Representation Issues

There are many forms of representations and stereotypes within the media and I have looked at two types in particular in which are represented in our film.

Children

‘Convincingly representing childhood experience in any creative medium is notoriously difficult. In film, quite apart from the well-documented problems of directing child actors, there is the question of approach to consider, since representations of children vary greatly, from nostalgic portraits of innocence, through to dark, disturbing, and nightmarish visions. Once these challenges are met, there still remains the challenge of finding an appropriate visual style to convey the child's world.’ – BFI Screen online.

I shall take into account both the innocence of the child and the evil child, these are both representations which will be seen within our trailer. To begin with our main character will demonstrate a young, vulnerable girl. Through this she will gain sympathy from the audience.

‘We love children for all the things we are no longer and often wish we we...we admire their innocence’ (Pg 3 of ‘the cute and the cool: Wondrous innocence and modern American Children’s culture’ written by Gary Cross). This quote serves as an example of why child representations are so popular in the media.

The audience admires the child character and thus they feel a connection with them as this child is a representation of ‘things we are no longer’ the child hasn’t yet lived through the corruptions of life such as education, work, stress, relationships and so on and perhaps we are jealous of this.

However on the other hand, there is always something extremely scary and unnerving about a child controlling all the power within a movie, perhaps this is because in real life children rarely have power over adults and perhaps this shift in normality causes fear.

Examples of children obtaining power are:

 Damien in The Omen 

Regan in The Exorcist 

and Chucky in Childs Play

These examples are noticeably all horror films in which the child is the antagonist causing fear and panic to others.

The ‘evil’ child is a play on the children’s innocence, for example the child’s laughter usually serves as an essential part within certain scenes and this is a reminder of the innocence of the child. Not only this but perhaps with the children becoming evil it implies that they know more about their surrounding than they let on.

Overall it appears that whilst we might admire the innocence of the child within film when this innocence turns evil the child then strikes fear within the viewer.

Women

Women are the gender that are usually victimised within any film whether that be a fantasy where they play the weak feline who needs saving or the victim of a killer in a horror movie. Through this they gain sympathy from the audience who begin to feel sorry for them and therefore develop a connection.

Sometimes however there is a transition of this stereotype where the female becomes strong, this is usually in the form of Clovers ‘final girl’. The final girl challenges the usual representation of women like the ‘princess’ character type and acts with bravery and intelligence.

Within our film our main character begins as the stereotypical Proppian damsel in distress however she then acts with vengeance  to become the antagonist who uses her new found power to victimise other females.