Structuralism – Claude Levi-Strauss

Levi-Strauss theory of Structuralism applied

The purpose of the extract from Shaolin Soccer, 2001, is to create comedic relief for the audience. Character oppositions are used at the beginning of the clip to deny audience expectations, where a player from the white team mocks the opposing yellow team. The yellow team players are 'outside of the norm' for soccer players and look disconnected as a team; one is smoking, some are sheepishly standing there, and another is smiling without break. The laughter of confidence exhibited by the white team player towards these shots of the yellow team players' awkwardness and peculiarity, cause the audience to develop preconceptions about the players' ability to win the game. The function of binary opposition in this context is to create identifiable character types to clash the white and yellow teams, which is done by the humorous and unserious impression the yellow team presents and the overconfident, bullying persona of the white team. This evolves to be the exact opposite as the yellow team turns out to be exaggeratedly talented — winning by forty goals, and with some of the white team players being flung into the goalie, adding ironic comedy intended by the clip.

Still image from Shaolin Soccer, 2001, showing the white team that was expected to win easily against the yellow team (character oppositions), being kicked into the goalie net by the yellow players. 

More Levi-Strauss theory of Structuralism in film

The motivation of the extract from They Live, 1988, is to depict the message behind the man's environment between drastically different when the glasses are on and off. When the glasses are on, the world is bleak and plastered with unemotional, pressuring messages. Meaning is conveyed by the scene through stylistic opposition contrasting a black-and-white world with the colorful world society he knows to exist without the glasses on. The alternate version of his world seems to run on greed for profit and the aims of the government openly, with each page of the magazines stating a phrase such as 'obey' and 'marry and reproduce', while noticing these goals in the world humanity knows, is not the easiest to differentiate when reading an advertisement slogan. The film also appears to be a genre-driven binary opposition, a science fiction genre presenting the world (humanity) as being easily manipulated by media's self-seeking motivations (signs, magazines, stores). The function of these binary oppositions in this case is to clearly explain ideas learned of the world from having the glasses on compared to off. The idea derived from the clip is that every form of media has a double meaning people do not recognize at first glance and that perhaps not everyone is who they appear to be.

Still image from They Live, 1988, of stylistic oppression used for the alternate, 'glasses on' world to show the real intention behind the previous advertisement's words.