How is Representation Implemented into the Thriller Genre?

  Like every genre, thriller has certain conventions as far as how gender, race, and class are represented in their films. After looking at some of the common conventions of how the intense and mysterious feel is created and how the story is left open for the viewer to figure out, I decided to also research how these groups are represented in thriller movies. In this post, I will be breaking down how each group is represented commonly in the thriller genre by researching various sources to find commonalities of genre conventions.

Gender

• Men are almost always portrayed as violent and/or serial killers, while women are almost always portrayed as the victims.
• Men are also usually the 'hero' of the film and are trying saving the woman.
• Men are usually shown as strong and muscular while women are shown to be thin and good looking.
• Males portrayed as powerful, while women are portrayed as powerless.

Race

• The hero is usually white, while other ethnicities are shown as rather victims or antagonists.
• Asians are skilled fighters.
• Characters from the Caribbean are often gangsters or criminals.
• American men are often the 'hero' of the movie, American females are used as sex symbols

Class

• The 'hero' of the film is usually of the upper class.
• People of lower class are usually intellectuals but don't have any common sense.
• Higher class people are usually shown to have busy and stressful lives.
• Higher class people are more powerful and lower class people are powerless.

 Overall, thriller has very similar conventions to many other genres in the way they portray who has power and who doesn't. For example, the characters who have power are higher class, usually white, and are almost always men. The common victims are women as we see in other movie genres, and their heroes are usually always men. However, through researching some other thriller movies, I have found that many modern thriller movies challenge some of these conventions, and it is opening up the thriller genre to many more possible stories. For example, in Get Out (2017), the main victim is a black male, being tricked by his white girlfriend into meeting her family, who plans on extracting his brain and selling it to a white buyer who wants his traits. This is interesting in the sense that not only is the victim a male, but a female was also one of the main antagonists, although it is normally the other way around. On top of this, the white family were actually the antagonists in this film, while the black man, overpowered by the whole family, was the protagonist. Lastly, the hero of this film was another black man, who was a friend of the protagonist, who found out where he was and the situation he was in and lead the cops to him. These are major challenges to common conventions as the hero, antagonists and protagonist are literally the opposite of conventions. However, some conventions such as white people being of a higher class, and the men in this movie are all strong and ready to fight, which the protagonist has to stand in the face of in order to escape.

Sources
https://www.slideshare.net/ccapricec/represnetations-and-sterotypes-in-the-thriller-genres
http://www.criminalelement.com/who-reads-what-thrillers-mysteries-gender-lines-linda-rodriguez/

Get Out (2017) Trailer