Freuds "The retun of the Repressed"

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis and is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression. The word Repression is the name given to the action that is disallows yourself to access painful memories by burying them deep into your unconscious mind. He thought of the term "the return of the repressed", this lead to the ide of neurotic symptoms. He thought about the personality as having 3 difftent aspects. These aspects were Ego, the Superego and the Id. He thought that the mind was structurally similar to an ice burg. He used this to describe what happens when thoughts and feeling try to force its way to the mind, which will be expressed know as "ID" . The Ego, known as the 'referee', would stop this by repressing it and allowing it never to be shown or expressed.


Freud argued that the repression didn't happen within a persons consciousness, which lead him to believe that a person wasn'teven aware of the traumatic memories and experiences that have been repressed. However, there are signs that repression has taken through symptoms, fantasies, slips of the tongue and character traits

Some people watch horror because they can relate to them, but might not realizes this as it is repressed. In the horror film 'Halloween' a 'return of the repressed' narrative structure is used to show the audience the return of a psychotic killer that escapes from a mental instatute and decides to kill more people. In the movie it is made to seem that the memories of killing his sister returns when he kill the others.

Using this approach as a narrative structure to a horror film, the audience an insight to possible reasons as to why people who have repressed thoughts might do the things that they do.

Narrative theory

After watching "The Shining" a 1980's horror movie we had a group discusion about applying four very diffrent narrative theorys by Bordwell and Thompson, Propp, Todorov and Levi-Strauss to the movie.

Bordwell and Thompson had a theory on the distortion of time and space within a movie. The distortion of time and space created the story of the movie and the theory went that without it a movie woudn't work. When his theory is compared to that of "The Shining" we notice that use of the distortion of time in the movie as it progresses. This is shown at the begining of each day when a month, day of the month or time is only shown to the audience, but with no other description, which gives us a noticable progresion of time but without the knowlage of WHEN it actully is. Space is also distored throught the movie and this is most noticable with Jack when he has illusions and when he is shown in the old picture at the end of the movie. Although the theory does apply to "The Shining" it has the problem that it dosen't actully tell us anything about the actual story that we see.

Propp created a theory based on characters and narrative functions. Propp suggested that there are eight character functions.

• The villain ( This could be jack or the hotel )
• The hero ( In places this is Wendy, the cook or Danny)
  
• The donor (who provides an object with some magic property)
• The helper (is the person that helps the hero. This could be the cook, wend, Tony and the ability of shining)
• The princess (This would be Wendy.... but this dosen't completely fit as she isn't the sought for person or the reward for the hero and object of the villain's schemes)
• The father (who rewards the hero. This would be Jack... the problem been that Jack dosen't rewardd the hero)
• The dispatcher (who sends the hero on his way, in this case the cook)
• The false hero (It's unsure who this could be and infact might not be anyone of the characters)

As noticed above sometimes a character may fit into the same role "The Shining" has a very small cast so it turns out that, some roles are played by the same person. However this breaks as some of the roles arent played by any of the characters in the shining. Propp also has a theory that suggests that all storys follow a narrative structure, a set of 31 stages. He says that these stages would follow in the order of the 31 stages. However it is clear that when the theory is compared to that of "the Shining" that it falls apart after the first few stages and then fits again in some other stages. This shows that "The Shining dosen't follow his theory but does have a few good few comparisons. Instead of watching a movie and seeing characters, Propp theorys show us a diffrent perspective of how to view the characters and their functions within a movie.

Todorov's thoery is that movies all begin with and equlibrium which then leads to an disequlibrium and the into a new equlibrium. Todorov's theory works when compared to that of "The Shining" as the movie starts it all normal, this would be the equlibrium and when jack goes crazy it would be the disequlibrium and when Wendy and Danny escape at the end it would be the new equlibrium. Although this theory fits in well with "The Shining" it also fits well with any other narrative as it follows the patterns of a standard narrative thta all movies/stories have a starting point, a middle point and an end point.

Levi-Strauss theory is based on binary oppositions (Binary is used for digital devises and is a set of 1's or 0's, this can mean on or off). He plays with the fact that when a human thinks something their also unconsciously thinking the opposite , A good example of this is when someone thinks evil they also thinking good. when compared to "The Shining" it is shown throughout the movie. This can be seen by Danny when the movie starts, he is inocent and harmless and the starts talking in the mirror as Tony which seem somewhat evil/ different virsion of him. His narrative theory fits in well with "The Shining" as its seen throughout the movie.

The narrative theorys, not only an interesting subject to studie but also gives a huge insite into underlines of the ways that movies work and create an indepth sight into their narrative structure. Although each give a good understanding of a theoretical narrative structure, it is just that a theory, as it's not able to define all narrative stuructures, but does fit well as somewhat of a guide to how a good narrative structures can work.

Although I don't think that any of the narrative theorys completely fit the narrative structure of "The Shining" I do feel that the theorys of Propp have the closet comparisans than the other theorys. The reason I think this is because it's more more about the characters and the theory of how a story is structured. Todorov's theory fits all narrative, but dosen't really tell us anything about the story, so although it's good, it dosen't work when trying to understand the narrative of "The Shining". For this reason I think Propps theory tells us most about the movie.

The Role of the Distributor

There are four Main roles that are needed to creat a selling movie, these roles are : the producer, distributor, thearter and the customers (consumers).

I will be talking about the role of the distributer and how it's needed for a movie to make it into the thearter. The problem most movies have is not the making of the movie but the actual distributoin of the movie. The reason for this is the costs and time needed to distribute a movie. The role of the distributer is an important one and is vital to whether a film succeeds or fails. For this reason the distributer must be sure that they will be able to make the money back and profit from it. A good way that sells movies is having a well known actor, studio or ditector.

It's important that the distributor knows enough about the film itself to be able to market and gain the awerness of the correct audience. With a competitive market it's important identify the films audience, for this reason a marketing and distribution plan is needed.

Using a Marketing and Distribution plan the distributer must identify the films target audience and consider why this audience would want to watch this movie. A detail analsis has to be done to find the gender, age, lifestyles and media intrests of its core target audience. With this siad the distributor wants to target a large audience as it posibly can, so using the data from the analisis the distributor must find wasys to expand on the targeted area by promoting it in areas that it's not reaching.

In order to sell a movie it best to creat a BUZZ that can entice their audience, this is done by creating advertisment in the forms of trailers and posters, this way it leaves the audience wanting to see more (BUZZ). This is one of the ways that a distributor can persuade thereatres to play a movie, along with developing plans and partnerships to build an awareness and interest in the movie. The goal is to aim to convert as much interest as possible into cinema visits.

Once the distributor company has rights to a film, after the movie has been released, they then get the rights to distribute the movie on DVD and TV etc. Which is done to enusre nessery profits are reached. They do this by estimating the revenue across all formats of the movies release.

A movie would never succeed without the distributor. From what I have spoken about it's easy understand why there has to be a distribution and marketing plan, it obvious that movies can't sell themselves!

HorrorTrailers

The "Human Centipede 2" Is a gornography (A pornography with a horror twist). The main protagonist is a twisted scientist that try's to create a disgusting creatures from human life by connecting their mouths to another persons anus, thus the name "Human centipede". This movie doesn't follow the normal forms and convention of a normal horror movie in the way that it is only about torture and enjoying it. Wheres Most horror films have torture is more about making the audience scared than giving them pleasure. The reason I choose this video is because I want to have some torture scene to a small amount in my trailer.

The trailer above Starts by showing an older man getting out of bed and getting shouted at by his mother. He seems to resent this and is one of the reasons his trying to vent his anger onto other people but in a messed up way.



"The Ring" is a well known horror movie of 2002. I chose to write about this video because It is a well known horror movie that has started a ring of similar movies with the same kind of theme.
This movie follows the forms and conventions of a topical horror movie as it uses gore in an unusual way in which the female character climbs the well with her limbs twisting in unreal ways.



"Saw 7" is a new movie of 2011 and is a follow on of the "saw" movie series, It's a gornography (A pornography with a sick horror twist). This kind of horror doesn't follow the normal forms and conventions of a normal Horror movie, instead the "saw" movies have set the forms and conventions of other gornograph movies. The entire move is based apon gore and

Codes and Conventions of a Horror "Vanishing On 7th Street"

"Vanishing On 7th Street" Is about a man that wakes up one day in the city of Detroit to find out that the vast majority of the human population have vanished after a huge power outage. As daylight falls the protagonist and his friends he meets, realize that the darkness is out to get them, shadows of the unknown (shown below to the right) .