EVALUATION TASK 2: HOW DOES YOUR

THRILLER REPRESENT SOCIAL

GROUPS By Alex Harris

AGE From our idea of a high school massacre we

wanted to use a teenage boy. We preferred a teenage boy over a grown man or woman because it is more believable as the teenager could just go to the school and be a psychopath.

If we had used a middle aged man it would be a lot less believable because the audience could easily question how the person got into the school in the first place.

In addition, if we wanted to film in a high school we needed to add to the verisimilitude of the film, we need to have someone of a high school age.

AGE IN SIMILAR FILMS There has been many films about high

school massacres and the way in which the characters age is represented.

Often young people are represented as being alienated, disaffected and outcast from society.

An example of how age is used in similar films is from ‘April Showers’. Teenagers are represented in two separate lights. One is brave, strong and heroic as you see in Sean and Jason. Jason becomes famous in his school as he is seen carrying someone out of the school. His newly found fame results in him committing suicide which shows that actually he felt isolated.

Another example of how age is represented is from ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’. Kevin is a psychopath as him mum tries to figure out why he killed 20 children. Kevin is vulnerable and isolated hence the reason he goes around creating incidents for people and his mum.

GENDER In high school massacres, gender is really

important as it helps the audience to relate to the character as they would be the same gender as them.

In my thriller, we used a male killer. We used a male killer rather than a female because it is a bigger stereotype that men are feared more and are more aggressive than women.

If we had used a woman it would’ve seemed a little indifferent as it’s incredibly rare that you see a woman overpowering men.

GENDER IN SIMILAR FILMS. In similar films, gender is

represented in a similar stereotypical light.

An example of this is in Elephant. The two killers Alex and Eric are both men which shows that they also followed the stereotypical idea of men being more intimidating which helps to make the situation more believable.

In contrast, We Need To Talk About Kevin shows teenage boys in a more vulnerable light. Yes, Kevin does commit some unforgiveable crimes but he does this because of his mental detachment from society and lack of affection from his mum.

DISABILITY By the killer using a mask to cover his

identity signifies, his corruptness and psychopathic tendencies.

We wanted to focus on his character being really deranged. We made him monosyllabic so that it gives nothing away about his personality. When you see him in the mirror he has little face expressions but he looks fearful.

The shot of the killer looking at himself in the mirror shows impending danger that me about to happen as you can see how shady he is.

SIMILAR DISABILITIES IN REAL LIFE

Similar features to the disabilities of my character can be seen in the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh.

McVeigh was supposedly bullied from a young age took refuge in a fantasy world where he imagined retaliating against the bullies. Most recognized him as timid and shy.

Another person we could compare our killer to is Anders Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks. He killed 8 people by setting off a van bomb and shot 69 dead.

On the day of the attacks, Breivik electronically distributed a compendium of texts entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, describing his far-right militant ideology.

Breivik was never bullied in school, in fact he was one of the stronger boys who stood up to bullies. His attacks seemed to be purely out of frustration for left wing politics as he as severely right wing.

McVeigh

Breivik

SUMMARY Overall we felt that we needed to represent

a young character committing a high school massacre to make it believable. In addition, we felt that our research dictated that we needed to show the characters motivations for his crime. We did this through our research into real-life crimes that6 were similar, from this we understood that we needed to show our characters unhinged mental state. By using a male character we also matched examples of real fms and real life incidents of young psychopaths who commit crimes.