Elder Stereotype in Film and Novel

Too many old villains...

Elder Stereotype in Film and Novel

     What do you think when you meet your grandparents? Some people say that they are warm, peaceful, and love since they love their grandson. However, most people think grandparents are evil, powerful, and bad because they use power to control people with no actual power, and causes problems such as car accidents and conflict between grandparents and families. Hating elders might happen because of elder's personality, but psychologists found that people are mostly affected by  novels and films. How novels and films make elder stereotype?

SHE IS CRAZY!!!

     What is the best way to make elders as annoying people? It is showing elders as main villains or monsters in stories. Villains are characters who oppose to hero and show themselves as greedy, pitiless, and aggressive people. When elders are villains, they become the most annoying characters in stories. Also, when people constantly watch and read these novels and films, it affects people to get elder stereotype. There are many examples that show elders as villains.

     Disney films are good examples that cause elder stereotype. In 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,'  Evil Queen shows herself as a beautiful woman in the world. However, after Snow White survives from a hunter, Evil Queen decides to kill Snow White by herself and Evil Queen becomes ugly grandmother. At the end, Snow Queen survives by prince's kiss and Evil Queen dies by thunder. Like Evil Queen, other villains, such as Scar from 'Lion King,' Claude Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame,' and Ratcliffe from 'Pocahontas,' are old, greedy, and powerful. Also, they have a bad ending.

     Elder villains can be seen in the novels. In the 'Aunt Maria' by Diana Wynne Jones, Aunt Maria, an evil old witch, abuses the power to control people. In the story, Maria changes people's name in her favor, orders people to work like slaves, and shows her temper. Also, she uses her magic power to control the village and people. At the end, Maria died in a tragic way.

Jafar in Aladin

     As you can see, there are a lot of films and novels that show elder stereotype. Fortunately, in these days, elder stereotype films and novels have been decreased. Movie directors and novel writers change the way of old people do in the story. Albus Dumbledore in 'Harry Potter' by J.K.Rowling shows himself as a protector and a responsible old magician and Gandalf from 'The Lord of the Ring' by J.R.R.Tolkien are powerful wizard who are against to the dark side.

What is New Weird? - Three Moments of an Explosion

One zombie loves human and it cures other zombies

What is New Weird? - Three Moments of an Explosion

     The word 'Weird' means something supernatural or uncanny, such as monster and magic from fantasy novels. Many novel writers such as Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley, etc. made weird stories before 21 century. However, in these days, many people don't think zombies, vampires, and ghost as a weird monster because these concepts have been used so many times in different novels. Because of that reason, people are making different weird things and the works make people surprised. How do we define 'new weird'? It is hard to find the answer, but 'Three Moments of an Explosion' by China Miéville shows the answer well.

Ghosts kill people without reason. But Why???????

     'Three Moments of an Explosion' by China Miéville, is a collection of the stories that contains 28 fresh and 'new weird' stories. In the book, some of stories like 'Three Moments of an Explosion' are not story like other novels, but descriptive story. Also, other stories like The Crawl and 'Escape' are plots for video. There are a few examples of stories that explains new weird well.

     Miéville shows the zombie apocalypse in a different way in 'The Crawl.' The story looks scenario version of movie trailer that explain what happens in each scene. One of the scenes shows that two zombies kiss each other behind the violent fighting between human and zombies. Also another scene shows that the zombies do not use their feet, but hands and knuckles like humans raised by spiders. It makes the weird story because Miéville changes the way of zombies' characteristic that zombies supposed to run with their feet and not feel emotion.

     Another story, 'Estate' shows the story about animals that attack everything on the city. In the story, it starts with the animal terror, and the stags have burning antlers, but it does not tell the truth that why it happens. After this happening, some people act weird like Dan, who frequently carries burning stags. These things make the story weird because of the mystery of the incident and the way that the animals attack people.

The man goes into ghost world for saving his son...but

    What is the new weird that Miévile describes and how can we define weird? The meaning of 'New Weird' that Miéville shows on 'Three Moments of an Explosion' is variety ideas that do not come from anywhere like the animals attacks people in a weird way and the zombies fell in love with other zombies.

Zombie(?) + Alien = Horror???

Three Moments of an Explosion Review

     I apologize right now. I cannot read all these stories because this super weird book has the most weird words that does not come from the dictionary (what is the word 'rotvertising' means in the first story???) and the vocabulary that I learned, but I read some of the stories, so I continue to review this book.

     The first thought that I have gotten is the fresh idea from each story. Every story have new ideas that I have never heard from other novels or movies. However, like I said on the first paragraph, the stories make people hard to understand and do not teach us the detail of the stories, which means there is no complete explanation on these stories. That makes the weird stories, and bad for someone who does not like open endings or not-well explained stories. If you are the person who like weird films, I would recommend to watch 'The Thing (1982,2011),' 'Warm Bodies (2013),' 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy(2005),' and 'Grudge (2004).'