Binary Opposition theory

This theory was developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist who lived through the 1900's. He believed that the way people understood words was not so much dependent on the meaning of the word itself but was more to do with the understanding and acknowledgement of a specific word and its opposite. Strauss viewed Myths as a kind of speech, and in this speech, an unidentified language could be uncovered, identified and understood. He wanted to discover the conditions he needed to be under and the key concepts that were paramount in the creation of a myth. This theory is an attempt to explain how old tales that have become so skewed and distorted over time, from their original meaning but still remain similar and almost identical across a range of different cultures. According to Strauss there is no single origin or interpretation of a myth that is correct but they are all a part of the same dialect.

How Strauss discovered binary opposites  

Strauss broke different versions/adaptations of a myth down into sentences, containing a relation between the function and subjects. If sentences had the same function they were assigned the same number and put together and the outcomes were known as mythemes. He discovered from this that myths consisted of binary oppositions. He believed human minds thought primarily in these oppositions and it is what made meaning possible. 

Examples of this theory are:

• The upper class and lower class
• Black and white
• Homosexual and heterosexual
• North and south

However, the critics of this theory argue that although there are opposites there is also middle ground between every opposite. For the upper and lower class the middle ground is middle class, for black and white there is grey. The existence of binary opposites is said to create balance in the world, but whether or not the world is balanced is a completely different argument. 

There are many binary opposites within the horror genre, which is why it is important we implement this into our film. A few examples of binary opposites in horror films are: the rational survivor who is calm and collective versus the irrational survivor that is distraught and outspoken causing disarray amongst other survivors; the sane victim and the insane antagonist and finally supernatural and human.