Sin City

How do your chosen texts use genre conventions?

The genre of Sin City is film noir with elements of comic book and the horror genre. We see this through iconography and typical conventions of these genres. Right from the first scene of the film we see it in black and white, with red being the only colour of her lips. Connotations of this colour would be passion and danger, which indicates femme fatales. Femme fatales are a typical feature of this style of films, and because of the threat of war people lived in fear and mistrust of everyone in this time period. This meant that even the women were dangerous and using the colour red on her lips instantly gives us a sense of a femme fatale character in this film. This use of unnatural colours is also an element of the comic book genre.
Another convention of film noir is the use of highly contrasted shadows and low key lighting. A lot of split lighting is used, particularly on the protagonists faces, which gives a reference to good and evil. This can link to both genres of the film, the hero and villain side of the comic book genre, as well as the idea of mistrust in the film noir genre we are unaware if these characters are good or not through the use of split lighting. The low key lighting we see throughout the film is a convention of the film noir genre and gives us an idea of the dark and gloomy time that the film was supposedly set about.

A typical convention of the comic book genre is shown in the scene where Hartigan is crouched down near the beginning of the film after being injured. We then see him stand up in a heroic fashion, with his long trench coat flowing out behind him, which resembles a superheroes cape. This is iconography of the comic book genre, and also the use of low angle shots on him as he stands indicates his power and strength, that of a hero figure.

Elements that we see of the horror genre are in the scene in the forest where Kevin is tied against a tree by Hartigan and eaten by his dog. This scene alone has the disturbing feel of a horror, however the typical conventions and iconography we see in this scene is the lightning in the back ground and even the location of a dark forest can be seen as a generic feature of many horror films. In this scene it quickly switches to the comic book genre and we see an animated version of him getting attacked by a dog, which by no means is realistic. It also turns a grotesque event into a more light hearted view, which could be seen as a comic book convention, highly stylised and not taking anything too seriously.