In most thriller films, gender is commonly represented through stereotypes such as the heroic male who saves the weak female prize. The Bourne Identity follows this pattern with the female lead initially portrayed as weak but becoming hardened through the story. Shutter Island subverts expectations by representing the female character as both weak-minded yet also driving the male detective to insanity. The Hunger Games reverses stereotypes by portraying Katniss as the heroic bow-wielding female who must often save the weak male Peeta, though some scenes still depict conventional stereotypes of femininity and romance.

1. Representation of gender in thriller films
Liam Woodgate

2. What is representation?
When a piece of media is produced we consciously or otherwise think
about how we are going to represent people, places and events.
Representations are often based on the media perspective, most of
the things we see have have been analysed and changed
accordingly, censorship comes into play here, but also the idealogical
standpoint that the media producer is from.
It is, in a more general note, the way that people are presented in the
media.
We as the citizenry of this country are made to believe that what we
see is a complete presentation of what is happening in the world, but
because we do not witness it personally we call it a re-presentation
because someone else has filtered through it and re-made it in a
sense.

3. Thriller film gender representations
This has everything to do with the basic representation, in most
thriller films we have the common stereotypes of hero, villain
and “damsel in distress”. To a certain extent we can apply
Propps character types to the mix because in a way those very
basic types are stereotypes in and of themselves, e.g.: the
princess is usually the prize for the hero and in thriller films the
person that needs saving is the woman and the hero is the man
and there is no other way of putting it because that is how it is.

4. Now let's look at some examples:
For this analysis I will be looking at:
● The Bourne Identity
● Shutter Island
● The Hunger Games

5. The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Identity has a unique charm to it that most other thrillers
don't ever seem to encounter, but the thing is with Bourne is that it is
so, damn, generic. I mean everything from the downright boring plot
to the colours put on display. What it doesn't have in story it makes up
for having over the top action that is very thrilling.
The most stand out aspect of the film is the action and the major
fights that happen, for the most part Bourne is the stereotypical alpha
male who steps forward to kill everyone who crosses his path apart
from one woman who is behind on her tax payments so she gives him
a lift for $10'000... seems legit. She may be portrayed as generally
weak but as the story unfolds we see this other side to her character
where she becomes a little bit hardened by the events unfolding
around her. But even so she ends up running away near the end and
she sits inside a shop in Greece waiting for Jason to come and be
with her. Happy ending, am I right?

6. Shutter Island
Ah Shutter Island, that one film that everyone thought was way
too complicated, but here I come with the completely differing
opinion that it is one of the greatest films ever made. Now there
aren't many gender representations here apart from the wife
who, apart from being completely normal, is absolutely mental
which **SPOILERS** drives the detective to kill her. In the brief
flashbacks we see of her she hardly speaks and she is largely
calm even though she just murdered her children, now this
could mean she is being represented as weak minded which
lent a hand to her turn to insanity, but she doesn't sit around as
a prize for our hero to collect considering that he kills her.
In this new light we can infer that she is being represented as
weak minded and easily manipulated, but at the same time the
detective is also susceptible to this because he is also
completely insane!

7. The Hunger Games
You see, The Hunger Games puts these stereotypes in reverse
because Katniss is a heroine and Peeta is the weak fool who just
slows the hero down. In this case the representation is warped
because Katniss must save Peeta a lot of the time and he is often the
subject of attacks or abuse.
Most of the film portrays Katniss as the bow-wielding badass that she
is, but there are some scenes where she lets out her femininity by
expressing the stereotypical emotions that women are seen doing
when they are the “prize”. In these scenes the roles are reversed
back to the more conventional stereotypes with the male character
being strong for the female and winning her over, but eventually we
see them both come out as heroes and the reversed stereotypes
actually come as a welcome change after watching a James Bond
film where the premise is different but the love interest is always the
same.