The Killing (Forbrydelsen):

Transnational audience = these are people from all across the globe, who may not speak the same language, but consume and look at the same media content.

Transnational institution = these are international organizations that are usually not run by the government and they are known worldwide and their impact spreads worldwide

In what ways is ‘genre’ beneficial for transnational audiences?

• Forbrydelsen is a foreign film that is produced in Dutch and it attracts a transnational audience by following the rules and conventions that follow with a certain genre of programme.
• A narrative image is used in order to allow the transnational audience to understand the plot of the media source, even if it is in a foreign language and they do not understand what is happening.
• Forbrydelsen includes the generic regime of verisimilitude in order to create a piece of media to appear lifelike, which makes the audience want to watch the media as they feel they can relate to it if they watch it.
• The theory of preferred reading by Stuart Hall can also be applied to this media as if many people like it, the word would spread across and more people would want to watch it as their friend recommended it and then they might recommend it to a friend and so on.
• “The Killing” uses familiarity of a specific genre, such as in The Killing, a mystery genre is set by the use of a detective and the death of the victim. This familiarity attracts a transnational audience as even though they may not speak the language that the programme is spoken in, they can follow the narrative image and see familiarity of the programme with the same genre programme in their native language.

In what ways is ‘genre’ beneficial for transnational institutions?

• By creating the source of media for a transnational audience, the transnational institution can attract viewers from all across the globe, which means they have a higher viewing rating and can therefore make more money through translated versions and spin offs.
• For example, Forbrydelsen was so popular, an English version was produced by Fox Television Studios in collaboration with Netflix.

HOW DOES MEDIA ORGANISATIONS BUILD AND MAINTAIN AUDIENCES NATIONALLY AND GLOBALLY?

• The Killing” uses familiarity of a specific genre, such as in The Killing, a mystery genre is set by the use of a detective and the death of the victim. This familiarity attracts a transnational audience as even though they may not speak the language that the programme is spoken in, they can follow the narrative image and see familiarity of the programme with the same genre programme in their native language.
• They use a famous theme that anyone would be able to identify, even if it was in another language.
• The Killing was a collaboration with a German PSB (public service broadcasting) company and Dutch PSB company so that both the audiences from the Netherlands and Germany are attracted due to the producing company being from their region.
• Usually, high status broadcasting companies are used as if people have watched a programme from the same company and enjoyed it, then they will be willing to give another programme by the same PSB company a try as they might like the style or their ideas they present in the TV programmes.
• The PSBs that produced The Killing make it very realistic in order to entice the consumers to watch because they feel they can relate to it and there is a repertoire of the mystery genre in order to keep the sameness of the programme with the mystery genre.
• Keeping the sameness of the programme and following the conventions of what makes a mystery genre keeps the audiences attracted as they are familiar to the genre and will be able to understand if it was in a foreign language due to the conventions, narrative image and non verbal communication are familiar to a programme in the same genre that is in their native language.
• However, The Killing is different as it counteracts the expectations of programmes in the mystery genre, leading the consumer into suspended disbelief, which makes this programme differ from others, but still remain familiar to the audience
• It targets social class C1, C2 and DE (80% of the population), so uses that class of people in the programme to attract that audience.
• Serves as a need of escapism and enjoyment in the Maslow’s Pyramid of needs

In this essay I am going to argue the fact that females are represented in a pessimistic way in comparison to males. I will be exploring issues in both prints about how they present the dominant male and female. In Tomb Raider Lara Croft is made to look like an attractive girl. This is the gender typical stereotype people have for a ‘perfect woman’. In comparison to this in Men’s Health Vin Diesel is made to look like a muscular man which is presented as the dominant ideology of what men should look like. In my opinion I would say that Men’s Health is a reactionary text because of the muscles and all the cover lines, “blast body fat”, “new year muscle”, whereas Tomb Raider is more of a radical text because even though Lara Croft is sexualised, she is portrayed as a woman that is involved with intense combat and she carries guns and weapons which is not what we associate woman to have. 

A difference between the two pieces of media is that the game cover presents a constructed reality, whereas Men’s Health shows a real person. This could be used as evidence to support the idea that the expectations of society for the appearance of females is more unrealistic and unattainable, meaning the only way to represent this cartoonish ideal is through the use of constructed reality, as it simply doesn’t exist within the real world. 

While some might say that a heavily sexualised protagonist or front cover image is a necessity to achieve high sales in the respective industries, sales figures show that most of the highest selling games and magazines do not follow this trend. For example, the highest selling video game of all time is Minecraft, followed by Tetris and a variety of Nintendo games including Mario and Pokemon. None of these games feature a protagonist similar to Lara Croft, and yet they have far exceeded the Tomb Raider games in terms of sales. 

Many would say that this is far more harmful than the presentation of Lara Croft, as even though she is stylised to be perhaps unrealistic and unattainably attractive she is never presented as a societal norm within the game, nor is the game intended to be viewed as realistic, as evidenced by the scene of her fighting a dinosaur on the back of the cover. Furthermore, within the game when other human characters do feature, they are not presented in the same way as Lara. Instead, they are more often realistic deceptions of normal people. 

The same can be said for magazines; the highest selling magazines of all time include National Geographic, Better Homes and Gardens, Food Network Magazine, and Popular Science. Only one magazine, The Cosmopolitan, out of the 20 highest selling magazines regularly features highly sexualised people on their cover.  

This evidence suggests that the idea that society demands and expects the heavily sexualised representation of both males and females to be false, in fact the sales of magazines and video games denote the opposite to be true. Because of this, games like Tomb Raider and magazines like Men’s Health seem to be unnecessarily unrealistic and perpetuate harmful ideologies to society as a whole for no apparent reason other than the preferences of the creators of said texts. 

In conclusion I think that media platforms such as Tomb Raider and Men’s Health use what I would consider, quite harsh and terrible ways to control their audiences, by impacting and controlling consumers’ confidence desires, and anxieties. I think that this contributes to bad mental health being formed, just so media platforms can sell their

Stephen Neale: UK film theorist, he said that genres use repeated types of features. Repertoire of elements and differences, views genre as a process

Repertoire of elements: Repeated features that are the same and recognisable as a specif genre. For example Comedy consists of: Jokes, stupid actions, puns and happy behaviour.

Corpus: Genres evolve as new texts are added to similar text. Slight changes are made to the audience, sound and text.

Hybridisation: The merging of different genres to create a sub-genre so that there can be more than one genre in a text. like a romance comedy rom/com.

Historic specificity: Genres that are associated with a specific time and were popular at a that time.

Repetition and sameness: Texts could get boring and repetitive if the they’re the same as other texts.

Variation and change: New things introduced in a text so the audience doesn’t get bored.

Narrative image: A story is told through moving images, and has a similar narrative structure to texts in that genre.

Expectations and hypothesis: Audiences predict what’s going to happen. For example, in a horror film you can tell when a jump scare is about to occur because the music turns into a crescendo or is silent.

Suspend disbelief : The audience must care about the characters in order for them to remain interested. This can be done by making them think a certain way and that something is going to happen to that character. This is known as Audience positioning.

Generic regime of verisimilitude: To make things the same so it’s believable.

 Conventions and rules: The certain rules and structures. Specific features that must to be included in a text to make it a certain genre. for example, suspenseful music to make it out like a jump scare will occur.

Sub-genre:  A genre that has been derived from the original main genre, so it doesn’t contain all of the required features.

CATEGORY	SIMILARITIES	DIFFERENCES	THEORY
CHARACTERS	– The hero was a female. – The victim was a female.	– The hero in the killing is a woman. However, in the missing the hero is a male.	PROPP – Every character fits into a type.
NARRATIVE	– The first episodes introduce the themes.	– In the missing the victim dies so it can not be fully resolved.	TODOROV – There is a beginning, middle and end. There will be a dilemma and at the end it will be resolved.
THEMES	– The city is safe and the countryside is bad.	– The killing someone dies so there is no hope about getting her back. – Whereas, the missing the girl comes back and it is about the hope of finding out what happened to her for all those years.	LEVI-STRAUSS – there are 2 binary opposites (good or bad)
REPRESENTATION	– The girl is the victim. – The hero is the detective.	– The Killing has a woman detective higher up in power than the male detective; this is radical as typically the male detective would be in charge of the female detective. – The lead detective in the missing is a male so this is reactionary.	SEMIOTICS
TECHNICAL CODES / LANGUAGE OF MOVING IMAGE (music, setting, props, lighting, use of camera, editing etc)	– The first 5 minutes of the 1st episode shows us what happened before or shows the conclusion and it will work back from there.	– The music in the missing fits well with what is on screen (mysterious and similar to music in a horror film. – However, the music in the killing is more cinematic and upbeat. This contrasts to what is showed on screen.	None

Category	Familiarities	differences	theory
characters	clear and obvious protagonist that will conflict the danger head on with a clear enemy or antagonist being western society.	they have an instinct engraved into their society that they must give up their life to please the government your life and repay your debt of them raising you and that your body belongs to them so they choose what happens to it.	propp
narrative	The protagonist is being made to do something that he/she doesn’t want to do but must be done for the greater good of their state and country.	The protagonist starts off with power when he tells the people off for smuggling Shakespeare into their country which is contraband. His power is then taken away when he meets people superior to him as they tell him to go away as a spy and complete a spy mission.	todorov
themes	secrets and lies are kept from the population to keep people from the truth as it might make them look bad.	the secrets are being exposed through dramatic irony that the viewers already know	Levi Strauss
representation	One nation or opposition is classified or represented as evil and a danger to their way of living	the difference is that our standard of living is the evil one.	semiotics
technical codes	music is being played In German on the radio which is similar to what we do	the difference is that they are playing foreign music unlike us because we wouldn’t play foreign music often.

Category	Familiarities	Differences	Theory
Characters			Propp
Narrative			Todorov
Themes			Levi Strauss
Representation			Semiotics
Technical Codes	The character was sweaty

Similarities:

chase scene: we expected the character to be caught

the protagonist was immediately introduced as the chosen one

we expected him to be nearly caught taking the photos

we expected him to try make contact with loved ones because its an instinct

when the lock is being picked the sound increases

Differences:

Language

Set in enemy territory showing their point of view.

Define each of these key terms

• Repertoire of elements – Characters. covers the theory that a certain genre of film will have similar characters. In a crime film there will often be the Italian mobster. Setting. covers the idea that the same genre of film will have similar settings.
• Corpus – a collection of written or spoken language data in a computer-readable format. It brings together large quantities of language evidence from a variety of real situations which lexicographers use to compile accurate and meaningful dictionary entries.
• Hybridisation – Hybridization is a term used to describe a type of media convergence whereby a new mode emerges containing elements of combined media. Hybrid media represent most modern media and the concept that different media forms can work together to create new media.
• Historic specificity –
• Repetition and Sameness
• Variation and change
• Narrative image
• Expectations and hypotheses
• Suspend disbelief
• Generic regime of verisimilitude

Stephen Neale – Prominent UK-based film theorist who has made an enormous contribution to the field of genre studies

Repertoire of elements – Repeated features that are identical and recognisable as a specif genre eg horror = dark, jump scares, night, groups of people

Corpus – Genres evolve as new texts and are added to the body of similar texts

Hybridisation – The merging of different genres to create a sub-genre , more than one genre in a text

Historic specificity – They are associated with certain time periods and tend to have been popular at a particular moment in time due to other cultural, economic or historical factors

Repetition and sameness – Genre text producers have a fine line between repeating successful formulas with only minor variations

Variation and change – Varying the genre sufficiently to still allow familiarity but also make the audience feel the product they are consuming seems fresh

Narrative image – Tells a story through moving image, and closely follows a narrative structure to similar texts in that genre

Expectations and hypotheses – Audiences like to predict what’s going to happen, eg in a horror film you can tell when something’s going to happen like a jump scare because they music builds up or it’s silent and the camera’s moving rapidly between shots

Suspend disbelief – The audience needs to care about the characters in order for them to remain interested in the text this can be done by making them think a certain thing may happen (audience positioning)

Generic regime of verisimilitude – Making things very similar and match up to both our experience of other texts and of the real world so they’re believable

Conventions and rules – There are certain rules / structures / features that need to be included in a text to make it a certain genre

Sub-genre – A genre that has derived from the original main genre but doesn’t contain all of the required features and can have differences to this as well

Hybridity – Putting 2 or more different things together