To the right is Emily Browning in The Uninvited and to the left is Cynthia Wangwe as Ava Van Camp in our film Rest In Peace. These two characters are similar in that they of a similar age, late teens. They are similarly represented as innocent and unaware of what fate will befall them, this being expressed in one way by their clothing which is pattered and lively. Browning's character (Anna) has her hair down or in a pony tail and is almost unhealthily thin, most likely due to her stint in a psychiatric clinic after the death of her terminally ill mother. (Incidentally, Ava is in a graveyard to remember her dead mother, a typical horror convention.) Having ones hair down allows one to "hide" or create a barrier from the rest of society, which Anna has done. However, Ava has her hair up, signifying that she is more confident and outgoing, and perhaps suggesting that she cares more for her appearance. Anna, as the main character of the film, has many lines, but has a very soft voice, perhaps indicating low self esteem. Our character has on lines as, so far, it is a silent film and is told (in part) from the antagonists view. In terms of cinematography, we have portrayed our character, much like Anna, as an isolated and lonely girl. Much like anyone, she is terrified when she discoverers she has been buried alive. A convention of Gothic horror genre suggests that all characters are unnaturally white (lack of blood playing a pivotal role) but as our main character is not white, we have broken with this convention. Overall, I believe we have conformed to a stereotypical teenager in a horror film: naive and innocent, isolated, (usually) mourning a loss.
Example: 2 and 3
Here we have Janet Leigh's Marion Crane in the horror classic Psycho. As the film was released in the 1960's, the portrayal of the female gender was significantly different as was fashion, body image and sex appeal. In terms of fashion, women continued the practise of girdles and petticoats through out the sixties. Clothing was meant to be practical and professional, nothing more. However, in Psycho, although her dresses are certainly practical, they accentuate her feminine figure, much to the joy of male viewers. Very much like today, short hair was fashionable, and Leigh's Marion is rather fashionable, as seen by her gloves in various scenes. This idea of being an 'ideal' woman/wife/mother does not come into play at all in our film. If anything, our character is presented as a normal, slightly outcast teenage girl. Leigh's character, like most women in horror films, is continually presented as naive when staying at the motel. In some ways she does break the normal conventions of a "horror female" in that she has the nerve to steal a large sum of money and run away with her lover. The typical Gothic Horror woman is "Virginal Maiden": young, beautiful, pure, innocent, kind, virtuous. She shows these virtues by fainting and crying whenever her delicate sensibilities are challenged, usually starts out with a mysterious past and it is later revealed that she is the daughter of an aristocratic or noble family. Both Marion and Ava cannot be fitted into this stereotype, Marion more than Ava. The two characters depicted above very different, both in their ideals and in their actions. Ava is not a risk taker, although one could argue that sitting alone in a graveyard is a risk in itself, but Marion certainly is, as shown through the dialogue and cinematography. This representation of gender shows that the "real" female ideals have changed as well as those in films, as women are taking a more aggressive stance in their depiction.
The "Gothic" image for women has recently become popular, as seen by the music videos of Marina and the Diamonds.
Example 4:
Mads Mikkelsen in the short Danish film NU. I though it would be interesting to compare a male character to a female character, as they can be portrayed in different ways. Mads Mikkelsen's character does not have a name, but is simply designated as the Husband. As seen in the previous characters, he is completely isolated and not content with the life he has with his wife and young child, forcing him to have an affair with a man. This character, like ours has no lines, communicating only through actions. Through out the film, he wears a black suit, white shirt and black tie, normally implying that he has an important job or that he is of high status. In the film, we see neither, in fact, we see that he is "normal", although his actions throughout suggest otherwise. He is of average of build for a man, much like Cynthia is for a woman, and his hair is kept in a normal fashion. The only outstanding feature of him being his cheek bones. This creation of a very generic person is meant to contrast strongly with his extraordinarily unusual actions, breaking typical conventions.With Cynthia, we have done the opposite, keeping within the conventions of a stereotypical teenage girl. In terms of cinematography, Mikkelsen's character is presented through close ups of his face and long shots of his remote surroundings, as seen in the picture above with a dead tree. We also broke the ethnicity convention with our film, very much like NU did, although the number of racial minority actors in films has increased dramatically in the last fifty years, as has the rise of Nordic Noir films, again intergrating and breaking the old american stereotype of "perfect" citizen. Within the representation of age, I think we did not have enough shots of Cynthia to fully show her age, but if one follows the conventions of a very typical horror film, one would find that most characters are teenagers. In Gothic Horror, this is less so as seen by the examples given above, with the exception of The Uninvited. As Gothic Horror is generally associated with vampires, the characters are stereotypically presented as eternally young. As seen both examples given above, different ages are beginning to play a prominent role in Gothic Horror- we have broken this convention.
Below are the trailers for the films/video's mentioned above.
The Uninvited:
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Psycho:
State of Dreaming and SU-BARBIE-A
NU
