Narrative Analysis of 'The Only Exception' by Paramore

The video supports the theory suggested by Tim O'Sullivan (1988) which argues that all media texts tell us some kind of story. 'The Only Exception' music video includes both narrative and performance elements, telling the story of a young women who has seen love negatively effect people close to her (her parents) in the past and so shuts her feelings away. However because of one particular person she is learning to accept love and open herself up to it.
Kate Domaille (2001) suggested that every story can fit into 1 of 8 narrative types, each narrative type being based around an original story. For example, the 'Achilles' -a fatal flaw that leads to the destruction of the previously flawless person. This particular video fits the 'Romeo and Juliet' narrative type (the love story). Love and relationships are often explored within music videos and so this is a fairly stereotypical video, however the twist of rejection of love is something less common and so sets the video apart from others following the 'love' theme. In addition to this the narrative is slightly unconventional, in respect to how the antagonistic character appears to be Hayley in this video, whereas we would expect her to play the protagonistic character.
The video falls into 'narrative clip' and 'performance clip' supporting Sven Carlsson's (1999) findings that all music videos fall into 'rough groups'. This is because we see a clear story and message being created however there are also shots of the band playing and Hayley lip syncing.
In relation to Todorov's theory the video fits his suggested structure however 'the point of equilibrium' is quite short as the complication comes early on. The couple appear to be fairly comfortable and happy together at the beginning of the video (the state of equilibrium), however Hayleys character soon creates a disturbance when she decides to leave her partner with only a note saying 'I'm sorry'. The problem is then solved when the character's experiences throughout the video (such as the wedding scene) persuade her to return to her partner and destroy the note, restoring equilibrium again. This is fairly conventional in relation to 'mainstream' narrative structures and provides us with pleasure as we seek a happy ending.