EVALUATION Q1b: Representations

EVALUATION Q1b - HOW DOES IT REPRESENT SOCIAL GROUPS OR ISSUES?
In this post I will be giving many examples of representations in existing films in the horror slasher genre and in general genre films and referencing how they have influenced my media product. 

General Genre Representations

GENDER

Common stereotypes of gender are the ultra feminine female and the ultra masculine male. These are binary opposites. The ultra feminine female stereotypically likes pink, has long hair, wears make up, handbags, skirts, high heels. The ultra masculine male stereotypically likes blue, wears trousers, has short hair, is muscular, likes cars, football, video games etc... 

SEXUALITY 
I looked at many different film examples and I discovered that in the majority of films I looked at the characters in it are heterosexual. I looked at the films Bridget Jones's Diary, The Girl On The Train, Wild Child and the main characters in these films are heterosexual. Although, the one film example that I did look at that didn't have only heterosexual characters was The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, this film's second main protagonist is bisexual (Lisabeth Salander - Rooney Mara). The main protagonist however is heterosexual (Blomkvist - Daniel Craig). Also, I looked into an america TV program called Orange Is The New Black, in this TV show, there are many bisexual, homosexual, transgender and heterosexual characters. This show explores the issues around homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender and gender.

Slasher Genre Representations
Characters:
The slasher genre tackles the issues of teenage drinking, sex and use off drugs. The slasher genre seems to symbolise the idea that teenagers who immoral, reckless things should get punished by being stabbed to death. But the teenagers who don't break these rules and who are resourceful and pure manage to survive and not get punished. This is where the idea of the 'scream queen' and 'final girl' comes from. 

The 'scream queen' is the teenager who breaks the rules, is sexually active, drinks alcohol, takes drugs, is relatable, popular and attractive. This is very relatable to normal teenagers. 

The 'final girl' on the other hand, is not that relatable to normal teenagers, she is more of an outsider and nerdy.

The 'killer' in slasher genre films commonly has a masked identity and a psychological problem which leads to their motives of killing. 

The phalic object of the knife is a symbol of rape. Mulvey stated that the knife (the idea of slashing) is a symbol of rape. The fact that the killer is male and the scream queen is usually an attractive, sexually active female this portrays the idea that the sexually revealing, sexually active, seductive female gets raped over the reserved, not sexually active, respectable female who puts her time into being resourceful and knowledgable instead of partying and having sex. The knife is punishing females who are sexually active to say that they should keep themselves pure, respectable and conserved to stay safe from rape. You can also somewhat put this idea to the 'scream king' also. The 'scream king' is usually wearing revealing clothes and shown to be sexually active also, connoting that in slasher films you will be punished for having sex and being seductive no matter what gender you are.

Slasher Film Examples
Halloween:
Final Girl - Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Scream:
Final Girl - Sidney Prescott

Scream Queen - Casey Becker

Scream 2:
Final Girl - Sidney Prescott
Scream Queen - Maureen Evans
Scream King - Phil Stevens

Bride Of Chucky:
Final Girl - Jade

Psycho:
Scream Queen - Marion Crane (Janet Leigh)

My Film Opening

Dyer
A man named Dyer, created the idea of stereotypes. Stereotypes are a way of reinforcing differences, and representing these differences as natural.

Link to my Film Opening: 
I have included many different stereotypes in my film opening that are stereotypical of the slasher horror genre such as the scream queen, final girl, killer and stereotypical teenagers. The scream queen is stereotypically attractive, dumb, immoral and sexually active. The final girl is stereotypically resourceful, innocent, clever, unattractive and down to earth. The killer is stereotypically male, anonymous, evil, dark, wearing all black and has a weapon like a knife or slashing object. Also, teenagers in slasher horror films are usually sexually active, drink alcohol, abuse drugs and do teenage things such as watch movies with popcorn or go to the cinema or go out to party. I have included many of these stereotypes in my film opening, but I have adapted these stereotypes to make countertypes. I chose to use a male for the scream queen therefore making the scream queen a scream king. Also, my killer is a little bit countertypical too, by the fact that she is female but other than that she is a very stereotypical killer with a slashing object (knife). 

Gramsci
When a cultural value is accepted as 'common sense' and unquestionable it has attained hegemonic status. Gramsci saw soft power as important as hard power - society can be controlled through culture as much as through military or police repression.

Levi-Strauss' Binary Opposition 
The juxtaposition of the refined Voldemort and Harry Potter is an example of juxtaposition and binary opposition. Any mutually exclusive pair form a binary opposition (male/female, rich/poor, rural/urban). Binary opposites are a key device for generating conflict and thus drama. When placed together, we can talk of binary opposites being juxtaposed - paired together to emphasise the contrast; their difference.

Link to my Film Opening:
I have included binary opposites in my film opening between the killer and the female rape victim because this is the same person (Jennifer) but ever since she was raped she changed into her binary opposite (gothic, dark, evil, angry). She used to be feminine, youthful, happy and a relatable teenager. 

Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze Theory' 
The male gaze theory happens when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man e.g. having shots of the curves of a woman's body.

Link to my Film Opening:
I have applied this theory into my film opening through the female killer, Jennifer. The shots that I used to show her, show mainly her body parts (legs, mouth, body and feet). I have used these shots to attract a stronger male audience because the only reason males would watch my film is because of the action and gore and the primary audience is mainly females actually, because the main protagonist is female and the killer is female so I need something else to attract a more male audience too to make the primary audience both equally males and females. 

Carole Clover's challenge 
Clover had to reassess her feminist condemnation of horror films. She pointed out that the hero of most horror films is actually female. The more passive female characters are indeed exploitative 'scream queens', featured and cast for their bodies rather than important narrative roles, but that the survivor was typically an unglamorous, smart and resourceful 'final girl'. Laurie Strode from John Carpenter's 'Halloween', 1978, is the perfect example of the final girl archetype.
Marylin Monroe is the archetypal 'dumb blond'.

The 3 B's
Berger
A male academic reinforced Mulvey's arguments:
"Men act and women appear"
"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at."
"Women are aware of being seen by a male spectator."

Butler
A queer theorist, Butler argues that the gender binary itself is a means of control and artificial. She argues that there is no natural male or female way of being, rather we are conditioned or socialised to behave in a conventionally male or female way. Constant media exposure to normative representation is a major means of this. Her 'performativity of gender' theory argues that we actually perform gender, a role we haven't learnt.

Baudrillard 

Baudrillard Society is so reliant on representations we have lost contact with the real. This leads to hyper-reality. Baudrillard, a french postmodern philosopher, argued that Disneyland is the REAL America. He claims that media domination is now so profound that we cannot perceive anything without unconsciously processing signifiers we've already encountered through our media exposure. He labels media representations of reality as simulacra.

SOCIAL GROUPS 
There are a lot of different social groups that exist in all genres of film. Some of these include:

• Age 
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Ethnicity 
• Homosexuality
• Disability

The representations and use of stereotypes in a film are factors that decide which audience a film is targeted at. The audience could be a niche audience e.g. a film about minorities in the north of England (social realism genre) - this is the case for the film I, Daniel Blake. Another type of audience could be mass audience when a film is aimed at a larger audience with a wide release. An example of this would be the rom-com genre films produced by subsidiary of Universal, Working Title, who has produced many films such as Bridget Jones's Diary, Love Actually, Atonement, Wild Child and About A Boy that have had a wide release. 

AGE

For my film, my target audience is 15-24 year olds, because it is a horror slasher genre film. The reason why the target audience is 15-24 is because my film includes teenage cast/characters. People from this age group will be able to relate to these characters. The final girl that I chose to use in my film is somewhat a countertype of the stereotypical final girl because she is attractive, wears make up and is not a virgin. I wanted to use countertypes in my film opening because I don't like the normative representations in slasher films. But on the other hand, she does have some traits that are typical for the stereotypical final girl such as being a brunette, being clever, knowledgable and resourceful. 

GENDER

The social group that my media product attracts is both a male and female audience. When doing research into the slasher horror genre, I looked at a past student's blog, Sophie Rasmussen, and found some statistics from a British Film Institute from 2012, which showed me that the amount of males and females under the age of 35 watch horror films is almost the same, this connotes that the audience for horror is both females and males. 

I think that these statistics are the way they are because in slasher films, there is a strong female main protagonist that attracts a strong female audience and the horror, gore and action that is present in slashers attracts a strong male audience.

ETHINICITY 

In my film opening, I contained mainly just caucasian characters, there was one character that was Indonesian but other than that all the characters were caucasian. Although, if I was making an entire film of this film opening, I would definitely want to include some non-caucasian characters for sure. 

SEXUALITY 
In some ways my film represents a certain aspect of sexuality, because the killer's weapon is a knife. The knife is considered to be a phallic object because it connotes sexual assault. So, the fact that the female killer in my film killed the boy who raped her before, with a knife, connotes that she is getting revenge on him by doing exactly what he did to her, rape. But I like the fact that in my film, a female is using the phallic knife object giving out a message that men can get raped too.

MY CHARACTERS:
Jennifer
This character is the female rape victim. I was influenced by the films Jennifer's Body and I Spit On Your Grave to call the female main character Jennifer. The main female character in I Spit On Your Grave is called Jennifer, she gets revenge on all the men who raped her, one by one. 

With my killer, her motives are the rape. The fact that she was raped has completely traumatised her. She is extremely angry so she wants revenge on the two men that raped her, and all the people who are friends/girlfriends with them. You don't really see her face at all in the film opening accept in the lair, when you see her mouth when she licks the knife, it builds narrative enigma by not showing her face. The 'scream king' is 17 and this is anchored by the clothes that he is wearing, the scream king usually wears little clothing that is revealing.

Brad Storch

This character is one of the rapists in the rape chase scene at the start of my film opening. He wears black jeans, a hoodie, a green t shirt and black boots. He also has a stubble which has negative connotations of antagonist.

This character is another one of the rapists who rapes Jennifer in the first scene of my film opening. He is the leader out of the two rapists, so Jennifer targets him first.

Prelim Evaluation

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

After this exercise Richard and I learnt many skills from filming under pressure.
We filmed the whole exercise handheld. Also, we learned how to apply the 180 degree rule while filming, to use continuity editing when editing the final product and to film and edit shot reverse shots.
So, the three important, main things we learnt were:

• Applying the 180 degree rule
• Using continuity editing and filming shots that would allow us to apply this continuity editing in the editing process.
• Filming and editing in shot reverse shots.

This was a basic exercise that was trying to get us started with using technology such as the Sony A58 camera and using Final Cut Pro X for the first time and applying basic skills of editing.

Microdrama Evaluation

Richard and I were also under pressure for filming this. We filmed the entire thing on one evening. We had to come up with a narrative that was based around Todorov's narrative theory and Barthes' narrative enigma theory. Also, we had to include Propp's 7 character archetype theory, so we had many different characters:

PROPP'S SEVEN CHARACTERS

1. The Hero - (Evie) Is the protagonist and goes on a mission to save the dog - succeeds.

2. The Villain - (Richard) struggles against the hero
In here our villain (or antagonist) struggles to get the dog back from the heroine. He succeeds at first, but ultimately fails when the hero and the helper come to save the dog.

3. The Prize - (Alfie, the dog) The hero deserves it throughout the story.

4. The False Hero - (Evie's 'sister') She tries to take all the credit for saving the dog and says the dog is hers.

5. The Dispatcher - (Fred)

6. The Donor  - (Fred) Gives the map (magical object) to the hero.

7. The Helper - (Fred) He helps the hero find/save the dog.

In terms of stereotypes the prize is usually a helpless princess. Also a young girl facing up to a sinister adult man (villain) is a common convention of the horror genre.

TODOROV’S FIVE-PART NARRATIVE THEORY

1 .    A state of equilibrium at the outset
- The young female protagonist is coming home from school, which is the normal routine for her

2 .    A disruption of the equilibrium by some action
- The stray dog suddenly appears at the outset, and this happy state is disrupted by  the villain stealing the dog

3.    A recognition that there has been a disruption
- The girl soon realizes and the dog has gone missing, and deduces from the writing on the map that someone must have taken it.

4.    An attempt to repair the disruption
- Dispatched by the father/donor, the heroine goes with her father to save the dog from an unknown thief

5.    A reinstatement of the equilibrium
- After having saved the dog, and a clash with the step-sister, the heroine has regained her dog and the text ends with a happy family dinner (for most of the family), restoring the order of things.

BARTHES’ NARRATIVE ENIGMA THEORY

We included Barthes' narrative enigma in the opening of the short film. So, when we see the main protagonist, Evie, walking home from school, she hasn't provided any dialogue to provide exposition for the audience, so the audience is wondering who this girl is, what she is doing and where she's from etc... The clothes she is wearing do give some exposition to the audience about the age of her and the gender she is.

   After this exercise, Richard and I learned:

 1. How to include different narrative theories in a short film. (Propp's 7 recurring character archetypes, Todorov's 5-part narrative theory, Barthes' narrative Enigma).

   2. How to think under pressure, as producers would who have to make TV programs 3 times week e.g. Eastenders.

   3. Enforcing continuity editing, 180 degree rule, match on action shots, shot reverse shots and just achieving general verisimilitude throughout the short film.
   4. More editing skills such as adding transitions (ellipsis), using special effects, using coloured filters. We did make some other cuts that had special effects on, just to experiment with what other effects would look like.