Form and Meaning

         

        When looking at a film as a whole, it can best be related to system, in which a group of elements affects one another. An example used outside of film could be relating to a football team organization. The organization starts at the top with the owner, works down to his appointed vice presidents, down to the general manger, head coach, and then finally the players on the field. All of these elements in the organization must work together to perform as a working system, if one of them fails at their position the organization will falter and eventually fail. Relating film to a system, the form of a film must be established. According to Film Art: An Introduction the form of the movie is “the overall system of relationships among the parts of a film” (Bordwell & Thompson, 2010). In the “Saw” film series, all films have a basic system of torturing people in a horrific bloody way. The games played in these films all exhibit “Excruciating forms of torture and free-form bloodletting seem to be their chief draw” (Sharrett, 2009). From the first film all the way to the seventh and final film, the “Saw” series forms a group of element of a couple or a group of people attempting to escape one of Jigsaw’s games. The people in these games all have a back stories as to why they are in that situation. Typically, these people do not appreciate the life they live or have caused pain to others. Jigsaw attempts to cleanse these people and form them by torturing them back to living life while they can.  From film to film the local police and detectives are always on the manhunt for the Jigsaw killer, who the original actually dies in the fourth film, but his reign continues but his accomplices.  The audiences’ of these films actively relate the elements of the people, the games, Jigsaw, and the back stories in the film. To expand on that, in order to completely understand all seven films viewers must relate elements of all the films together to understand the complete system in the end.

         The meaning to a movie is important to audienece’s experience of what is taking place on screen. When an audience member views a film, typically thoughts of what is the larger scale of the movie takes place. The audience member does not simply take what is seen and not think about a deeper meaning. Their minds are constantly grasping what is taking place on screen and making sense of that. When looking at the implicit meaning of the film it is, the signifincance left for the viewer to discover upon analysis or reflection. Basically it is when the viewer interprets different aspects of the movie and attempts to understand why that happened in the film. According to Christopher Sharrett, he believes that “Saw” does reach out to today’s audience for implicit meaning. “The numerous gory tableaux of Saw tend to make one see them as further indicators merely of a braindead culture rather than inextricably linked to the political reaction and cynicism that pervades the cycle, making Saw a perfect emblem of the recent era’s rightist ideology” (Sharrett, 2009). Sharrett makes the point that in today’s world people go to the movies for sheer entertainment. That entertainment in “Saw” is the obscene amount of killings, bloodshed, interesting games, and the various deaths themselves. There is nothing more than just pure blood and death behind the film according to Sharret. Another way of looking at the meaning of a film is the symptomatic meaning which is, the significance that a film divulges, often against its will, by virtue of it’s historical and social context. To fully understand this, the social ideology must be understood. That is the meaning that springs from culturally specific beliefs about the world. In the article, “Your Sick This is not Art” Rjurik Davidson states, “Such fears, which are often political, economic, and psychological rather than supernatural, give the best work of horror a pleasing allegorical feel - and it's the sort of allegory that most filmmakers seem at home with.” In many horrors films, including the torture porn category, many references to people’s fear of their culture come into play. An example in “Hostel” is the sheer fear of traveling abroad and out of the comfort of your know culture. Everything is new to the person and in the movie it ends up that Americans are the one’s at fault. The meaning of this film can relate to sheer fear one’s culture and abroad.

Sharrett, C. (2009). The Problem of Saw: "Torture Porn" and the Conservatism of Contemporary Horror Films. Cineaste, 35(1), 32-37.

Davidson, R. (2011). 'YOU ARE SICK! THIS IS NOT ART!'. Overland, (205), 41-46