In our thriller, there is only one character shown, however, he can represent a number of social groups such as people with mental disabilities and people who're interested in technology. Also, his gender can be representative of real social groups.
In terms of representing people with mental disabilities, it can be argued that the boy represents this group well. Our character has Autism and so struggles with social interactions and some physical tasks, however, our thriller doesn't highlight these and instead highlights the positive aspects of people who have Autism as it shows that where they may lack in some skills they gain in others. For example, the teenage boy has the technological skills and intellect to be able to hack in to one of the most highly secured data bases on the planet. This represents people with Autism (and therefore disabled people as a whole) quite well in the way that it defies common ideologies and shows that people with disabilities can have superior intelligence to people who aren't disabled. However, it could be argued that our thriller represents disability badly as he is breaking the law and is the criminal in the film, but because we see the film from his point of view, we sympathise with him and so he is not seen as the criminal. Also, the reasons for his breaking the law are just and so the character is seen as a hero, which represents disability well. Another drama/thriller which looks at a character with, possible, Autism is The Social Network. In the film, Mark Zuckerberg is shown as an outsider and it has been suggested by him and others that he might suffer from Aspergers. However, Zuckerberg is a successful business owner and pioneer of social networking. There is an idea, presented by The Times, which states that 'everybody is on the Autistic scale somewhere'. By using Nick, an attractive, younger man, we aim to suggest that it's not such an alien thing for someone to be Autistic and therefore create less stigma.
Gender is also represented in our film and as the protagonist and all the other main characters are men and the mise-en-scene of the titles are mainly male orientated colours, the impression is given that men are in control. They have the power on both sides of the dispute and the topic is one of great importance which suggests that men are in control of everything which is of great importance in the world: a patriarchal world. Linking disability and gender together, Aspergers is more likely to occur in men than it is in women so our character is an accurate representation of people who have Autism. Furthermore, Autism is very hard to diagnose in children that are under around the age of 12, so we chose a boy who is about 17 so that he is definately Autistic but he isn't too old. Gary McKinnon, the man our character is based on, was about 40, however for our plot we thought it would look strange if a man was sat in child's pyjamas under a table so we went for a teenager.
Another group of people in our film is people with power, i.e. the government, F.B.I, MI6 and other similar organisations and these groups are represented negatively. The boy, when he hacks into the data base, finds incriminating evidence about 'the major security stand-down on 9/11' which 'couldn't have been accidental.' These ideas suggest that people in power are corrupt and therefore represents them badly. Furthermore, when our character speaks out about what he found, these higher powers try to keep him quiet which further shows them to be the negative force in the film. Even though the protagonist has broken the law, he is fighting for the greater good and so he is shown in a positive light.
No comments:
Post a Comment