Claude Levi Strauss (1908-2009) was a anthropologist and philosopher from France in the early 1990s. He believed that the way society understood certain words depended on their understanding of the word and it's opposite. This caused Strauss to come up with the theory of Binary Opposites.
Binary Opposites are used within the film industry as it enables the audience to identify a villain from a hero. This is mainly used in the horror genre as they use sane and insane, human and supernatural and good and evil as sets of Binary Opposites.
Examples:
Within the Harry Potter series Harry and Voldemort are set as Binary Opposites through good and evil. Throughout the films Harry is seen as 'good' and has wanted to see Voldemort (seen as 'evil') dead throughout. The image to the left is effective as it shows to the audience the Binary Opposites. As a marketing image this effective as the wand separating the two mixed with the characters bruised faces indicates 'vs', foreshadowing to the viewer of the image the fights between these two characters. Both characters have vicious looks on there faces but by looking closely at the eyes of the characters it could signify innocence vs corrupted, young vs old, novice vs experience, light vs dark.
Using this Theory:
Within our opening I feel we use Binary Opposites however it may not seen apparent. The character of the Ring Leader is clearly seen as the 'evil' character as she intimidates and is physically violent towards 'X'. Whereas I don't feel it is apparent that 'X' is the good character, this is because she hides her true personality of knowing what's right, primarily why the film is called Incognito. As this theory is present, once again I do not feel it will be evident to the audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment