16
unspoken thought, daydreams, aspirations, memories, fears, and fantasies.
19
The way filmmaker makes the observer knows about it is by taking them visually or aurally into the character’s mind so that they see or
hear the things that the character images, remembers, or think about. e
Characterization Through Reactions of Other Characters The way other character looks to the main character is also important in
characterization. They can give us some information and also their thought about the character. They can do it even before the main character appears
in the movie. f
Characterization Through Contrast: Dramatic Foils Dramatic foils is one of the effective techniques to characterize the
characters in a movie. This technique is contrasting characters whose behavior, attitudes, opinion, lifestyle, physical appearance, and so on are
the opposite of those of the main characters. g
Characterization Through Caricature and Leitmotif The word Caricature is from the technique used for cartooning.
20
Caricature including a physical feature, such as the way a person moves, voice qualities, and accent. While Leitmotif is the repetition of a single
action, phrase, or idea by a character until it becomes almost a trademark or theme song for that character.
h Characterization Through Choice of Name
19
Ibid, p. 62
20
Ibid, p. 65
17
This method is also can be used to see the characterization in the movie. We can see the characters name from the qualities of sound, meaning, or
connotation. Barsam
21
said that character in the movie, whether round, flat, major, minor, or marginal, does not necessarily arouse our sympathy. He concludes that
there are several ways to characterize the characters, we can see it: from their traits, motivations, and actions; from the ways in which a narrator or other
characters describe them; and from the style in which the actors who play them interpret them.
As narrative movies developed through their history, filmmakers increasingly left things out of their movies’ characterization, or left them implicit,
or left them to viewers to determine, that it makes the writer needs to analyze it so we can know the characteristic in the story and what the motive of the character in
doing her actions.
C. Representation
Representation is categorized as one of cultural studies and the concept of this theory has come to occupy a new and important place in the study of culture.
Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people, besides, representation is an
essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of culture.
22
It means that representation is an important
21
Barsam, p. 136
22
Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations And Signifying Practices Great Britain: BPC Consumer Books Ltd., 1997, p. 15
18
element for people to communicate each other. By means of representation they can share ideas and thought in their society.
In brief, representation is the production of meaning through language.
23
If we talked about representation, means that we also worked through language,
because representation is made of meaning and language which is connected. Language is one of the media through which thought, ideas and feelings are
represented in a culture. Representation through language is therefore central to the processes by which meaning is produced.
24
People can use language, sign, and images to represent something.
In Oxford English Dictionary, there is two relevant meanings for word represent, they are 1 to represent something is to describe or depict it, to call it
up in the mind by description or portrayal or imagination; to place a likeness of it before us in our mind or in the sense; and 2 to represent also means to
symbolize, stand for, to be specimen of, or to substitute for.
25
There are two processes or two system of representation. First, there are systems by which all sort of objects, people and events are correlated with a set of
concept or mental representation which we carry around in our head. Then, the meaning depends on the system of concept or images formed in our thoughts
which stand for or represent the world.
26
It is called system of representation because it consists, not of individual concepts, but to different ways of organizing,
clustering, arranging, and classifying concept, and of establishing complex
23
Ibid, p. 16
24
Ibid, p. 1
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid, p. 17
19
relations between them. The second system of representation is language.
27
Our conceptual maps must be translated in a common language, so that we can
correlate our concept and ideas with certain written words, spoken sounds, or visual images.
The general terms we use for words, sounds, or images which carry meaning is sign. Sign can represent the concept in our thought which we carry
around in our head and together they make up the meaning system of our culture. Any sound, word, image or object which functions as a sign, and organized with
other signs into a system which is capable of carrying and expressing meaning is a language.
28
There are three approaches in representation, which are reflective, intentional, and constructionist.
29
In reflective approach, meaning is thought to lie in the object, person, idea or event in the real world, and language function is like
a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exist in the world. So the theory which says that language works by simply reflecting or imitating the truth that is
already there and fixed in the world, is sometimes called ‘mimetic’.
The intentional approach to meaning in representation argues the opposite case. It holds that it is the speaker, the author, who imposes his unique meaning in
the world through language. Words means what the author intends they should mean.
In constructionist approach, the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things do not mean we construct meaning, using
27
Ibid. p. 18
28
Ibid, p. 19
29
Ibid, pp. 24-26
