Mya's Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis: The Ring

The film I am going to analyse is The Ring. The release date for the film was the 18^th of October 2002. The director is Gore Verbinski. The genre of the film is a Super natural horror. Super natural horror is anything above or beyond what one holds to be natural, which adheres with a sense of horror.

PART ONE

The Ring’s Equilibrium

Tzevan Todrov argued that all stories share a common structure. The stories begin with a state of normality a balance which is the equilibrium. There is then disequilibrium: a disruption something that happens that sets off a chain of other reactions. After there is a resolution to the problem then a new equilibrium is then established, that is different to the first.

Equilibrium

There is a state of normality at the start when two school girls named Becca and Katie are watching T.V. and start to talk about a tape that kills you if you watch it.

Disruption

Katie is gets a phone call which tells the audience that she is going to die. Katie is then killed. Her auntie Rachel who is the main protagonist in the film starts to research about the tape. Rachel gets the tape and watches it too and has seven days to live. Therefore she has seven days to complete her mission to save her son and husband from death because they have watched it too. Rachel does her research and finds the clues into how death can be stopped. Rachel reaches day seven and is stuck in a well. She manages to save herself along with her son and husband from death. The next day Noah (her husband) is killed.

New Equilibrium

Rachel and her son Aidan do not die. She has saved them from death.

Binary Oppositions

Claude Levi – Strauss was an anthropologist who suggested that the production of meaning depended of the concept of binary oppositions. Binary oppositions are opposites within a film. I.e. in the horror film scream, the police are doing the right thing by obeying the law and the killer is doing the opposite. In The Ring the opposites are the parents of Samara abusing their daughter in other words being evil, when most parents love and care for their children therefore are good. Another binary opposition in my film is

Omniscent is when the audience are aware of everything that can be known i.e. characters feelings, thoughts etd. The Ring is omniscent, and the film is in chronological order, which helps the film to be omniscent. Open narrrative is when there is no clear sencse of ending. In The Ring, there is an open narrative, because it keeps the audience wondering what happens at the end. The film ends with the boy saying “what happens to them?” It is a "cliff hanger"

PART TWO

When there is a state of balance in the film, it starts off with two sixteen year old girls in there school uniform. White shirts and pleated black skirts. Their hair is out and looks natural, that it has not been straightened. This is how the ‘typical average’ school girl would go to school. They are not wearing any make up. There are many mid shots and close ups. The close ups show the facial expressions of the girls when they are talking about the scary tape. The mid length/long shots show the body language i.e. when the girls are walking slowly to the phone and are trembling shows there fear.

Rachel is a mother, who works in an editor’s office who is a journalist. So most of the time she is dressed in smart loose fit trousers, and blouses. His hair is short and blonde, with very subtle make up. This shows that she is not dressed up on a normal day. At the funeral, Rachel wears black dress, black shoes, black cardigan. This represents darkness and death which links to the disruption.

Aidan is wearing his school uniform when he goes to school, and a black suit when he goes to the funeral which represents darkness and death, which related to the disruption. His hair is mousy brown, short and straight. Aidan is always drawing pictures of death; he does not talk much, and talks in a very deep steady voice. This is a bit creepy for the audience because most ten year olds do not talk like that. They are usually happy and loud, whereas Aidan is sad and in his own world all the time.

Noah wears casual denim dark jeans, and T-Shirts, which represents him being an ‘average’ man on a usual day. Noah has a stubble and messy hair.

The spooky character who is in the tape is a little girl called Samara. She has long black dirty hair. It is messy and wet. She wears a white dress which is very dirty and also wet, because she lives in a well. Her body is bruised black and blue. She has scars on her body and face. This is typical of a Horror film, because there is always a creepy masked man or a creepy character i.e. Scream has a white man.

Throughout the film, it is usually raining. The weather is always dull and depressing. If there was sunlight it would brighten up the audience’s attitudes. By having dull depressing weather, it puts the audience in a gloomy mood.  There is very dull lighting inside the house, or it is either very dark. There is mainly darkness throughout the film, which is typical convention of the Horror genre. This is because the whole image is not so clear, which makes the audience concentrate more.

There is a lot of sudden sounds throughout the film which is a screeching noise, and a lot of drum beats. In the beginning of the film where the girls are talking about the tape, there is non-diegetic sound which is a low quick steady drum beat building up the suspense. There are diegetic sounds such as the phone ringing and the rain. Throughout the film there are many shot angles such as mid lengths when two people are talking, with an over the shoulder shot. There are close ups which show the facial expressions of characters, such as Aidan’s face when he tells Rachel about Samara. Long shots show body language, i.e. when the horse is running towards Rachel, she is walking backwards and jumps to the ground, which shows her fear. There is quick seconds shots that show the dead characters in the film i.e. Katie in a cupboard dead. This makes the audience jump. This is the typical convention of a horror film.   

There are a few props used throughout the film. The first main prop is the tape. This tape is talked about from the start, and is consistently used throughout the film. The other main prop is the telephone. The telephone rings every time the tape has been watched. Another prop is the television with the tape player. Without this no one would be able to watch the tape, and no one would die.