Textual analysis of the Ring by Olanike Adebiyi

Textual Analysis of ‘The Ring’

The film I will be analysing is ‘The Ring’ which was directed by Gore Verbinski. This supernatural horror was released on the 18^th October 2002 and is a remake of the Japanese horror film ‘Ring’. The film is about a video that when watched the person will receive a phone call that tells them they will die in seven days.

 The film does follow Todorovs narrative structure which includes an equilibrium which is the two young teenagers hanging out in a house. Second to happen is the disruption. This was when the young girl Katie dies and Rachel tries to investigate. The new equilibrium is when Rachel buries the girl Samara and copies the tape so her son will not die and the curse will be passed on to someone else.  In terms of Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary oppositions shows how the meaning of something reinforces peoples beliefs and values. For example the protagonist Rachel is only the hero of the story because there is the scary young girl in the video trying to kill people. The film is in chronological order because the film was arranged in events from the beginning to the end. The narrative of the film is open because the new equilibrium does not resolve all of the questions raised in the narrative. Even though there is a new equilibrium bring it to a different state. The fact that when the young son asks his mother about the next person who watches it and ‘what happens to them’ it leaves us all in doubt about who they are going to give it to and what is going to happen to them. One of the common conventions in a horror film is that the narrative is restricted. By not telling us everything that is happening and by the characters not knowing it either we are left in uncertainty and this keeps us attentive to the film and when at the end it becomes omniscient the thrill and us getting scared at those moments are more higher than if we knew what exactly was happening. In ‘The ring’ the main character doesn’t know why the phone call is happening and we do not know why this has happened or what the meaning of the video tape is. Similar to this the film ‘Sixth Sense’ directed by M. Night Shyamalan tells the story of a psychologist trying to help a young boy who claims to see dead people. At the end it turns out that the psychologist himself is dead and is just imagining himself still alive. We do not know this and neither does the character himself until the very end of the film which shows how restricted the film is. We are also not told until the middle of the film why the boy is troubled and what is going on with him.

The characters are very typical of the film genre. The mother whose child was murdered in the beginning facial expressions shows her mourning and sadness because of the death. Death occurs most of the time in horror films and the mourning of loved ones is also very common. The function of the mother in the narrative is when she asked Rachel to investigate why her daughter died the way she did. Her speaking in the film shows she is sad because of the low tone of voice and her struggling to speak at times. The hair and make-up was done so she looks stressed and as if she hasn’t been sleeping because there are bags under her eyes and her hair is very natural looking. Her make-up also looks very natural like she didn’t put any on at all because she doesn’t feel the need to make herself look nice when her daughter has passed. Her costume is black because the scene she was featured in was the funeral of her daughter. Black clothing is usually always used in horror films which connotes death and mourning also.

Noah who is the father to the main character’s son is shown as confident and doesn’t really believe the curse which is happening. This could show how men are usually portrayed hegemonically as the braver one and the one who reassures the women that everything will be fine which reinforces the stereotype that the male is stronger. His body language shows his confidence when he walks up to the character. He puts his hands in his pockets showing his coolness about the subject and his facial expression show him smirking which shows he does not believe her.

However Noah in this scene when the girl comes out of the screen looks petrified and traumatized when he sees this. His body language is unstable and he is ready to go on the floor which shows levels of power and that when he is on the floor he will be powerless. In many horror films the victim is usually on a lower level to the culprit before they die. In Scream 1 this young woman also ends up lower than the killer before her death.

The body language makes the attacker walk very disturbingly and eerie up to her victims. This makes it typical to her role as the evil attacker because it has to look scary for the audience. The hair is long and by choosing the colour to be black connotes death and this contrast with the paleness of her skin which shows lack of blood and life in the dead person. When she came out of the television it showed the films supernatural side as it is impossible for anything to come out the screen and this shows the convention of the supernatural film making it typical to the genre. The make-up was done so that the skin looks as if it is decaying like a dead person and the costume looks very wet and dirty showing us that the well she has just come out of made her this way and she was in it for a very long time.

The role of Samara is to be the killer and the person who the protagonist wants to find out more about. We are not told who she is in the video and why she is doing this all we do know is that she was adopted. This makes the leading character Rachel want to find out more on why she turned out the way she is. Her hair is long and black and covers most of her face. This shows that not only can we not see her face but she does not want to show us her expression clearly, which is why her head is facing down in terms of body language. The representation of age in this character is very pluralistic as it is a different idea of how a child should be.  However for horror films it is common for children to be murderers.  Children are often represented in this way in horror films. For example in Halloween (1978) the young boy is a murderer who kills his sister with a kitchen knife.

The story line of the ‘The Ring’ in which a film that is watched with strange and unnatural events occurring and things that may frighten people makes people die in seven days is very typical to the supernatural psychological horror genre. It includes murder, a protagonist trying to find out more about the killings that is going on which happens a lot and it includes a young child which is the reason everyone is dying.