The document discusses representations of gender and ethnicity in thriller films. It notes that women are often portrayed as sex objects, damsels in distress, or femme fatales who are sexualized and meet tragic ends. The author's film aims to challenge these stereotypes by having a strong, independent female protagonist whose gender is unimportant. While the film portraits gender equality better than ethnicity due to its limited cast, the author acknowledges thrillers generally lack diversity.

1. Question 2

2. Firstly, our thriller challenges generic conventions of this genre
by having a main female character who is portrayed as capable,
strong and not in any way reliant a male character for anything.
This is a common archetype for women to be represented in
many thrillers, women can be objectified, such as in the thriller
film Casino Royale, where women are often sex objects for the
main protagonist James Bond. Or they are the character type
‘damsel in distress’ who need to be saved by physically and
mentally stronger males such as in the thriller film The Dark
Knight, where the female romantic partner to the main
protagonist Batman needs saving by him. An incredibly
common conventional role for women to play within thrillers is
a femme fatal, this role often does give some power to women
because it contradicts another negative stereotype of women
not only in thrillers but in the wider film industry in which they
refuse to play the role of devoted wife and loving mother that
mainstream society prescribes for women.

3. Instead a femme fatal is deviant, independent and dangerous,
however this is often the reason they are killed, showing that it
is bad for women to be like this and attempt to have more
power than men as it will result in their downfall. Alongside the
fact that most femme fatal are often oversexualised and
objectified, which is mostly how they gain power, like in the
film noir Double Indemnity with the femme fatal called Phyllis.
Or the femme fatale Gilda out of the thriller Gilda, where she is
seductively singing “put the blame on mame”, using her body
to hypnotize men, therefore overall her character type is a
positive for her because she gains power, but is still sexualised
through her strip teasing. This is why we chose not to have this
specific character type, as when researching we found that the
overall representation of a femme fatal was negative, and we
wanted to challenge negative stereotypes of women in thrillers
and the wider film industry. There are many more negative
stereotypes of women within the thriller genre which always
seem to portray them as of less or secondary importance
compared to men, they have less power or are flawed in some
way in contrast to their male counterparts, these can be more
roles such as simple love interests or props to men.

4. However, our thriller opening challenges these patriarchal
archetypes, which is the direction many new and modern
thriller films are taking, making this these stereotypes become
outdated and old fashioned and putting men and women on an
equal ground within thrillers, and the wider film industry. For
example, in the very recent thriller films like Gone Girl, where
there are many strong female characters such as the
determined and smart detective Rhonda or the antagonist Amy
who is incredibly smart, deviant and powerful right throughout
the whole film. Or Kill Bill chapter one where the subgenre is
action, so there is a lot fight and confrontation scenes and
gender is portrayed equally and of unimportance, when it
comes to this fighting and who wins. We chose to do this
because it is a more contemporary view that suits our target
audience.

5. Additionally, men can be negatively represented in films also,
where if they are anything but strong, masculine or powerful
then they aren’t as worthy as other male characters. One
example of this is on the TV programme The Walking Dead
which subgenre is thriller, where the story is about survival.
One character called Eugene is portrayed as less likable
compared to the other male and stronger characters, he also is
less traditionally masculine and macho, and one of the only
characters like this, therefore suggesting being male is all about
masculinity, power and dominance. We have also chose to
ignore this representation of men, however it is argued that
the negative representation of women within thriller films and
the wider film industry is a lot more prominent and passive,
whereas for men they aren’t as categorised and discriminated
compared to women.

6. We have tried to contradict negative stereotypes by not even
showing masculine and feminine behaviours and traits within
our opening and characters. For example, our female
antagonist’s costume, at first doesn’t even reveal her gender
because it is unidentifiable and androgynous, her face is hidden
because she is wearing a hood, also she is wearing an
unfeminine large coat, with the lack of jewellery, which is often
associated with a femme fatal, and our camera shots and
movements doesn’t give her gender away through no close ups
or extreme close ups of her face. Therefore, establishing that
her gender is of unimportance and irrelevant within this
opening, and this is not what the audience should be focusing
upon. This adds upon the generic mystery theme within the
genre, because it contradicts the anticipation of characters’
moves and behaviours often associated with their gender, such
as women over reacting and becoming hysterical in unnerving
times and crisis’, while men stay calm and in control.

7. Whereas in our opening the female murderer isn’t hysterical
and over emotional while she is killing her victim, she is in
control, composed and calm, and isn’t there for the male gaze.
Moreover, when Holly’s gender is finally revealed there is no
ambient sound or lighting to emphasise this moment and make
it of importance, so it is conveying to the audience the fact that
a women and not typically a man in thriller films doing this
psychotic murder, that again her gender isn’t what’s important
about this moment. Also the general mise en scene
surrounding the two main male and female characters isn’t
typically feminine or typically masculine, we attempted to keep
it pretty neutral through a plain and pastel colour palette, with
no bright pinks or blues often associated with each gender. We
tried to make to Holly’s character type similar to Mallory Knox
out of the thriller Natural Born Killers, where she is ruthless,
dangerous and carries a gun with her at all times, contradicting
what the audience may think of her capabilities as a woman
which are often shown in the film industry in which she will not
be capable of this murder. Or similar to Lisbeth Slander who is a
computer hacker, a role traditionally filled with a male, and is
uncompromising and determined to her cause, similarly in our
production Holly will do anything to get to Billy.

8. The fact that in my opening the two characters, Billy and Holly
are both white may contradict the equality approach we
attempted to take with gender along into ethnicity. However,
because there is no dialogue what so ever, it isn’t confirmed
that the only two characters within this opening are definitely
white British, because we cannot hear their accents. They could
be from any other background where white people are, like
South Africa or Australia, it’s all open to the audience’s
interpretation. This in a sense places another irrelevance on
what ethnicity the characters are, because it doesn’t place any
importance or give any clues away on it, therefore suggesting it
overall doesn’t matter, but I don’t think we did as good of job
on diversifying ethnicity as we did gender, because the 6th form
is mainly white British therefore it was difficult to find available
characters to make it more diverse, who could fit our shooting
schedule. Unfortunately, many other thriller films have
problems with being diverse and even representing ethnic
minorities at all, for example the Essex Boys opening, only
shows white British males in its opening and mostly throughout
the film.

9. Furthermore this has been a prominent issue raised within the
award ceremony the Oscars, where it was shown to be an
institutional problem where the reviewers and nominators for
the films are mostly all white males, so the ceremony is
culturally bias because of this and films and actors nominated
were mostly white also. This racist and institutionalised under
representation of ethnicities is a trend and issue of the wider
film industry. Although in Britain today, about 83% of the total
population are white British, as our target audience are British
teenagers, I don’t think that we have harshly discriminated and
underrepresented ethnic minorities. As we only have two
characters and its only two minutes long, our under
representation isn’t as bad as the film industry’s, where they
seem to portray ethnic minorities as non-existent, and if we
were to make a longer opening/film, we would have definitely
included a more diverse cast.
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10. Our representation of British youth doesn’t do well in
challenging the stereotypes the film industry has in todays
society. For example Holly is wearing a hood, therefore
associated with the dodgy lower class ‘hoodie’ stereotype
of a younger person, like in Attack the Block. Establishing
that they are the more evil character in our production and
we don’t do anything to later to challenge this view, we let
the audiences anticipation and expectations of Holly being
dodgy and criminal come true. Additionally another
preconception of youth in general is being obsessed with
fitness and their looks, often associated with teenage girls
more often than boys. However we have done this with our
male character Billy, therefore putting them on an equal
ground as its showing it happens to males as well as
females, and shown that he is not overly or unhealthily
obsessed with fitness.

11. Therefore I think that this is progressive and positive
representation of youth contrasting the other middle class fear
that the youth are lazy and dependent, especially in the
economy where it is difficult to find a job at a young age,
therefore teenagers are labelled as just lazy ,good for nothing
and the answers for these inadequacies. Whereas our
protagonist is being productive, he is being healthy and useful
by washing up. Both characters are shown to be isolated
because there's no dialogue; they're are in isolated locations
like the empty forest; there are no other characters apart from
them whatsoever, which is another negative representation we
are reinforcing within our thriller. However when I was
researching thriller films I found that there was an under
representation of teenagers as characters, they're barely
appear in thriller film and if they do they're negatively
represented and of secondary importance to their older
counterparts, such as out of the thriller Taken, the protagonist
has to save his teenage daughter, who was ‘stupid’ enough to
get kidnapped. In contrast our production presents them as
main characters and ‘normalises’ them, not showing that
because they're teenagers, this is to blame for their flaws.