Media Studies Resources

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Conventions mind maps

CONVENTIONS OF THRILLER

- The Narrative - centres around a crime eg. a theft or a murder.

- The protagonist - is fallible and has an 'Achilles heel' that is exploited by the antagonist.

- The title of the thriller may relate to this weakness eg Vertigo and Insomnia.

- The protagonist will be seen 'in peril' in one or more scenes before the resolution.

- The antagonist ensnares the protagonist in an increasingly complex web, until the protagonist feels isolated and helpless.

- The narrative presents ordinary situations in which extraordinary things happen.

- Micro elements combine in a build up of suspense. ( Micro means film elements like camerawork, sound, narrative, genre, mise-en-scene, lighting, costumes, actors and facial expressions, etc.)

- Themes of identity are common: mistaken identity, doubling/doppelgangers, amnesia.

- Themes of seeing, reflection and mirroring. Manipulation of perspectives, visual McGuffins, and optical illusions are common.

- The audience of a thriller is placed in the ambiguous position of voyeur.Voyeurism can also be a theme and the objectification of female characters is common especially in earlier thrillers.

- A series of/ one important enigma(s) are/is set up in the opening sequence of the film, is further complicated during the first part of the film and only resolved at the very end.

Example Thrillers

Fears mind map

Theories for Identity Case study

Karl Marx
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their identity but their social being that determines their consciousness.” – Your identity is defined by social forces – e.g. class, status etc

Freud
“You” are defined by your previous experiences and subconscious desires. Your core identity is hidden from your conscience mind.
We are only aware of a very small part of what makes up our personality; most of what we are is buried and inaccessible.

Gillles Deleuze
“You” as a concept is unstable and ‘schizophrenic’. You are an ongoing project.

Mikhail Bakhtin
The Russian philosopher Bakhtin believed that individual people cannot be finalized, completely understood, known or labeled. He saw identity as the unfinalised self meaning a person is never fully revealed or known.
This ties in with the idea that identity is a fluid concept, a life-long project that is never complete.

Paul Ricouer
The Narrative Self - ‘You’ are a fictional character created to take part in the ‘story’ of you life.

David Gauntlett (Media, Gender and Identity)
'It is the case that the construction of identity has become a known requirement. Modern Western societies does not leave individuals in any doubt that they need to make choices of identity and lifestyle - even if their preferred options are rather obvious and conventional ones, or are limited due to lack of financial (or cultural) resources. As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has noted - everyone wants to 'live their own life,' but this is, at the same time 'an experimental life'.'

Today we're bombarded with ideas about - being yourself, standing out or finding your place - we're encourage to define our existence in terms of what buy, do, earn money from or enjoy. Obviously finding an 'identity' is problematic especially when so many existing identities and roles are uncertain - think gender roles, career stability, upward mobility in class. So Beck is saying that we experiment with 'identities' to see what fits, works and is comfortable. And Gauntlett continues:

'Your life is your project - there is no escape. The media provides some of the tools which can be used in this work. Like many toolkit, however, it contains some good utensils and some useless ones; some that might give beauty to the project and some that might spoil it.'

One of the tools in this 'toolkit' is personalities and characters in the media that could act as 'role models'

'The role model remains an important concept, although it should not be taken to mean someone that a person wants to copy. Instead, role models serve as navigation points as individuals steer their own personal routes through life.'

Gauntlett explain the power relationship between the media and the audience:

'The power relationship between the media and the audience involves a 'bit of both' or to be more precise, a lot of both. The media sends out a huge number of messages about identity and acceptable forms of self-expression, gender, sexuality, and lifestyle. At the same time the public have their own even more robust set of diverse feelings on the issues. The media's suggestions may be seductive but can never simply overpower contrary feelings in the audience.'

Sheldon Stryker
We interact with others to create an identity, this is called identity negotiation. This develops a consistent set of behaviours that reinforce the identity of the person or group. This behaviour then become social expectations.
This is particularly relevant for collective identities (especially sub-cultures) that develop a specific way of relating to each other (attitude, language, ideas) that goes some way to helping construct our identity.

Judith Butler
Butler says: 'There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; ... identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results.' In other words, gender is a performance; it's what you do at particular times, rather than a universal who you are. The idea behind this is our identity (specifically here gender identity) is not defined by biology but is actually a performance learned as we grow. As media students we can apply to our study of identity as many of these performances and notions of idenity will be learned from the media.

Thomas de Zengotita
InMediated: The Hidden Effects of the Media on You and Your World he asserts that almost everything (info, values, news, role models) comes to us through some media (TV, print, web, magazines, films) so will undoubtedly colour/influence our view of life and therefore our own self-definition.

Jacques Lacan - Mirror Stage (we form ourselves by identifying with other images)
‘Lacan's concept of the mirror stage was strongly inspired by earlier work by psychologist Henri Wallon, who speculated based on observations of animals and humans responding to their reflections in mirrors. Wallon noted that by the age of about six months, human infants and chimpanzees could both recognize their reflection in a mirror. While chimpanzees rapidly lose interest in the discovery, human infants typically become very interested and devote much time and effort to exploring the connections between their bodies and their images. In a 1931 paper, Wallon argued that mirrors helped children develop a sense of self-identity.’

Althusser's Interpellation
Here's one definition. And here's an attempt to explain it: Interpellation is the process where a human subject is constructed by pre-given structures. This has been taken up some media theorists to to explain how media texts impose their ideology (their set of ideas) on the audience. If you think about it, we're bombarded by messages from the media, messages that make certain assumptions about us (taste, place in society etc), and as soon as we engage with the message we are positioned as a 'subject' rather than an individual. The idea is that we are controlled by these messages and go some way to defining our identity.

Judith Butler's Performativity
Butler says: 'There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; ... identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results.' In other words, gender is a performance; it's what you do at particular times, rather than a universal who you are. The idea behind this is our identity (specifically here gender identity) is not defined by biology but is actually a performance learned as we grow.

COLLECTIVE
The concept of a collective identity refers to a set of individuals' sense of belonging to the group or collective. For the individual, the identity derived from the collective shapes a part of his or her personal identity. It is possible, at times, that this sense of belonging to a particular group will be so strong that it will trump other aspects of the person's personal identity.’
Collective Identity.net

‘A collective identity may have been first constructed by outsiders who may still enforce it, but depends on some acceptance by those to whom it is applied. Collective identities are expressed in cultural materials – names, narratives, symbols, verbal styles, rituals, clothing.’
Francesca Poletta, James M Jasper, Collective Identity and Social Movements

‘Although there is no consensual definition of collective identity, discussions of the concept invariably suggest that its essence resides in a shared sense of ‘one-ness’ or ‘we-ness’ anchored in real or imagined shared attributes and experiences among those who comprise the collectivity and in relation or contrast to one or more actual imagined sets of ‘others’.
David Snow, Collective Identity and Expressive Form