aliens are the majority Miles is disrupting their new society and he is the destructive element and invader.

Each scene in a movie has a cause and effect in the narrative structure. Within IOTBS every scene has an importance and represents a part of the social issue that is James Mccarthy. For example the scene where they find Becky's friend's Uncle has a significance. The fact it starts out blank with no detail and then we see later on how it then looks just like the Uncle is a reflection on how Mccarthy's followers are. It's just an ideology at first but then someone chooses to adopt the belief but they're still the same person and they can not tell that something in their mind has changed, they have every detail but they think different things. It perpetuates the fear of losing identity within the story using the narrative structure.

In conclusion IOTBS uses different devices and changing the narrative to show how James Mccarthy's followers would slowly take over until they were the majority of society and the use of Miles character shows how the minority is powerless in society as they are the unbelieved ideology.