The first character that is shown on the screen is an attractive late teen years girl, whom seems oblivious to the dangers around her. The representations of the girl being shown first may connote that the film is 'sexual' and sells to the male gender. Another interpretation of the blonde girl being shown first is that she is the 'scream queen', a typical blonde attractive sexually active dumb girl, who in the killers mind, deserves to die, this representation also shows that the killer may be a misogynistic, someone who has a hate for the female gender and therefor kills them.
The general audience of this film are teenagers, this is represented by the age of the scream queen and her boyfriend, teenagers can relate to the social norms of the film, for example, the scream queen has a boyfriend and the scream queen makes popcorn and likes 'scary movies'.
Another way the intended audience may be shown is how the adults do not make dominant decisions and arent a big part of the opening scene of SCREAM, they fail to save their daughter which portrays that they are useless and not authorative, which may be real teenage audiences opinions on adults.
In SCREAM, the target primary audience are males, as this horror film would particularly interest males because of the gore, violence and the scream queen.
The scream queen is usually a blonde haired, busty pretty girl who on nearly all occasions (unless the film is going against general slasher conventions) is killed.
Scary Movie represents a good rip off scream queen as they over identify with the stereotype of a scream queen and exaggerate her character.
The killer 'ghostface' in the film is not presented as being heterosexual or homosexual, yet he stabs his victims, the killer could be phallic, therefore he is metaphorically raping his victims, but his first victim was the scream queens boyfriend which could show interpretations of homosexuality. Ghostface then kills the scream queen, which could be oedipal, he could be homosexual and frustrated by it so then takes his frustration out on the girl.
thats 'misogynistic'
ReplyDeletethe point about scream queen would benefit from reference to how this is handled in scary movie - which is an excellent text to reference as its highlighting very explicitly the genre conventions, including representations and the factors included for a male audience (scream queen killing in it is worth re-viewing)