representation essay

My thriller conforms to certain traditional structures of representation but it also challenges these structures going against them and trying to portray a new postmodern approach.

In my thriller we do conform to the ideologies and representation structure, especially the marxism theory. We have a motherly figure who cares for and is worried about her child. This is common sense and is dominant ideology because you would expect this from a mother. The way the scenes are edited shows that the child is a illusion in the mothers imagination because the child has actually died. The fact that the mother still cares and sees the child conforms to the motherly ideology.

Our thriller does not conform to the structure of feminism and Laura Mulveys theory that women are a 'male gaze'. Our main character is a girl but her costumes does no convey her to be sexualised, it is a long white gown, showing pureness and prominence on the screen. We use close ups, not of her body parts or in a sexualised manner but of her face to show intimacy. Many women are shot sexually traditionally in hollywood films but we have chosen a different approach to shoot our main character that challenges the 'male gaze' representation. 

The stereotype representation according to John Berger states that people have to conform to the dominant ideology and what is the 'norm'. In our case we challenge this as we cast a women to be our lead actress not the traditional male. This challenges Bergers theory that 'men act and women appear'. We also did not cast any male roles in the thriller opening reinforcing that we are challenging this traditional representation that males always take the lead roles 

Our thriller uses hyper reality as our character has psychological issues and does not live in the real world. She has simulations of reality as Baurillard suggests. She has visions of her dead child and flashbacks so we are not seeing her life as it is now. This is a post modern theory and as it is not a traditional structure of representation we are breaking the conventions of traditional representations again.

Overall i think that our thriller challenges the traditional structures of representation. Although we conform to one of the theories we could also argue that we challenge this because even though our character is portrayed as motherly she is the one that kills her daughter, so this is not common sense and dominant ideology.