How does Dreamworks represent RJ as a stereotypical hero?

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Lucy Eaton

How does Dreamworks represent RJ as a stereotypical hero?

In this essay the way Dreamworks represents RJ as a stereotypical hero will be explored. The film “Over the Hedge” will be compared to other popular films also produced by Dreamworks. The audience’s response will be considered as well as the other characters’ reaction to RJ using camera angles, sound, genres and institution.

The definition of the word hero from “Oxford English Dictionary” is “a man or boy who is admired for an achievement or for bravery” Commonly heroes are role models for children, leading children to copy the behaviour of their hero – for example trying to fly or perhaps “Saving the World”. However, in “Over the hedge” RJ is first shown to be a greedy, self-absorbed animal. Although he is alone the audience has no sympathy for him as he does nothing for anyone else so he deserves to be lonely and he shouldn’t feel sorry for himself. He tricks the animals to help him get food; the animals think he is great as he is helping them. However, unlike us they are unaware of the real purpose of collecting the food, we know that RJ is trying to pay back a hungry, angry bear who will devour him if he doesn’t get his food back by full moon, therefore making us hate RJ even more. We get frustrated because we know something that we really would like to tell the forest animals to prevent so many problems that happen later on in the book. In this part of the film RJ is a false hero. Due to this it makes the audience not want to copy his behaviour as they realise how unhappy and miserable they would make themselves and everyone around them. As the film progresses the viewers are able to see RJ build relationships with the other characters and start to help them rather than use them. This results in him becoming so much more cheerful. Younger children in the audience will see this and like to copy him. This means that rather than having children jumping off buildings trying to “Save the world” they are merely being nice.

Traditionally at the beginning of most films the hero tends to be in the distance then slowly the camera zooms in on them to show an expression often anxious, happy or scared. With RJ you see his real personality; he’s by himself trying to steal food. The introduction music is very cheery and you can tell that he doesn’t mind being “a one man family”. However soon the music becomes slow and he seems devastated when he is wandering the streets alone.  When the animals come across the hedge the cameras are used to enhance the size of it by having an established shot showing the true size. They use a high view to make the animals look intimidated and even smaller than they are for example when they first see the hedge the animals look tiny and extremely frightened, also in this clip the shadow from the hedge makes a great effect as the animals are in the dark and it makes the hedge look scary in an over exaggerated way. The music is dramatic and gets louder to create tension when a scary or exciting scene is about to happen. There is often a lot of slow motion to create the effect of humour and suspense. The music also slows down as the graphics do! There is often a lot of non-diegetic music to set the mood of the scene. It is quiet and slow when someone is sad or lonely and when it gets exciting the music tends to be loud and fast. Diegetic sound is also used a lot mostly for dialogue however it is also used from objects in the film for example the squeaky toy in the garden. Both camara angles and sound keeps the audience engaged.

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To appeal to a variety of people the producer would have to make different sections suitable for different kinds of people based on groups like age or sex. Similar to many other Dreamworks films “Over the Hedge” is targeted mainly at families; however the success they have achieved obviously proves that many other people watch them as well. To appeal to young children they enhanced the cartoon characters and some of the jokes which young children love, for example Vern and RJ being chased by the dog and Hammy being hit over the head with a big text book. ...

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