Vladimir Propp's Code

The experiences that makes us attach the meanings to it is not limited to events. An experience can also be a narrative we familiarise ourselves with — book we read, a film we watched or a fairytale. And as people, to decode the meaning of those narratives we use a certain universally (some times only geographical universally) understood ’codes’ such as archetypes, languages, structures of narration.
One type of codes explain how a narrative is constructed. A prime example of such a code is the Morphology of the Folktale by Vladimir Propp. Propp, dismissing all matters (e.g. author, historical background) apart from the text’ s components (events, character’s role), distinguishes 31 functions. Those functions are plot elements which are always

Applying functions and complying to Propp’s rules is not found to be as easy as one would expect. From the very beginning one can note that one of the most important scene — Aladdin meets Jasmine in the market— is missing as a function. This scene is crucial for the development of the narrative. When Jafar learns about the meeting it is his motif for the villainy. Moreover, if one shall respect Propp’s “law of sequence” and use the functions in order some other important for the fabula twists are missing as, for example, Aladdin being put in

Instead of using Propp’s Methology word by word recognise that it was made for fairytale. Having been conscious of the limits Propp imposed on himself he adapted the Morphology of the Folktale to be accurate to his own genre in such helping us understand the underling structures in series like CSI, Homicide, White Collar.
He argues that his breakdown is based on Propp’s guidelines. As he explains he uncovered functions “limited in number and relatively stable and constant” after analysing his chosen TV genre. Furthermore, he points that other Proppian rules such as, the helper should not give more than the answer for the question/task he was given, are respected in his TV Police Series Propp based Morphology.
In this case Prop was used to, as Rober Lapsley and Micheal Westlake would write “show that it was possible to analyse the production of meaning at a macro