Task 2.1: Sterotypical representations in the "Horror" and "Thriller" genre

Villans/Antagonists:
Classically and also still in our modern media villains are often represented as psychopathic whit males who are often in their middle ages.

Classically this can be seen in examples such as Dracula and in our modern media can be seen in characters such as that in silence of the lambs.

Heroes/Victims: 

The heroes or victims of horror and thriller film are often weak, young, white, and somewhat sexually appealing women. Classically it was very rare to see women as heroines due to problems with sexism at the time which stereotyped women to be weak and incompetent. However as time progressed we can see that women now are often the heroines of the film and are the ones who fight back and in a lot of cases win. A modern example of this can bee seen in the cult classic character Ellen Ripley from the alien films.  

Biases:

Biases that can have an impact on the characters in a horror and thriller film include racial, sexual and gender bias. Leading actors and even as far as directors in Hollywood films are often seen to be white. It is rare to see someone of black complexion with a leading role in a film or being the director of a Hollywood film. We can see that there are a few films with exceptions that challenge the norm such as se7en which has Morgan Freeman (Black male) as its leading role. A gender bias would be that you rarely see females having the role of antagonist in horror and thriller films. This bias is rarely challenged and so is therefore still a prominent bias is our modern media. Sexual biases would include that seeing a gay male is very unconventional for horror and thriller films as it is often seen to be an unnecessary feature to a character and is most likely left untouched and unchallenged due to the difficulty of incorporating a sexually diverse character and using their diversity to somewhat develop the story in a meaningful way.