Essay exploring the Thriller genre

Essay exploring the Thriller genre

'In a menacing world, we flee into thrillers' Thrillers are fast becoming the dominant genre and society's favourite means of escape. Discuss.

It can be argued that thrillers are the dominant genre in terms of means of escape. Through the media we are able to escape form the troubles and worries of our lives and flee into the comfort of watching somebody else’s. Thrillers can be seen as one of the most potent forms of escape as it somehow links to the harsh reality of the world around us and we as an audience are more able to engage to this.

One reason for why we as an audience are able to engage in thrillers is that they use suspense, tension and excitement as their main element. We as an audience are engaged by these thrillers and use them as a means to escape as we can identify to the characteristics of thrillers as we may in our day to day lives experience these elements for ourselves. Furthermore thrillers provide a sudden rush of emotions, excitement, and exhilaration that drive the narrative and we as humans like to get or seek out that sudden rush that we anticipate. An example of this is Hitchcock's film Rebecca, where Mrs Danvers tries to persuade Mrs De Winter to leap to her death. Thrillers leave the audience on the edge of their seat anticipating what's going to happen next and triggers a certain rush of adrenaline. This adrenaline kick is offered to us through watching thrillers as we are constantly wondering what's going to happen next. It is for this reason that it can be said why we use thrillers as a means to escape for our own menacing world.

However a counterargument to this is that an action genre does just the same and offers a means to escape for the audience. Action genres tend to have fast moving camera work and high octane action which peaks the audience’s interest and allows them to fascinate the life of the character they are watching. A good example of this is 007, James Bond, who is said to be the envy of every man as they want to be him. This shows how the action genre could be perceived to be a stronger means of escape than thriller. In addition to, in the sense that thrillers offer a certain adrenaline rush as audiences anticipate what is going to happen. Action movies do this mostly throughout the main production rather than at just certain points offering limited peaks of adrenaline. An example of a film that offers this constant adrenaline rush would be Crank, or the Expendables. These action movies have fight scenes and gun warfare which peaks the audiences interest more so and gives them a surge of adrenaline which they may not experience in the ‘real world’. Therefore this shows why the action genre may be perceived to be the dominant genre in terms of means of escape for society from the menacing world.

However a counterargument to this view would be that the action genre only tends to appeal to men as its primary target audience. Most women do not like blood, gun fighting and violence so therefore the argument that action is the most t dominant genre in means of escape for today’s society is invalid. As the other half of society, who are women, may not be interested or able to engage in the action genre and thus have no means to escape from the harsh real world. Thrillers offer a means to escape for both forms of society as thrillers are deemed popular with both genders. Most of Hitchcock’s films, that were thriller, were the pinnacle of films at their time and we viewed by many people. To reinforce this point, the film grossed $32,000,000 at its time which equates to nowadays as roughly $256,000,000. This shows that even then in Hitchcock’s time people used thrillers as a means to escape an therefore it can be justified that thrillers are fast becoming the most dominant genre in terms of escape for today’s society.

Conclusively it can be said that thrillers are one of the most dominant genres in terms of means to escape for today’s society. People are appealed to thrillers primarily because of their characteristics such as suspense and tension and because they offer certain thrills and put the audience on the edge of their seat anticipation what's going to happen. It is for these reasons that society uses thrillers as a means to escape from the menacing world we live in.