Tuesday 15 October 2013

How typical is 'Sin City' of it's genre?

The film Sin City is a hybrid, consisting of joint characteristics from both Noir and Comic Book genres in order to produce a more state-of-the-art text.
           One way of which Sin City typically conforms to the Noir genre is by usage of a male narrator, which tends to be highly common within this particular film genre, as the repeated protagonist within the tale is male and proceeds the assertive role. Nevertheless, the protagonists within the story regularly succumb the Femme Fatale's sexuality of the sequence even though, women are only used for men's personal gain. An example of typical male narration within Sin City is when the prostitute Goldie is murdered, Marv speaks about the inflicted harm in return for the person who'd caused it to happen, as well as speaking negatively of himself, calling him a "two timed loser". Yet another male protagonist role, John Hartigan constantly puts himself down by his narrative comments which he also used for self-motivation "an old man dies, little girl lives" whilst saving a young girl from paedophiles.
            A typical feature used constantly throughout Sin City to portray the film's status of Noir and Comic Book hybrid genre is through usage of a leather trench coat, worn by the protagonist, Marv. Trench coats were popular military coats, introduced in the 40's, around the time WW2 roughly ended, which relates to the 'cold war' theme, Noir genre films are based upon. However, one main comic book convention 'the Superhero's cape', portrayed within Sin City through the protagonist, Marv's trench coat at the beginning and end of each mission, as he removes and later clothes himself with the coat before and after killing his enemies (conventions of the horror genre), to prevent disgrace upon his character as a hero.
            One way of which Sin City conforms typically of comic book genre conventions, is by usage of over exaggerated physical violence which exceed the boundaries of common sense. Within Sin City, at some point each protagonist uses extreme violence which doesn't tend to occur naturally in Noir films. An example of this is when Goldie's murdered and the Police are called, and Marv escapes by blowing the police away by punching the door open, he then continues to fall down flights of stairs, dodging bullets, breaks through windows, stops a police car and drives off in it. This highlights the modern features of film as being hybrid, with fast, exaggerated conventions of a comic book.

1 comment:

  1. Rose, this is the best piece of work you have done this year, well done! Workshop seemed to have helped. You could justify the purpose of giving a voice over narration to the protagonists. However the structure is well done, the points are clear and mostly justified. You could add more detail of specific scenes to improve this further.

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