Genre Theory

The theories related to gender are particularly important in relation to films. Feminist theory and queer theory provide different ways of receiving and reading a range of media texts.

Feminist Theory

This is the response to society’s assumption that women should subservient to men. In relation to media, feminists consider the way women are represented in media texts. Laura Mulvey argues that an audience watches a film in two ways:

·         Voyeuristically the audience watches unobserved by the characters but also by their fellow audience members. This leads to objectification and narcissist identification.

·         Fetishistically the vougerism leads to the figure becoming a fetish so that she becomes even more beautiful and she argues that this leads to the culture of the female movie star who is celebrated for her looks but considered as an object and often treated as such.

We are going to contrast against this theory and the conventions of the genre of which we are creating. We are establishing the character, Anna, to fight for herself and not be helped by the hero. This goes against the codes and conventions and this theory as this suggests that this the woman character cannot look after herself and is used as an object which isn’t the case with our trailer.