Tuesday, 24 November 2015

Stereotypical Representation of Thriller/Horror

The Thriller and Horror genres have very similar stereotypical representations that have been carried on for many years, the most well known ones for gender and ethnicity are:


Cultural Bias - All over Hollywood the leading character has always been a white male character with the side-kick or the minor roles being played by a black, ethic and minority actors, however this very old tradition has started to be broken over the years with actors of other races as appose to just white have started to play the lead. Specifically in the horror and thriller role it has always been known to have a white male protagonist as the main role.


Gender Bias - In the thriller genre females have always played the 'damsel in distress' roles and the main hero male character will be the one to save her. Or if not that then she will be the femme fatale who's role is to seduce the main male character in order to get him to help her gets what she wants. The female characters are never the main characters who saves the day.


Heterosexual Bias - Also having a homosexual/lesbian main character is very rare in any genre, only recently has any kind of homosexual/lesbian relationship been introduced in movies to be a side story let alone the main couple. This may be because in thriller/horror the main character is usually one to have a lot of power or in an important job so them being openly gay may make them seem less manly.


Examples of all three of these together is Dracula, a white male who bites the necks of women  (most commonly) and in some instances can control people, so shows that he has a lot of power.

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