Dawg get your Claude Levi Strauss On :)

Levi-Strauss was known as part of the Structuralist school of thinkers. One of the main parts of his theory was the concept of BINARY OPPOSITIONS

Strauss argued that we can understand many things in this way. This theory is often applied to understanding narrative in cinema. It is a good theory for understanding genre in cinema.

So for example if we were to take the example of The Lost Boys we can explore binaries within the film and then look at how they fit or don't fit when The Lost Boys is placed within the Horror genre and the Vampire sub-genre.

In the Lost Boys we have good forces in opposition to evil forces. There is also the chaos of Santa Carla and the order which the Frogg Bros try to restore. There are other binaries such as those between the lure of the otherness and revulsion at the otherness. There is the also the opposition of Night to Day and between youth and older age.

It is interesting that Binaries compliment Classic Narrative Formula in the sense that CNF is concerned with equilibrium and disequilibrium. For Strauss these are binary oppositions!