Anil's Ghost, Rear Window By Alfred Hitchcock
ESSAY – EXTENSION ENGLISH
Anil’s Ghost, Rear Window and 2 ORTS: crime fiction genre, texts, contexts, values and techniques
“While the genre of crime writing covers a wide diversity of texts, these texts all engage with investigating a crime and associated social and moral issues”
Conventions shape a text and are adopted to suit a specific audience or contextual purpose. The genre of crime writing covers a wide diversity of texts that through the composer’s contextual influences and intentions conform to or subvert the archetypal crime writing conventions and themes such as the investigation of a crime and the associated social and moral issues involved. ‘Rear Window’ a highly cinematically geared 1954 film by Alfred Hitchcock, ‘Anil’s …show more content…
Renowned as ‘the master of suspense’ Hitchcock achieves tension and suspense by taking innocent, ordinary characters and placing them in a situation beyond their control where a vulnerable victim is murdered. The combination of thriller with crime is illustrated through the use of several cinematic devices such as sound and lighting. Throughout the final scenes where Jefferies is confronted by Thorwald, the re-curing flash of the camera light bulb which dissolves into complete darkness heightens suspense and the anticipated thrill within Hitchcock’s respective audience, reflecting his subtle subversion of the genre to suit his purpose. The juxtaposition of silence and urgent whispering with the digetic booming sounds of Thorwald’s menacing footsteps forebodes the characterisation employed by Hitchcock to enable the establishment of a villain detective reflecting how the text engages with crime and its associated social and moral …show more content…
The nature of the crime as one against a culture subverts the stereotypical victim versus perpetrator convention “we need to discover we are talking about a murder committed by the Government” yet the social and moral issues of restoration of order, justice, truth, teamwork and communal understanding are still prevalent. “Her journey was getting to the truth, it was a flame against a sleeping lake of petrol.” Ondaatje’s use of emotive language and hostile cultural imagery explores the setting “around him were more than 100. Dead” as well as the style of the crime as subverting the conventions as the quest is not to uncover the murderer, instead, the identity of the victim. The characterisation of Anil as a female detective who embodies a high intellect, modern methodologies and forensic knowledge contrasts to the archetype detective established pre- Golden age crime writing in the 1920’s. Ondaatje’s representation of women’s power and the juxtaposition of methods of investigation to the historical styles used within Sri-Lanka sees the diversification of crime’s invitation and the social issues of trust and team work that aim to achieve the ultimatum of crime writing fiction; restoration of order, a strongly coherent values
Anil’s Ghost, Rear Window and 2 ORTS: crime fiction genre, texts, contexts, values and techniques
“While the genre of crime writing covers a wide diversity of texts, these texts all engage with investigating a crime and associated social and moral issues”
Conventions shape a text and are adopted to suit a specific audience or contextual purpose. The genre of crime writing covers a wide diversity of texts that through the composer’s contextual influences and intentions conform to or subvert the archetypal crime writing conventions and themes such as the investigation of a crime and the associated social and moral issues involved. ‘Rear Window’ a highly cinematically geared 1954 film by Alfred Hitchcock, ‘Anil’s …show more content…
Renowned as ‘the master of suspense’ Hitchcock achieves tension and suspense by taking innocent, ordinary characters and placing them in a situation beyond their control where a vulnerable victim is murdered. The combination of thriller with crime is illustrated through the use of several cinematic devices such as sound and lighting. Throughout the final scenes where Jefferies is confronted by Thorwald, the re-curing flash of the camera light bulb which dissolves into complete darkness heightens suspense and the anticipated thrill within Hitchcock’s respective audience, reflecting his subtle subversion of the genre to suit his purpose. The juxtaposition of silence and urgent whispering with the digetic booming sounds of Thorwald’s menacing footsteps forebodes the characterisation employed by Hitchcock to enable the establishment of a villain detective reflecting how the text engages with crime and its associated social and moral …show more content…
The nature of the crime as one against a culture subverts the stereotypical victim versus perpetrator convention “we need to discover we are talking about a murder committed by the Government” yet the social and moral issues of restoration of order, justice, truth, teamwork and communal understanding are still prevalent. “Her journey was getting to the truth, it was a flame against a sleeping lake of petrol.” Ondaatje’s use of emotive language and hostile cultural imagery explores the setting “around him were more than 100. Dead” as well as the style of the crime as subverting the conventions as the quest is not to uncover the murderer, instead, the identity of the victim. The characterisation of Anil as a female detective who embodies a high intellect, modern methodologies and forensic knowledge contrasts to the archetype detective established pre- Golden age crime writing in the 1920’s. Ondaatje’s representation of women’s power and the juxtaposition of methods of investigation to the historical styles used within Sri-Lanka sees the diversification of crime’s invitation and the social issues of trust and team work that aim to achieve the ultimatum of crime writing fiction; restoration of order, a strongly coherent values