Thursday 18 December 2008

Media essay( half completed)

'Using the comparison of these two texts as your starting point, explore the media issues and debates which they raise"

The exorcist is a well known and established movie which is regarded as one of the most scariest films in the horror genre of all time, for its era its a realistic film with limited the limited features and technology that was only on offer, it went on to become a corner stone for other movies and directors in the future for this type of genre as its violent graphic nature pushed horror into new dimensions of gruesomeness.

These new aspects of the horror genre at the time were new to companies that gave ratings to films such as BBFC and MPPA and also to audiences of the UK thus being the reason why the UK release set off controversy and outrage, this could be due to the fact it was a new experience that they weren't use to plus the fact it was making a direct reference to Satan (the devil) something which had not been done before and which was deemed socially unacceptable to screen. It even went as far as the movie being banned in some areas such as the contempt of disgust and shock to the ideologies the film was promoting which made the exorcists reputation even worse.

When dealing with material that was considered unbelievable at the time, there must be an aspect of truth that is sufficient enough to obtain for the audience to relate with as opposed to using their imagination because it only heightens the disbelief for the moment. The Exorcist revealed violations of codes put in place by rating authorities that pointed to the possible decrease of the film audience with violence contained in movies based purely on the shock response.

If you look through time then as society moves on so does acceptance of certain things and the movie ratings companies make reference to these changes on society when releasing certain content, this is why some things weren’t repeated from the original and some where built on this. Some of the scenes that occurred in the exorcists were not repeated because of the nature of the scenes and what they contained.
When comparing the modern version to the one with the old there are clear differences between the two this is mostly because they are separated by the two decades and the amount of technology in the 70s was limited as apposed to today’s Hollywood effect. The original mise en scene has obvious contrasts with the updated version as it with the lighting affects used during the new one a stark contrast to the dark gloomy effect the original has on you went first viewing.