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Steve Neale - Hinterland
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Crime drama: Hinterland QUESTION: With reference to Steve Neale’s theory of genre, explore how the television industry uses genre to attract audiences.
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With reference to Steve Neale’s theory of genre, explore how the television industryuses genre to attract audiences.
The television industry uses genre to attract audiences by using conventions that the genre
is known for as well as implementing different elements unexpected of the genre. In this
way, not only can they attract audiences who enjoys the conventions but also interest
audiences by providing them something new. Steve Neale, a film theorist, proposes the idea
that whilst common elements of a genre, in this case, crime, offers audiences a pleasing
sense due to its familiarity, pleasure can also be gained from having our expectations
challenged.
Being the first episode, Hinterland’s ‘Devil’s Bridge’ must quickly latch the attention of
audiences and the producers do so by introducing them to a crime scene in the first few
minutes. In this crime scene are iconographies conventional of the crime genre, involving the
police, police cars and crime scene tapes. Seeing policemen and police cars, audiences
would obviously be engaged with Hinterland as it indicates to them that what is occurring is a
serious situation, and that if audiences had sought out this particular drama to experience
the exact seriousness one would experience in a real-life crime scene, then their efforts were
not wasted as this would be the ideal drama for them. To see crime scene tapes would
inform audiences that there is shrouded secrecy from an outside point of view. The idea that
any average individual is prohibited from entering the scene but there is the exception of the
audiences, which enables them an insight into a murder similar to a real-life occurring
situating, can offer them pleasure from knowing what is usually concealed. Audiences would
then be intrigued enough from the element of mystery to continue to watch. Hinterland then
presents the audience with a crime scene involving explicit details of a substantial amount of
blood in the bathtub and scattered upon the walls. As audiences’ gazes are forced to focus
on the blood through the close-up shots, they may find themselves feeling discomfort and
terror. However, these feelings are frequently associated with crime dramas and are often
well-received from audiences because it provides them the rush of adrenaline. Some
audiences may even find it fascinating, as some people do watch crime dramas to be
informed about how crime investigation scenes operate. Audiences will be interested in the
scene because blood implies death or danger, and to know that the body has been brutally
murdered will elicit a rush of anticipation in the audiences as they await to see how the
police or detectives will deal with the situation. To see that the dead body is missing may
further interest audiences as it would make audiences ponder on why the body is removed
and where it is hidden, which would then lead them to watch further on to see how Mathias
will discover the body.
Neale has once stated that in media there is ‘the pressure… to maximise the profitability of
capital assets and to repeat the formulae marking previous financial successes’. For
Hinterland, this is especially the case as it originates from a Welsh film industry compared to
more popular film industries from England or the likes of Hollywood. There is a likely chance
that the producers have felt the pressure to conform to the style of popular dramas in order
to be successful.
In the opening scene of the same episode, the producers introduced an element of
difference to the crime genre by setting the episode in a rural area of Wales in order to
create interest and to distinguish the programme from other crime dramas. Whilst the
premise of the story may seem like any other crime dramas, the fact that the setting is
different to typical crime dramas can draw audiences’ attentions. Neale proves this idea by
stating that ‘Genres may be dominated by repetition, but are also marked by difference,
variation, and change’. In Hinterland establishing shots are used to present the expansive
landscape and cliffs where it leads to the ocean. For audiences watching on BBC who have
never been in Wales or seen much of the country before, they may be interested in gaining
an insight into the landscape and how the culture works as well as how the culture will
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