Applying theory to “The Kiss of Death” (group trailer)
Narrative is very significant in story telling as narrative is the form in which events taken place are put together to present to the audience. Narrative is analysed by through technical code such as lighting, editing, sound, design and layout, shot framing and composition and camera angles and movement. In “The Kiss of death” the bullies who harass Holly have low angle camera shot to portray they are looking down on Holly as she seem worthless to them. The lighting is dim and melancholy even in broad day light the clouds are grey giving this film a dark atmosphere. Verbal code allows the audience to understand what the film is about. In the trailer we have decided to have a male voice over with a deep voice containing authority, allowing the audience to be drawn into the trailer and their own conclusion of the trailer. Mise en scene is very important in our trailer as it tells a lot about the characters. This is evident as when Holly wears dark clothing during her murderous scheme; her hair is all disorganized suggesting she is not mentally stabled. Her black skirt is short illustrating there is a sense of sexuality in her. Her appearance is supported by the Male Gaze theory explaining how women are portrayed in the media as vulnerable and weak through their clothing and their seductive appearance. Although Holly may carry some of these connotations, in the way she dresses as she becomes bitter with the men in her life, she however holds the connotation of femme fatale in film Noir. Femme fatale is a French word for “deadly woman”. Femme fatale came out after the Second World War where women were obliged to leave their jobs as the men came back for them. Meanwhile they noticed they too were capable of doing what the men could. Furthermore, film noir presented femme fatale as an attractive woman, seductive, sexual allure but dangerous in order to achieve her hidden agenda where in most cases the men found themselves to be a subject of death, or losing their homes and family. Moreover Holly has some of the characteristics of Femme fatale as she gets revenge by killing men for how she has been treated all her life by girls at school, her drunken mother, her abusive father and now her cheating boyfriend.
Russian theorist by the name of Tvzetan Todorov suggests that all narrative follow a three way structure. Firstly everything is balanced and this is called equilibrium until something comes in the way to disrupt that equilibrium which then becomes disequilibrium (beginning middle and end). However there must be a resolution to this and that’s where new equilibrium comes in. “The Kiss of Death” follows this narrative structure. Holly is a normal child but just unfortunate in how life has turned out for her. Her daily routine is that she goes to school in the morning, but unfortunately she gets bullied at school as she is not sociable and not into boys, make up and parties like the other girls in her year group. When she gets home her mother does not give her the attention she deserves as she’s on drugs, having men around the house and a drunken. Her father runs away with a hooker a couple of years back. The disequilibrium is when she matures, begins to get involve with the wrong type of friends and gets a boyfriend. She becomes obsessive over him and mise en scene is portrayed through the trailer as she’s talking to the boyfriend called Freddie and on the wall she has pictures of him, messages such as “my Freddie forever” and heart shapes and flowers. Eventually she finds out he is cheating and goes out to seek revenge by killing him and everyman that comes close to her as by this time she is a very attractive young lady. To solve this issue, Holly must be stopped and the whole country is looking for her. When she is finally trucked down in the woods about to kill the “final boy”, Holly is caught and shot by the police. At this point she is not dead but in a mental institution. After a while the doctors came back to check on her, but she is nowhere to be found. Holly has escaped and ready to strike again, this time with a new identity. Halloween the film inspired us to decide to let Holly live and escape the mental institution home in order to create enigma code as the boggy man escaped after the final girl battled for her life and survived. Todorov’s approach to this theory came from his studies of folk’s tale.
Furthermore Vladimir Propp being a Russian critic, he examined 100s of folk tale and recognised that in most of these tales he was able to identify 8 character role and 31 narrative functions. These characters are the villain, the hero, the donor (who provides an object with some magic property), the helper who aids the hero, the princess (the sought for person)- reward for the hero and subject of the villain’s schemes, her father- who rewards the hero, the dispatcher (who sends the hero on his way) and finally the false hero. Some of these characters are definitely found in all of narratives such as TV programmes, the newspaper, novels and some are found in my trailer. The villain in this case is Holly even though through equilibrium she is seen as the victim. There are no immediate heroes except for the police coming to rescue the “final boy” even though that’s the case; she escapes showing thing that she cannot be stopped even by the high authority being the police. Moreover in slasher films the final girl is usually nerdy, with brown her, virginal and obedient. The monster represents sex and his weapon portrays his penis. The first girl to get killed is usually a blond girl who is sexually active. The representation of this narrative is to give awareness to teenagers to cherish their virginity and put their heads in their books or they would turn out like the blond girl. Moreover my group and I changed the codes and conventions and have switched the roles. The monster in this case is an angry young girl who is sexually repressed but shocks the audience by using her seductive appearance to drive men to her and later she murders them through anger and disappointment through her own life. She is not sexually repressed because it is something she likes doing, however she uses that element to attract the men to her. There is no obvious benefactor in this film however when Holly was in school her teacher was always there comforting her, advising her to take the right path. Moreover the benefactor would therefore be the helper who aids the hero according to Propp’s theory. The reason why we decided to have a female blond killer was to bring awareness to men who are sexually active as society will look down on a sexual active girl and think of her as a damaged hoe, however a sexual active male would be praised and patted on the shoulder for having some many girls. This show how ill and deprived our society is.
In the 4th century BC Aristotle decided that ‘all drama is conflict’, moreover in the 20th century Claude Levi- Strauss looked at narrative structure in terms of binary opposition. Binary opposition is recognised in horror/ slasher films such as “good Vs evil, and virginal Vs sexually repressed still exist. Character types are still constant; the binary opposition good Vs evil still supplies the horror genre with monsters and heroes. Social themes are probably the most constant variation in horror films today. Social themes are based on society’s fears at the time of the movies creation, so the themes are based on the era of production. Horror genre is a consistent genre, viewers know what to expect when seeing a horror movie, yet it is still a genre which draws audiences, as viewers still can’t "resist the Aristotelian compulsion to ‘open the door, and show what is behind it" Cook, Pam. The Cinema Book (1985), New York, Pantheon Books, Page 102. In addition the binary opposite within my trailer is monster (being female) Vs victim (being male), dark Vs light, right Vs wrong and revenge Vs forgiveness.
Furthermore Pam Cook gives a description of American film from “4 defining pictures of American Cinema”; the first one being, ‘A linear narrative of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution’. Through this quote I understand that for my film to be affect there must be a story that goes in a straight line allowing something to happen in a film causing something else to happen. The path that the narrative takes is important as there has to be a puzzle where it is then solved enforcing a happy ending to the film. In this case Holly has been pushed around by everyone in her life to such an extent where it mentally deprives her and she loses control by killing everyman that shows interest in her or anyone that has hurt her before. However this disequilibrium will therefore be mended ‘As there will be a high degree of narrative closure’ this implies that all the loose ends will be tide at the end when Holly is taken at the mental institution home when the doctor’s finds out what caused her to kill and where the anger and bitterness had come from. Moreover cook goes on to suggest “A centrality of the narrative agency of psychologically rounded characters”. Through this quote, Cook goes to explain that even animation films always tend to have a recognisable human character such as “Finding Nemo” as it is consistent with this institutional mode of representation. Finally the fourth picture of American Cinema is when “A fictional world governed by spatial and temporal versimitude”. The film has a made up world but real for that play. This is evident in Star Wars when sound is heard even though scientifically there is no sound in space, also when the characters walk in spaceships. However in reality there is no gravity in space.
Roland Barthes was a professor of the 1950s and 1960s. His job was to unravel text and explain how he did so. Barthes describes a text as "a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signified; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." (S/Z - 1974 translation). This basically suggests that you can unravel a text in infinite number of times and get different meaning each time. This is evidence as Holly’s actions can be seen as pure evil or a young girl that needs to be rescued from her dark past. It therefore becomes up to the individual audience to have sympathy on her or see her as the enemy. Moreover these threads Barthes suggests are called narrative codes which are Action/proiarectic code which refers to the actions taking place, enigma code when questions are being raised by the audiences. Symbols & Signs refers mise en scene, Points of Cultural Reference and Simple description/reproduction.
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