Day 58 : The concept of Male Gaze in regards to Megan Black

 Introduction 

As “encoders” we have to be careful what messages we place in our trailer as the media can be highly effective through its representation of specific subgroups. It could potentially encourage negative behaviour towards individuals in society, which in this case is women. This would also contradict the market research (Questionnaire) I conducted on the representation of women in Horror and Final Girls, as it was evident that both men and women agreed women should have a wider variety of roles in Horror.

Detailed Summary

•       We plan to make Megan follow the conventional “slut” trop often presented in the Horror genre. This will be through the clothes she wears and camera angles/shots, but also the fact that she is a victim of our young villain Flora. Megan is also unconventional in comparison to the typical female victim presented in Horror, through her personality as she is intelligent, confident and mature when looking after Flora.

•       The representation of women in horror who express their sexuality freely through what they wear is often negative. Making Megan intelligent is a concept which challenges the dominant ideology suggested in Horror that women must be conservative and restricted in comparison to a man who is free to express their sexuality, which is why I believe it is a positive representation of women. (This will also appeal to a female audience who are often forgotten by male directors in the Horror industry)

How this will be presented in our trailer

We will be using a variety of camera techniques and angles to sexualise Megan. This ranges from point of view shots which were presented in our storyboard as Flora watches her sister Megan getting unchanged, but also slow motion and tilts of her body to enable the heterosexual male watching our trailer to be able to become closer to Megan.  (This will be shown through a point of view shot reinforcing the theme of voyeurism often seen in Horror). We will also use low angles and close up shots as Megan is introduced to the audience, e.g of her lips, eyes and legs. The use of eyes is inspired by Psycho (1960) as Hitchcock consistently presented eyes to symbolise fear, e.g when Marion Crane is stopped by the sheriff you can see she is scared by her eyes. Rather than fear we will present insanity through Jean as she is in a mental ward desperate to escape and Flora as she is wearing her mothers old clothes and makeup.