Last week I attended the screening of a film by British producer Bob Portal, entitled Red, White and Blue. As a film it exhibited a unique mix of explicit horror, implicit narrative and American culture. The storyline tied 3 narratives about different characters one after another into one storyline. The way the director used camera shots, edits and dialogue meant that often it was left to the audience to piece together backgrounds of each character via their dialogue-less actions. Furthermore the actual time line for the storyline wasn’t as explicit as most films, and it becomes evident at the conclusion that the narrative takes place in a far greater timescale than you expect. Only by taking note of key dialogue and compositional focuses can this be realised.
As we are looking at Genre this week, the film had all the key representational stereotypes of the Horror genre. It was set in the suburbs of Texas, which is a common location for American horrors. Furthermore the self-destructive femme fatale, the flawed war veteran and the rash band member are all representations that are both stereotypes of such American films.
One key element that both breaks the conventions and does not, is that not one of the characters was a clear ‘Protagonist’. Each main character had flaws that made them morally unjust in the eyes of the audience. Additionally, there are two killers, one which at the end is not killed. This is something that sets itself apart from conventional horrors, however is becoming common places in Horror Thrillers such as Dead Man’s Shoes (Shane Meadows) and the Saw series – in which there is no moral ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and often the killer will escape.
Red, White and Blue was a good all round example of both conventional and un-conventional approaches to Genre in the medium of film. Considering however, that this is a study of games, it makes me wonder whether other games have adopted a similar approach. The obvious example would be Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar) in that the player is in the place of a criminal who has to comply with dubious requests. But still this doesn’t really resonate too much with the approach of Red, White and Blue, as while Grand Theft Auto sparked huge controversy with its Viewpoint, the narrative structure ultimately remained the same. The only way it changes is that the player begins in a state of Disequilibrium (getting shot by Catalina in a cutscene, escaping jail, etc.) to slowly progress to the main conflict and resolution. Many games adopt this tactic, such as Uncharted 2, whereby the player begins with a gunshot wound, hanging off a cliff.
The only game that really uses multiple running narratives in the timeline I would say is Resident Evil Zero (of course this is only off the top of my head – there will probably be multiple games that do this) in that you can switch between two characters in the middle of play. Furthermore each character progresses when not controlled. One may be being attacked while you play suddenly, meaning you have to switch to that character or run to save them. It is this which relates more to the convention breaking aspects of Red, White and Blue.
Having studied Genre last year in a Media course, I have a reasonable understanding of areas of it, however it is still interesting to look at contemporary films and games, and how they deal with both Genre and Narrative.
As we are looking at Genre this week, the film had all the key representational stereotypes of the Horror genre. It was set in the suburbs of Texas, which is a common location for American horrors. Furthermore the self-destructive femme fatale, the flawed war veteran and the rash band member are all representations that are both stereotypes of such American films.
One key element that both breaks the conventions and does not, is that not one of the characters was a clear ‘Protagonist’. Each main character had flaws that made them morally unjust in the eyes of the audience. Additionally, there are two killers, one which at the end is not killed. This is something that sets itself apart from conventional horrors, however is becoming common places in Horror Thrillers such as Dead Man’s Shoes (Shane Meadows) and the Saw series – in which there is no moral ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and often the killer will escape.
Red, White and Blue was a good all round example of both conventional and un-conventional approaches to Genre in the medium of film. Considering however, that this is a study of games, it makes me wonder whether other games have adopted a similar approach. The obvious example would be Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar) in that the player is in the place of a criminal who has to comply with dubious requests. But still this doesn’t really resonate too much with the approach of Red, White and Blue, as while Grand Theft Auto sparked huge controversy with its Viewpoint, the narrative structure ultimately remained the same. The only way it changes is that the player begins in a state of Disequilibrium (getting shot by Catalina in a cutscene, escaping jail, etc.) to slowly progress to the main conflict and resolution. Many games adopt this tactic, such as Uncharted 2, whereby the player begins with a gunshot wound, hanging off a cliff.
The only game that really uses multiple running narratives in the timeline I would say is Resident Evil Zero (of course this is only off the top of my head – there will probably be multiple games that do this) in that you can switch between two characters in the middle of play. Furthermore each character progresses when not controlled. One may be being attacked while you play suddenly, meaning you have to switch to that character or run to save them. It is this which relates more to the convention breaking aspects of Red, White and Blue.
Having studied Genre last year in a Media course, I have a reasonable understanding of areas of it, however it is still interesting to look at contemporary films and games, and how they deal with both Genre and Narrative.
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