Sunday, March 22, 2009

Good vs. Evil: How does film deal with these questions?

Films relatively deal with the theme of good vs. evil, differently depending on whom the movie is intended for. Again, the audience, whom novels or films are made for, affects the complete storyline and the theme regarding good vs. evil. Depending on the target audience, the good and evil characters are often compared by the setting, lighting, and special effects in the film. The author or director may use special colours, or effects to make one side stand and make obvious.
Usually evil is represented by a much larger force, darker setting, corrupt people, and ugly faced, while on the other hand the good is represented by more lighting, clearer image, more focused, handsome, beautiful and basically the opposite of evil.

Even though in many of these graphical novels these so called heroes sometimes use violence as a mean to get what they want or information, this gives off a bad example and image of the character. This example is seen in the beginning of Watchmen, after The Comedian being killed, the guy with the moving ink mask (cannot remember the name, but I believe Ian was playing his role in the presentations), goes to Comedian’s arch enemies house and demands for some answers or clues. He uses violence, such as breaking the fingers off slowly, inflicting pain to the arch enemy of Comedian. Sometimes, the good, in films, use many forms, whether peacefully or painfully, to get what they want, and similar applies for the villains or evil. Such examples of evil are by luring innocent people with wealth, respect, and power in order for some answers. This is seen in many films, based on the theme of good vs. evil, where the “good”, such as police officers, governments are lured by higher, powerful, rich, “evil” organizations.

However, in the end, the actions that are produced by the good are generally intended and result in positive outcome for the society in the movie, and the good always comes out on top, defeating the evil. Morales of being good in the film are meant to teach to the audience, so that they can see the outcomes from the film of being and associating with evil, which results in being caught by justice.

Films deal the same as literature does, but in films, the actions and transitions are better, as the audience can see for themselves. Comparing to a reader, where they can easily get bored, or misread the text, in films the theme of good vs. evil can be displayed so that the audience can clearly view what’s happening, and see in front of their eyes the result.

No comments:

Post a Comment