Binary Opposition

Levi Strauss was a French anthropologist who lived in the early 1900's. He believed that the way we understand certain words depends not so much on any meaning they themselves directly contain, but much more by our understanding of the difference between the word and its 'opposite' or, as he  called it 'binary opposites'


Our understanding of the word 'evil' depends on the difference between that and the opposing word 'good'. Within the media field, binary oppositions are used very frequently in films, especially in the horror genre. Many horror films include sets f binary oppositions in their plots.
Some examples that regularly get used in the horror genre are:

• Sane & Insane

• Rational & Irrational

• Human & Supernatural