Applied theories: Representation Flashcards
Passive women: van Zoonen
Adele, Clare and Julie
* Adele’sinability to adjust to Simon’s death, for example, is signalled when we see her in her wedding dress, her reliance on Simon reflecting a weak and self-victimising female characterisation.
As such, Adele presents as a paralysed character, frozen in time as a result of male abandonment - a damsel in distress who awaits the rescuing return of her Proppian hero, Simon.
- Claire, too, demonstrates female passivity when she phones Jerome when Camille reappears, her cry for help positioning Claire within a story arc that ultimately places her as a secondary figure to Jerome and Pierre’s more active presence regarding Camille’s reappearance.
Claire, moreover, is positioned as a romantic prize within the show’s menage et trois story arc: a largely passive character trapped between the affections, past and present, of Jerome and Pierre.
- Julie as the town’s doctor presents, initially at least, as a self-determining character. That independence, however, is soon side-lined by a need to become both mother and carer for Victor. Her lack of happiness as a non-mother, signalled via the use of oversized costuming and dishevelled hair, both of which give way to more positive gesture codes when she finally accepts responsibility for Victor.
The male gaze in The Returned
van Zoonen
van Zoonen also reminds us that masculine power is encoded within media texts via the male gaze. Male characters, van Zoonen argues, are routinely invested with the power to look at their female counterparts.
Audiences, correspondingly, are positioned to internalise female objectification as a social norm - a process that is readily apparent across the first episode of The Returned.
Lucy, for example, constructs an immediate objectified presence as the town’s prostitute in the opening scene, her apology to Jerome when he is unable to perform sexually combined with her righthand framing clearly constructing her as a secondary character, as an object who solely exists to enable male gratification.
Camille readily offers herself up to a disinterested Simon, while Lena’s sole worth as a character is evaluated in terms of the impact of her losing her virginity.
Julie’s neighbour, Mademoiselle Payet, presents as a sexually wanton character, a two-dimensional stereotype of a dissatisfied middle-aged woman - a woman whose powerlessness is based upon her inability to provoke the male gaze of Simon.
Racial savagery and Serge
Stuart Hall
In terms of racial diversity, The Returned constructs a white centric portrait of French society, a representation that is hugely at odds with the reality of contemporary, multiracial France.
The absence of any meaningful non-white representation, perhaps, reflects the powerlessness of non-white media creators in within the French media.
Serge, as the only non-white character in the opening episode, also presents as a deeply problematic representation. As the perpetrator of extreme and indiscriminate violence, he reinforces Hall’s arguments that non-white racial groups are routinely depicted as lawless ‘others’ to civilised society.
Although Serge’s subway murder scene is short, its graphic nature and underlying sexual themes are designed to provoke a disconcerting visceral response, clearly constructing Serge as a savage ‘other’ to middle class French society.
The lingering close-up in the final moments of the murder scene depicting Serge’s innocent victim in a blood-smeared heap hammers this
Active masculinity: van Zoonen
active masculinity: placing male characters at the centre of stories in ways that reinforce real-world masculine power as a social norm.
- Jerome’s centre-framed composition during the episode’s opening scene invests the show with a central male presence.
- Jerome’s later command of the parent survivor’s group further reinforces the character’s presence as an alpha male narrative focus, with high eyeline compositions and active dialogue constructing him as a clear authority figure in the show’s rural community.
Jerome’s superiority over the more feminised presence of Pierre during the meeting constructs a further critique, perhaps, of fragile masculinity, but even Pierre, as emotive as he is, is invested with social authority via his doctor status - a job that allows him to demonstrate a natural authority over Claire and Camille when he conducts his examination later in the episode.
- Simon, interestingly, reinforces another male power stereotype, his aloof pursuit of Adele signifying his status as a lone-wolf male whose central concern is to hunt down his female counterpart.
Zombies as racial others?
Hall
While Fabrice Gobert has not openly said that The Returned was a reflection of Syrian migration into France, it can be inferred from the series’ story arcs and the many similarities with Campillo’s 2004 film that the show reflects growing social discontent of the influx of migrants and asylum seekers coming to France in the early 2010s, most of whom arrived as a result of the Syrian civil war.
The Returned, as such, could be read as an allegorical commentary concerning the refugee crisis, with Pierre representing the voice of a traditional, Christian society that purposely rejects the zombie/immigrant others, driving them out of their town at the end of season one to preserve the purity of the Annecy - a series setting that constructs a picturesque and rurally conservative ideal.
Arguably, the zombie’s treatment mirrors the growing resentment of the many migrant camps that began to form at the edges of French cities during the period, and of the growing perception by mainstream France that those immigrant camps were a lawless threat to the social stability of their country.
Todorovs Narratology Theory:
Within the first episode of the Returned, it begins with an equilibrium of Camille sitting on what is presumingly a school coach which is travelling for a trip.
This then breaks into disruption as the school bus crashes down a mountain, but the next shot is later on with Camille coming from over the drop where the coach left the road and walking home in what seems a normal state. As she returns to the house this is the realisation stage by the mother Claire and other characters such as her father Jerome and twin sister Lena, they act in a very shocked way and we realise ,through other scenes of parent support groups, that Camille actually died in that crash and somehow has come back to life.
After this comes the restoration stage, where they try to think of her return as a good thing and settle slightly, but overall the episode never resolves or re-equilibriums, there is still major distress within several story lines within the episode and ends that way.
This may be displaying to the consumer that there is more to come long after this episode and that it will carry onto the next ones.
