Claude Lévi-Strauss's Structuralism Analyzed Through Film and Myth

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), the Belgian-born anthropologist and key figure in structuralism, developed a method for analyzing myths as binary oppositions that reveal universal structures of the human mind. After the death of Jean-Paul Sartre in 1981, 600 French scholars voted Lévi-Strauss the most influential intellectual in France. His key works include Tristes Tropiques (1955), The Raw and the Cooked (1964), and The Savage Mind (1962). Influenced by Roman Jakobson's structural linguistics at the New School for Social Research in New York City, Lévi-Strauss applied binary oppositions to myths, arguing they reconcile life's contradictions. The article applies his method to the Western film High Noon (1952) and James Cameron's Titanic (1997), highlighting gender and class binaries. Lévi-Strauss's fieldwork among the Bororo in Brazil and his critique of Western ethnocentrism are noted. Despite criticisms of reductiveness and sketchy fieldwork, structuralism remains a valuable tool for narrative analysis.