Binary Opposites and Structuralism....

Binary opposites are the groups, as humans, we like to put things in.... eg postive and negative, good and evil etc.

As Human's we like to see things as just black and white. There is no middle ground. In a film a hero must be a hero he must be purely good - like Superman for example. He is not allowed to have a dark side because he is a hero he ultimately belongs on the good side.

Culture feeds the structuralism on this society we live in. We think that people, objects, characters, etc have to be categorised. But life isn't like that. Characters in films are not like that as much as we want them to be.

Take Shrek.... we know he is the hero of the plot... but we also know he is an Ogre that eats people, he is grumpy and bad tempered. He depicts both set's of binary opposites between humans and ogres. He is in the middle ground.

Human                 Ogre
Happy                  Angry
Clean                    Dirty
Houses                Tree Stump
Water                   Mud
Community         Alone

But Shrek over steps these boundaries and becomes immersed in the middle of these groups as he begins to inhabit both qualities.