U1-36 : THRILLER PROJECT 2007/8

Wednesday, 6 February 2008
U1-36 : THRILLER PROJECT 2007/8

Conventions of a Traditional Thriller

Today I have been researching the characteristics of a conventional thriler. I found an item on wikipedia.org (not always a reliable source, but in this case I believe we can trust it.)

There are select piece of information we have jotted in our Media Studies 'orange books' from this article:

Thrillers often take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently "hard men" accustomed to danger: law enforcement officers, spies, soldiers, seamen, or aviators. However, they may also be ordinary citizens drawn into danger by accident. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women have become increasingly common.

Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. In a thriller, the hero must thwart the plans of an enemy, rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. Thrillers also occur on a much grander scale: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. In thrillers influenced by film noir and tragedy, the compromised hero is often killed in the process.

In recent years, when thrillers have been increasingly influenced by horror or psychological-horror exposure in pop culture, an ominous or monstrous element has become common to heighten tension. The monster could be anything, even an inferior physical force made superior only by their intellect (Saw), a supernatural entity (Dracula, Christine books, The Amityville Horror, The Ring), aliens (H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos books), serial killers (Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Psycho), or even microbes or chemical agents (Cabin Fever, Richard Matheson's The Last Man On Earth, 28 days later). Some authors have made their mark by incorporating all of these elements (Richard Laymon, F. Paul Wilson) throughout their bibliographies.

Similar distinctions separate the thriller from other overlapping genres: adventure, spy, legal, war, maritime fiction, and so on. Thrillers are defined not by their subject matter but by their approach to it. Many thrillers involve spies and espionage, but not all spy stories are thrillers. The spy novels of John le Carré, for example, explicitly and intentionally reject the conventions of the thriller. Conversely, many thrillers cross over to genres that traditionally have had few or no thriller elements. Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes, and Brian Callison are best known for their thrillers, but are also accomplished writers of man-against-nature sea stories.

Thrillers may be defined by the primary mood that they exhibit: excitement. In short, if it 'thrills', it is a thriller.

Also, there was an article on the site about sub-genre.

We have the main synopsis, but I'm going to discuss these options before I confirm the sub-genre(s) on this blog:
Action thriller
Crime thriller
Disaster thriller
Drama thriller
Eco-thriller
Horror thriller
Legal thriller
Medical thriller
Political thriller
Psychological thriller
Spy thriller
Supernatural thriller
Techno-thriller

In all honesty, after having read the explanations of all of the sub-genres, I'd love to involve as many of the themes from all the options as possible, not forgetting that the opening sequence is a mere 4 minutes long!

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