The Killing - Theorists

The Killing is a show that gained critical acclaim and was seen as innovative in terms of its representation of female characters. In what ways do you agree and disagree?

In ‘The Killing' we see that the detective and the protagonist is a female. This is already seen as surprising for people as usually in the media/films, according to Laura Mulvey ‘women see themselves through the eyes of men' We see that she controls her team and is not in any way sexualised or controlled by a male. She is the dominant one in the show as all the decisions are made by her. We see that she always wears jumpers and dresses in black. She does not live in the patriarchal society, meaning that it is a male-driven society - if anything, the women in ‘The Killing’ are driving the society. We see this through both the characters, Sarah Lund (detective) and Rie Skovgaard (political secretary)
Van Zoonen believes the media portray images of stereotypical women and this behaviour reinforces societal views.


The Killing uses narrative codes appropriate to genre. In what ways do you agree. Refer to theorists.
  
The narrative codes in The Killing are appropriate to genre because
the according to Todorov theory of narrative the action codes lead from one action to another. We can see this when a suspect is questioned and then we soon find out that they are not the killer so then we start to ask questions about who else it could be.