Representation and Characters

This is an interesting video presented by Buzz Feed Yellow that explored the representation of women in horror films and contrasts this with a male character playing the role instead. This video gives the viewer an eye-opening view of the way women are represented as "sexual objects of desire" conforming to Mulvey's 1985 theory named the 'Male Gaze'. The use of the parallel editing to show the juxtaposition of the original film footage with the females next to their footage mocking this idea next to it shows how sexualised female characters are in order to appeal to the male audience of the film, despite sex being irrelevant to the narratives of horror films and unnecessary to be included. With the males being sexualised in the same way, it shows just how exaggerated the behaviour of the women is in an attempt to be attractive, and concludes how unnecessary its presence is. 

To further this point, in this article (page 10, figure 4.3.) the oversexualisation of men is theorised by MacKinnon when he says: “Men are increasingly and unapologetically objectified, both in terms of erotic spectacle and as targets of advertising for products beyond cars and beer, including many items once thought to be marketed for women alone,” (MacKinnon, 2003). This tells us how, in the same way that females are used to attract the male audience, males are used to attract women. 

It is clear that in the film and advertisement industries, the sexualisation of males and females is relied on in order to attract the opposite gender to certain products, and as I've touched on before in audience research, the sexuality of the audience not being necessary information to know when making a horror film because sexuality is not relevant to the narratives of horror films, and the oversexualisation of teenagers is often the reason that teenagers aren't cast to play teenagers and instead, more developed adults are cast in order to sell these film products. 

In 1904, Stanley Hall theorised the storm and stress model to describe youths through adolescence, saying that youths are often depressed, they are more invested in criminal activity between 12 and 24, and they often turn to drink and drugs. In this short, the main part of this theory I want to draw on is criminal behaviour because it is most relevant to the narrative and horror convention in general, due to them breaking in to the asylum and committing murder, and this relates to Ogerby (1997) and Hedbridge (1987)'s theory of "Youth as fun" and "Youth as troublemaker" which are theories that are also followed through the criminal behaviour in No Escape.  

In this short, the teenagers will be teenagers and therefore there will be no sexualisation of the characters, and these youths will represent the aspect of youth as criminals within the narrative of No Escape.