Abigail Williams A2 Media Blog
Friday, 3 May 2013
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Representation of women in horror films
Within
the horror genre, there is a clear difference in the way that men and women are
represented and even though women are all represented in a similar way. Every
so often there will be a women character in a horror film that challenges this
representation and also challenges the theories about women’s representation in
horror films. The four theories that I will focus on when exploring the
representation of women in horror films are The Final Girl theory and the Male Gaze
theory.
Paris Hilton's character |
Laura
Mulvey had a theory about the male gaze and this theory stated the male gaze
occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual
man. It may longer over the curves of a woman’s body, for instance. The woman
is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters
within the film, as well as the spectator who is watching the film. The man
emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is
passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of ‘patriarchal’
order and it is often seen in illusionistic narrative movie. A good example of
this is in the movie House of Wax, the character portrayed by Paris Hilton who
in the film is mainly dressed in revealing clothes for example the pictures
which show her dressed in her underwear and a letterman jacket. The reason for
her being dressed in these types of outfits are because it is said men should
be attracted to her and therefore this is a good selling point for the film
however it doesn’t give a good representation of a woman. This is because it
shows a woman as someone who doesn’t care for dignity and she dresses in
similar ways to this for men and not for themselves. It has also been said that
a lot of men like to watch women getting killed in horror movies rather than
men and so Paris Hilton was a good actress to put in this film. Her character
was killed off by Vincent (the murderer) who throws at pipe at her character which
ultimately impales her through the head.
The
next theory was one by Carol Clover who came up with The Final theory and in
this theory she stated that the final
girl in many of these works show similar characteristics: she is typically virginal
and avoids the vices of other victims such as sex, illegal drug use and the
hedonistic lifestyle. The character will sometimes have a unisex name such as
teddy, Sidney or Billie and it may even be that the final girl has shared some
history with the killer. In the film Scream
there are two characters, one who conforms to the idea of Clover’s theory and
another who challenges the theory. At the beginning of Scream there is a small
scene where Drew Barrymore plays her character Casey Becker and this character comes
across as someone who will fit the final girl theory. This is because she is
dressed so everything is covered and comes across as a very plain looking
student type girl, however the convention of the final girl is broken when she receives
a phone call where she is asked to answer a question in order to save her life,
refusing to answer her parents find her tied to a tree by her neck with slashes
in her chest. By having a character who comes across as a final girl but isn’t a
final girl is a good way of showing the audience that no matter how you dress
or present yourself as a woman the same fate can happen to those who present themselves
differently, and this represents women in a good light through horror because Barrymore’s
character in particular is a positive way to show a teenage girl.
Neve Campbell's character |
The final
girl that conforms to this theory is also in the Scream movies and this
character is Sidney Prescott - played by Neve Campbell. The first sign that this character could be a
final girl is that she has a unisex name and this is a common trait with final
girls. As Sidney’s character possessed other traits of the final girl theory it
was easy for the audience to assume that she would be either the last one to
survive and this is what happened even until the end of the franchise. It turned
out in the third movie of the franchise that she was in fact half brother of Roman
Bridger who was revealed to be the killer. By having the sole survivor for the
movies as the half brother of the killer, it makes it more obvious that this
character is meant to be the final girl as it is often realised that the final
girl has some sort of connection with the killer themselves. The idea of having
someone like Sidney Prescott as a final girl is a good way to represent women
in horror films because her character is someone who is intelligent and
vigilant, and this is what helps her survive as a character.
Another
example of the Final Girl theory is from the movie franchise Alien in which the character Ellen
Ripley was identified as a final girl by Carol Clover herself. Ripley follows
the traits of a final girl in that way that she looks with her masculine hair
style and she is characterised by Clover who said that Ripley’s character had “smartness,
gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual
reluctance” and this was because her character worked as a ship’s mechanic and
she would always reject sexual advances made by other male characters on the
ship. The roles for women in society have changed slightly over the years and
when Alien first come out it would have been different seeing a woman in the environment
that Ripley’s character was in because typically the job that she was taking on
is something that would have been done by a man because it was always seen as
something that was masculine. Also through the way that her character dressed,
it would have been seen as strange because she looked very masculine and as
horror films and other films in general have advanced it is now more popular
for the women in films to be dressed very differently to please the male eye
rather than anything else. And so from all this, I think Ellen Ripley is the
best representation of a final girl because of the time that her character came
about, it would have been seen as a lot different and perhaps this is what has
helped the movies advance in that way that there is a lot more final girls in
movies now than there ever was.
Let the Right One In Film Analysis
Let the Right
One In is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror movie, directed by Tomas Alfredson.
The movie was based on the 2004 novel of the same title written by John Ajvide
Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the movie. The movie was produced by Carl Molinder
and John Nordling and then distributed by Sandrew Metronome. When selecting who
would play the main roles in the movie, it took over a year to for them to be
chosen, in the end two 11 year olds Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson were
chosen for the lead roles. When the movie was released in the UK, it was clear
that these actors were unknown and so this made it more difficult for the movie
to become successful globally. However, following the release of the movie both
actors were commended by movie reviewers and Alfredson himself for their
performances.
According to
Todorov’s theory, a movie should go through certain stages and I think that
this movie in particular does go through these stages however this movie in
particular doesn’t go through the stages too quickly and so it was harder for
the stages to be picked out. To begin the movie, there needs to be an
equilibrium so that the audience can familiarise themselves with the characters
and the settings. For this movie, it begins by showing Oskar – one of the main
characters – being constantly picked on by other boys at his school and then it
shows that when he goes home he sits in the courtyard where he practices knife
attacks on a tree. From this the audience can assume that Oskar is willing to
attack his tormentors but he doesn’t, and they can also assume that Oskar is often
bullied and therefore isn’t going to stand up for himself unless it’s necessary.
The next stage for an event to take place and for this movie there isn’t a
clear event and this is because the other main Eli turns up and other things
start happening such as people dying due to Eli. For example, she’s not very
friendly towards Eli to begin with, she also goes hunting for blood to feed on
and her ‘guardian’ goes hunting for blood for her as well. With all of these
significant things happening in the movie, it then becomes clearer that Eli
herself is the main event and this is because the next stage – which is the
recognition of event – takes place when Oskar realises that Eli isn’t a girl
and in fact she is a vampire. As Oskar learns that she is vampire, he questions
this and when he does she begins to bleed form various places of her body as
though she is proving what she is to him. In almost every movie there is a time
when they try to resolve or do end up resolving the event that has taken place,
however in this movie the audience think that the event has been resolved when
it fact it hasn’t. Oskar see’s Eli for one more night before she moves away and
this is when the audience think that she is gone for good and so from here
there should be a new equilibrium. However as the end of the movie gets closer,
there is a scene in which one of Oskar’s tormenters gets his older brother to
give Oskar an ultimatum – as Oskar doesn’t say anything he gets his head pushed
under the water in the swimming pool and after a minute or so Eli pulls Oskar
from the water and the camera shows three of Oskar’s tormentors have been
slaughtered. This shows the audience that Eli isn’t going away from Oskar
anytime soon but in fact the new equilibrium for this movie is that Oskar doesn’t
have to put up with being bullied anymore. This is shown in the last scene of
the movie where Oskar is sat on a train with a basket in front of him where Eli
is hidden but they are tapping Morse Code to each other through the wood of the
basket.
Audience
expectations are something is taken into consideration when creating a movie
but also when advertising the movie and making it appealing. If the audience
like the advertising they see they will want to the movie, however through the advertising
– especially the trailer – the audience will have built up an idea of what they
want to see in the movie. As this is a movie that is about romance and horror,
the audience will expect both of these genres to made clear when watching the movie,
but as this is a movie based on a vampire, they may expect more horror than
romance to be shown. I think the audience for this movie would expect the movie
to contain a little bit of gore as it does have a vampire as one of the characters,
but there wouldn’t be too more gore to put people off the movie. I also think
it would be expected that some of the characters get killed due to the nature
of the movie. However, because the movie is also a romance, the audience will
be expecting a little bit of romance to be in the movie, but because the two
main characters are so young, I don’t think that the audience would expect a
lot of this.
There aren’t many
scenes in the movie that show the element of romance and I think that this is
because the characters are so young in the movie. There is one scene where the
two characters just sleep in the same bed and they also hug in various scenes
but that is about as romantic as the movies gets, although the audience do know
how the two characters feel about each other. As a lot of the movie is based more
upon the horror elements in the movie, it means that there are more scenes that
have ‘horror’ in them but many of the scenes are tame in comparison to other
horror movies. There is one scene in the movie where Eli’s guardian pours
chemical over himself and when we next see him in the hospital where he offers
his own blood to Eli as he doesn’t want to live anymore, but the audience can
see the damage to his face and so this could be considered an element of horror.
We also see a couple of attack on different people throughout the movie such as
when Eli bites a passerby’s neck for blood and she also attacks someone else
who then turns into a vampire. However we see this person in the hospital where
she opens up the curtains and bursts into flames because of the sunlight. There
are also a few more scenes that are similar to these ones. Another scene that
is movies with iconic things is when Eli starts bleeding from various places
in her body, I think this could be considered an element of horror because it isn’t
what you expect to happen and it also makes the audience want to squirm slightly.
This movie
does contain a few of the functions that Propp has for character’s however some
of them aren’t necessarily what the audience they are going to be when they
start watching the movie. It is obvious from that start the bullies/tormentors
in the movie are going to act as villains as they contain to bully Oskar until
the end of the movie, but when Eli first comes into the movie, the audience can’t
be sure on whether she is going to be a villain also because she is a vampire. However
as the movie goes on, the audience could place Eli into the villain category
for the fact that she kills a lot of people, but in the end it turns out that
Eli was more of a hero than anyone else in the movie because she saves him from
being drowned by the bullies at the end of the movie. This is an unusual
character type because for a hero of a movie, it wouldn’t be expected that the
12 year old vampire would fit the category and I think this is hat separates
this movie from other horror movies. For Oskar’s character I think he becomes a
helper in the movie because he allows Eli to be herself and he doesn’t run away
from her when he knows the truth but he also doesn’t tell everyone what she is
and what she has done to other people; he could also be considered a victim due
to all the bullying that he got put through before Eli killed the tormentors. There
is also another helper in the movie, I think, and this is Håkan because
he sacrifices himself for the sake of Eli and besides Oskar there isn’t anyone
else in the movie that would have done this for her. With all these different
characters in place, I think that this movie does conform to most of Propp’s
ideas about characters and the functions that they provide in the movie and I think
is something that lets the audience connect to the characters easier.
There isn’t much
of an opposition in this movie that it made obvious and so I don’t think that it
conforms to Strauss’s theory of binary opposition. However, if there was to be
any type of opposition in the movie, I would think it would be either Good vs.
Evil in terms of Oskar and his bullies, but also Eli and all her victims even if
she does turn out to be a hero. There is also the opposition of youth vs. age
but I don’t think this plays a large part in the movie and so I wouldn’t say
that this works in Strauss’ theory however it does show a clear difference between
Oskar and Eli themselves because one is a lot more insightful compared to the
other. Also with Oskar and Eli as the main characters, it could also be said
that there is an opposition in the way that it’s the supernatural world vs. the
real world but I don’t think that any of these oppositions play a part big
enough in the movie to be considered part of Strauss’ theory about binary opposition.
In conclusion
this is a movie that conforms to many theories and the typical elements that
should be found in a horror but sometimes these are gone about in a different
way to other movies. The thing that makes this movie unique is that even though
it does conform, it is a different movie with a different way of approaching
things, for example not many horror movies have a 12 year old girl as the hero
of the movie, so I think that this is what makes this movie successful and
different.
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Monday, 8 April 2013
Production/Distribution Companies
For
programmes on TV and movies to be released both in cinema and on DVD, production
companies play a large role in this and if it weren’t for the productions
companies a lot of media types wouldn’t be around. Production companies are
responsible for the fundraising a specific production, they handle the
budgeting, scheduling, scripting, marketing, the organisation of staff,
post-production, distribution, the supply of talent and resources and the
production itself. The production company is usually run by a producer or a
director, but it can also be run by a career executive and in entertainment, a production
company will rely highly on talent or a well known entertainment franchise to
raise the value of a project therefore drawing it out to larger audiences.
The marketing and advertising of a product
plays a large part in how popular it becomes, for example if a movie has a lot
of advertisement, more people are likely to go and watch it compared with a smaller
film that has had hardly any advertisement. It also depends on how the product
in this case a movie is advertised to how many people go and watch it, and the
range in people that go to watch it. The main methods in advertising is
billboard with posters, TV and radio adverts, advertisements on social
networking sites and much more, by having so many different ways of advertising
one product it means that the product can attract a wider audience and
therefore become more popular. But it also means that if someone doesn’t go on
social networking sites, they are still likely to the see the advert elsewhere
and vice versa, as well as gaining an audience globally that are filled with
different types of people ranging in age, gender and much more. The only
problem with advertising is that production companies have to continue research
all the time and this means that trends change quickly and advertising has to
move with it, therefore more and more advertising methods have been created.
Production companies also have a way
of publicising products and this is usually through the advertising, however it
won’t be regular advertising, instead they’ll advertise a product using a well
known face – usually a celebrity of some sort – and this will make audiences
want to buy the product as they will want to aspire to be like that certain celebrity.
An example of this way of advertising is the Sharpie Company who for many of
their adverts used David Beckham and this was so that people would want to go
and buy the pens as they would believe that David Beckham uses them same pens
too. Something that movies usually do is use actors in the movie that are familiar
to the audience because they can then make this/these actors the spotlight for
all the advertising, they will place them centrally on the poster and make sure
they are seen throughout most of the trailer. This is a good way to gain publicity
both for the product and the actor themselves because if the actor is popular already
it means more people are likely to go and watch the film, and if it a small but
recognisable actor it means that they will gain more fans through the
advertising of the movie that they are in.
Distribution is also something that
Production companies take care of but the film distributor can be a company or individual
representative. The distributors control the marketing and circulation of a
movie whether it is in the theatre or for home viewing and so they can control
how a movie is shown and therefore how it is advertised. As a distributor to
make the film successful is very important and so often they will arrange
screening for exhibitors as well as other marketing techniques in order to make
sure that the film will be as successful as possible. The film distributors can
also control where the movie will be shown and how long it will be available to
see on screen for and this then determines how much money is made during its
run at the theatre. The distributors can then monitor how many people are going
to watch the movie and this will then control whether it is shown for as long
or if it needs more viewing time and also whether they need to widen the amount
of theatres it is being shown in or in some cases, lessen the amount of the
theatres it is being shown in.
Scary Movie 2 Film Analysis
Scary Movie 2 is a 2001 parody movie,
and is the second movie in the Scary
Movie franchise. The director for this movie was Keenen Ivory Wayans and
the screenplay was written by eight people in total. Eric L. Gold produced the
movie which was then distributed by Dimension Films. Scary Movie 2 contains
some of the same characters who were in the previous movie but apart from
these, there are no actors who are well-known in the movie; instead it uses
smaller actors, some of these being Anna Faris as Cindy, Regina Hall as Brenda,
Shawn Wayans as Ray and Marlon Wayans as Shorty – who all featured in the first
movie of the franchise.
I
think that this movie follows some of the rules from Todorov’s narrative theory,
but not necessarily in the order constructed by Todorov himself. The start of
the movie doesn’t have any relevance to the storyline of Scary Movie 2 and
instead is a parody of The Exorcist. The beginning to the storyline of the
movie is a year on from the last Scary Movie, and the four characters from the
previous movie – Cindy, Shorty, Brenda and Ray – are all at college and are
trying to start a new life after the events that happened in the last movie and
so this is the starting equilibrium for the movie. By having this is as the
equilibrium, it means those audiences who didn’t watch the previous movie can
become familiar with who the main characters of the movie are going to be and
it also shows that something is going to happen with these characters because
life is so normal for them at the time. The next stage is for an event to take
place and in this case, the students Professor asks them to go on a trip to a
haunted house, unbeknown to the students that they would be bait for the paranormal
activity that takes place in the house. The teens eventually find out about
their Professors plans after all the incidents that have taken place in the
house and this is the next stage in Todorov’s theory where the event is
recognised, and so from this the next stage has to be revealed and this is
where there is an attempt to fix the problem or the event that has just taken
place. The teens attempt to fix the event that has just taken place by
equipping themselves with several technological devices that will injure the
spectral enemies in the Hell House. Eventually the teens manage to lure Kane
the ghost toward a device that destroys him all whilst destroying a skeleton,
and a possessed Hanson. Two months later, there is a new equilibrium where the
teens are all back in college, Cindy and Buddy are in a relationship and look
after the parrot from the Hell House, however Cindy see’s Hanson again and the movie
ends with Hanson getting run over and killed for good by Shorty. By leaving the
movie without a real sense of a new equilibrium like Todorov’s theory says
should happen, it makes the audience think there a movie could be made to
follow this one.
When
watching a movie, the audience always have in mind the types of things that
should be in the movie depending on the genre of it, for example a comedy movie
is expected to have a lot of comedic moment otherwise it wouldn’t fit the
genre, and sometimes two genre cross each other and this is what happens in
this movie because they are some parody moment in it, as well as it being a
horror and comedy. So for this movie to be successful, the movie had to
marketed right and attract the right audience, this is made easier as it is a
sequel and so the producers know what to put into the movie and so this makes
the expectations a little less pressurising. For a movie of so many genres, the
audience will expect aspects from all the genres to be in it – mainly comedy
and horror – so the audience will expect it to have slight elements of horror
but nothing to horrific because it will have the comedy factor to it and I think
for this movie, it is more about the comedy side of things rather than the
horror side. But because this is the second movie in the franchise, the audience
will expect the ideas to have advanced from last time and I think they would
expect the movie to be funnier and have new jokes in it.
There
are a few scenes in the movie that hold a small element of horror but most of
the movie is based on the comedy genre and so a lot of the scenes hold elements
of horror more than anything. Two scenes in the movie are parodies of other movies
and these are; the start of the movie consists of a parody from The Exorcist
and towards the end of the movie there is a scene where Cindy, Theo and Brenda
fight a possessed Hanson and it turns into a parody scene from Charlie’s
Angels. The scenes that hold an element of horror are when the skeleton chases
Cindy, the ghosts who create incidents in the house and the housekeeper at Hell
House is also weird looking and so is there to creep the audience out. These are
some of the only horror elements that are in the movie. Most of the movie is
built up on comedy and so the whole movie is based on jokes and taking something
that shouldn’t necessarily be funny and making it humorous for the audience.
Parody movies were a genre of movie that was often overlooked but it is now one
of the most commonly profitable at the box office, and so by bringing this
element to the movie, it means that the movie should become quite successful at
the box office. And horror-comedies have also recently become more popular and
so by bringing elements of this genre into the movie it means that there aren’t
too many expectations as at the time of its release the genre wasn’t too
popular.
According
to Propp’s Character Functions, the audience should be able to pick out a clear
victim, villain, hero and many other characters. For this movie in particular
the Professor seems like a normal character at the start of the movie and we
get further into the storyline it becomes clear to the audience that this is
not the case, and in fact the Professor could be seen as the villain for the
movie. This is because he uses the students as bait for his project and he also
hopes that he’ll get something from the college girls that he takes on the trip
with him – the Professor eventually gets killed by a female ghost who lives in
the mansion. The Professor has a helper who the audience can assume will also
be villainous as they will think he helped in the plans that the Professor had
but once the Professor is killed, it turns out that Dwight is willing to help
the students try and escape the mansion whilst killing all the ghosts in the
process and so he is the helper for the movie as he provides the students with
the weapons they need to defend themselves with. Due to all the students being
taken away to mansion for bait, it can be said that they are all victims in
this movie but at the same time they all become hero’s because they manage to
escape with help and they also manage to kill all the ghosts and stop the paranormal
activity that goes on in the Hell House. Shorty continues to be a hero right
until the end of the movie where Hanson is back to get Cindy but before he can
do that Shorty runs him over and kills him for good. I think that this movie
does conform to some of Propp’s ideas about character functions; some of them
are just less obvious in the movie.
There
is a clear of opposition of Good vs. Evil in this movie and this shown through
the way that the students are all on the good side and the Professor along with
all the other things in the house such as the cat that attacks Cindy, the large
weed plant, all the ghosts and even the toy clown that comes to life are on the
evil side. We see the fight between these oppositions take place towards the
end of the film in which the students manage to defeat the evil side and so it
can be clearly seen that Strauss’ theory works in the case of the movie.
In
conclusion, this is a movie that conforms to many of the typical elements that
are needed in it and is a prime example of a film that uses a narrative
structure, the idea of binary opposites and character functions. I think that if
the film hadn’t followed these conventions then it wouldn’t have been as
successful therefore all these theories are an important piece to this movie. The
typical aspects such as the comedy and the fact that it parodies other films is
what mainly made the film so successful globally and this is why audiences have
wanted more films from the Scary Movie franchise.
Saw II Film Analysis
Saw
II is a Canadian-American horror movie that was released in October 2005. The
director for this movie was Darren Lynn Bousman, who also contributed to some
of the screenplay along with Leigh Whannell. Gregg Hoffman, Mark Burg and Oren
Koules all contributed to the production of this horror movie and it was then
distributed by Lionsgate. Saw II doesn’t contain any well-known stars and
instead uses smaller actors, some of these being; Donnie Wahlberg who plays the
corrupted police officer; Erik Knudsen as the Eric the police officers son;
Tobin Bell as John otherwise known as Jigsaw and Amanda Young who plays Shawnee
– a player of the game.
I think that
this movie follows some of the rules from Todorov’s narrative theory however it
is a more unusual approach to the structured theory. The beginning of the movie
doesn’t have much relevance to the rest of the storyline and so therefore I wouldn’t
say that this is the movies starting equilibrium, instead the equilibrium for
the movie is the next scene where two people can be seen arguing to which one
of them leaves and the other (who is a Detective) is soon called away to a
scene of a death. Up until this point, it would seem that this is something
that regularly happens and therefore the storyline is showing a normal life. However,
the crime scene that the Detective is called away to is what is significant to
the rest of the storyline because the symbol of a padlock can be seen on the
device around the victim’s neck and this becomes the signifier for other deaths
and also for the murderer. The next stage in the theory is an event and this
event is the kidnapping of 8 people who have been put in a house full of saw
traps and this is then recognised when the SWAT team of detectives follow the
clues from the last death and find what they think is live CCTV footage from a
house where all the victims are being kept – one of these victims being the
main Detectives son, and this acts as the next stage to Todorov’s theory where
the event is recognised. The next stage to the theory isn’t ever fully
completed, because most of the people who are kidnapped don’t make it out of
the house and the house is never found instead it turns out one of the people
who were kidnapped was in with Jigsaw and the son of the Detective is found in
a safe. To finish the movie there isn’t much showing of a new equilibrium
instead it shows the Detective in his own saw trap and the audience don’t know
whether he makes it out or not. I think that the narrative for the movie
follows some of the stages of Todorov’s theory however they aren’t always in
the right order and some of the stages are missed out completely or never
finished.
When an
audience go to watch any genre of movie, they almost always know what to expect
unless it is a completely new genre. This is mainly because every genre of movie has its own elements that make it recognisable
to an audience which makes marketing the movie a lot easier – for example being
able to attract the right audience. Due to this movie being part of the horror
genre it is clear that there will be certain expectations such as for it to be horrific
and terrify the audience and how it does this varies. For this movie in
particular, it would be expected that it will contain elements of gore and gore
that is advanced due to the aspects that the previous movie held. As this movie
is a sequel to the first Saw, I think that audience would expect it to have a
lot more gore than the previous movie and more advanced trap ideas. As well as
this they may also expect to find certain character from the previous movie
also.
There are a
lot of scenes in the movie that hold a lot of gore and this is the main aspect
of this movie that allows the audience to know that it is a horror. The Saw movies are made of many different traps
and this is the main element of horror in the movies, for Saw II specifically,
there were around 9 different traps. One of the more horrific traps for this movie
was ‘The Needle Pit’ and this consisted of the middle of a room being filled
with used syringes, and one of the victims had to jump into the pit and find
the key to unlock the door and gain another antidote, the idea of the trap was
that it would be like “finding a needle in a haystack.” Another one of the
traps that was used in this movie was ‘The Nerve Gas House’ which was the large
trap that has other traps inside of it, for this trap all the victims awoke in
a house where they were breathing in a deadly gas to which they had to find the
antidotes in each of the smaller traps in order to survive. This trap required
all the victims to work together and this is something that doesn’t happen and
if the audience have watched the precious Saw movie, will know won’t happen and
therefore a lot of deaths take place. All the elements that make this movie a
horror, is what allows it to be placed in the gore category for the history of
horror movies and as more movies are made, we expect more gore to come out of
them.
As an
audience, it is unclear of who is a victim and who is a villain (Propp’s
Character Functions) in the movie to begin with, this is because we think these
people have been placed in the trapped house are victims of Jigsaw’s plans when
in fact they have all been put there with reasoning which could lead the
audience to believe that they are villains in some ways. One of the characters
who has been best displayed is Amanda because throughout the movie, the audience
believe that she becomes a victim of the other kidnappers attacks (she was also
in the previous Saw movie) and it isn’t until the end of the movie that the audience
find out she had been one of the villains all along and has been helping in Jigsaw’s
plans – she also ends of locking Detective Matthews in ‘The Bathroom Trap’
where he is left to die. The main villain for this movie and the audience know
this because he is the one who knows where the Nerve Gas House and he is the
one who planned the kidnapping of the people who have been put in the house. However,
even when the movie has ended, the audience are still unclear on whether
Detective Matthews is a victim or not, this is because he doesn’t come across
as having any victim like qualities and in one scene, he beats up Jigsaw and so
he wouldn’t come across as a character who is a victim in the movie, but at the
end he is placed in a trap and so in this sense he is a victim but the reasons
for him being put in the trap could lead to him being seen as more of a villain
– although throughout the movie, many audiences will be on the side of what
seems the corrupt Detective.
According to
Strauss’ theory of binary opposition, a movie should show an opposition and for
this movie it could be the idea of Good vs. Evil, however the whole movie does
conform to this idea and it challenges it in a lot of ways. For example, it is
uncertain whether some characters are victims or not and so it can’t be seen
whether they are trying to defeat ‘evil.’ This means that the audience can’t be
sure what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’ and so it’s not until the end of the
movie whether it can be determined that good had triumphed evil or vice versa.
In conclusion,
Saw II is a movie that doesn’t follow too many conventions of movies in terms
of its characters and its narrative, however it does follow the conventions that
make it a horror movie and this could be seen as the most important aspect
because without these aspects, the movie wouldn’t be a horror. It’s the typical
aspects such as the tension and the questioning of what will happen next and
who will survive throughout the movie, along with the settings for the movie
such as the abandoned and secluded house as well the fact that the movie doesn’t
use a lot of lighting and so this is creates a creepier environment. With all
the elements that Saw does hold, I think this is what has helped it become a
successful film globally and this is why there is a demand for more movies similar
to it.
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