Thursday, 2 October 2014

To what extent does your thriller conform to the structures of Representation?

Our thriller plot was that the computer hacker has something valuable that the killer wants, for example government information on a USB stick. In order to get this, the killer kills the computer hacker. The sub-genre of our thriller can be classed as a crime-thriller, however it can be also classed as a mystery and conspiracy thriller too. The representation theories that I will include is Levi-Strauss and Dyer's definition of representation, Gauntlett's theory of Marxism, Mulvey's theory of Feminism, Strinati and Baudrillard's theory of Post-modernism and Reality and Lippmann's, Klapp's, Dyer's and Perkin's theory of Stereotypes. 

Representation is the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular perspective. Levi-Strauss believed that all representations have ideologies behind them. These can be encoded into texts and others are left out in order to give preferred representation. Richard Dyer believed that "How we are seen determines how we are treated, how we treat other is based on how we see them. How we see them comes from representation". We used representation in our thriller because we showed the killer with black gloves and a gun, and we showed the computer hacker with glasses and a briefcase. This reinforced the representation of their characters. However, the killer was dressed with a tie (smart) which challenges the representation of hired killers as assasins and ninjas because he has become well dressed for the job. This leaves out information about the killer because he's not stereotypically dressed head to toe in black. 

Marxism is circulating and reinforcing dominant ideologies and not often undermining and challenging these ideologies. David Gauntlett argues that 'identities are not 'given' but constructed and negotiated'. He also argues that 'identity is complicated. Everybody thinks they've got one. Artists play with the idea of identity in modern society'. In our opening titles we don''t use Marxism because we don't show the characters in any other role than their stock characters as Hero and Villain. For example, the killer isn't seen in any other light because he is shown as a killer and thats it. In other circumstances, he is just doing his job and he has no vendetta against the computer, he was hired by the organisation that has a vendetta against him. However, our thriller does show other sides to characters than perceived because in terms of lighting, the killer is seen in the same lighting as the computer hacker at times. This is challenging the stock characters of Hero Vs Villain because they are seen on the same level. This is because they both have the same morals. They do something illegal to get a gain from it. 

Laura Mulvey is known for arguing that the dominant point of view is masculine. The female body is displayed for the male gaze in order to provide erotic pleasure for the male (vouyerism). Our thriller doesn’t include vouyerism because it hasn’t been sexualised in any way. Even if female characters did feature in our thriller, they wouldn’t have been objectified by the camera lens because that wasn’t the idea for our thriller. It is about a conspiracy from the organisation that doesn’t involve a masculine POV but rather a Universal POV. However, you could say that the gun close-up at the end of our thriller aimed at the computer hacker from the killer, could be seen as phallic imagery. This would mean that our thriller shows female gaze instead of male gaze because the men are being objectified in front of the camera lens.

Dominic Strinati believed that reality is now only definable in terms of the reflections in the mirror. Baudrillard believed that the idea of ‘truth’ needs to be deconstructed so that dominant ideas can be challenged. He also believed that we live in a society of simulacra - simulations of reality that replace the real. I would say that we used the idea that conspiracy’s happen and exist in reality, and channelled it into our thriller. This makes people question what other conspiracy’s are out there and brings it to the surface. However, we don’t stray from dominant roles of good Vs evil  as we know that the computer hacker is good and the killer is evil. This is question as to whether the computer hacker is also evil and the truth isn’t deconstructed.

Walter Lippmann believed the word stereotype wasn’t meant to be negative and was simply meant as a shortcut or ordering process. Orrin E. Klapp defines social types as representations of those who ‘belong’ to society. Those who don’t challenge stereotypes get a stereotype. Richard Dyer suggests Klapp’s distinction can be reworked in terms of the types produced by different social groups according to their sense of who belongs and who doesn’t, who is ‘in’ and who is not. I can apply Dyer's theory of stereotypes to my thriller because we've featured the computer hacker as a hero which influences smarter people like the computer hacker that they have a sense of belonging to a group. Tessa Perkins says that stereotyping is not a simple process. She identified that some of the many ways that stereotypes are assumed to operate aren’t true. She also argues that if stereotypes were always so simple then they would not work culturally over time. In our thriller, we used stereotypical stock characters of Hero Vs Villain. This shows that we didn’t go against the stereotype because the Villain (killer) seeked out to end the Hero’s (computer hacker’s) quest. The killer didn’t change his plot to kill the computer hacker, he continued to do so and finish the job. However, in order to work culturally over time, the computer hacker, who is stereotypically the Hero, doesn’t survive and his life ends at the end of the thriller opening. This grabs the audience and makes them wonder why the information was so important for him to be killed.

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