Narrative - Neale

Mise-en-scene:

• Set - Langley (CIA Base)
• Props - Guns, bombs, knives
• Costumes - Military uniforms

Typical narrative:

• Binary oppositions - bad guy/good guy
• Police and terrorists
• Political/military and psychological drama, not just crime

Generic/Stock Characters:

• Female lead who has bi-polar disorder

Themes:

• Police vs criminals

Evaluate the relevance of Neale's theory to long term television drama (Homeland).

Neale's narrative theory relates to Homeland in terms of the Mise-en-scene, narrative, characters and themes. Neale's theory argues that genre is a process of which conventions and generic codes are shared by producers and audiences through repetition in media products.

The mise-en-scene in Homelands supports the theory of repetition as they have used very conventional props, costumes and set designs for a crime drama, for example the set is at Langley, the CIA base, the props they use are guns, bombs and knives and the costumes are military uniforms, these are all things that are repeated throughout different crime dramas and is what an audience who enjoy crime dramas would expect and want to see when they watch something like Homeland.

Homelands narrative also follows crime drama conventions, In the narrative of the show they have binary oppositions such as a good guy and a bad guy have police and terrorists, however in Homelands it links in other sub-genres for example it is also a political, military and psychological drama, not just crime. Many other crime dramas also use political and other sub genres into the crime aspect so it is relevant to the time of which it was released. This relates to Neale's theory as it is common to link in other sub-genres into a crime drama like they have in Homelands.

The themes linked in to Homeland are also conventional because in all crime dramas there is usually a good guy and a bad guy (police vs criminal) and they usually explore binary oppositions such as good vs evil so this heavily supports Neale's repetition theory.

The characters in Homelands also support Neale's idea of repetition as there are very generic characters such as detectives, police, security and criminals which is very conventional for a crime drama, however the lead character in Homeland shows subversion to conventions as she is a female working for the CIA with 
bi-polar disorder which is not a common thing for a lead or as a character at all in the crime genre of TV dramas and therefore this disrupts Neale's theory.

Although Homeland is conventional it does have some different aspects in it as otherwise the audience are likely to not watch it as they won't want to watch a completely generic storyline in every crime drama, so the main thing that makes Homeland different is there being a female lead with bi-polar disorder this makes the story more exciting for the audience as none of her colleagues know about this.