Solved: The 23 year mystery of man’s body found on Weybourne beach For more than two decades a grave with no name has stood in a north Norfolk churchyard.Despite a six-month police investigation, the man’s body could not be identified - leaving villagers to gather for a poignant funeral at Weybourne cemetery in April 1990.
But now - thanks to modern detective work - the mystery of the body washed up on Weybourne beach in 1989 has been solved.
Police can now reveal that it is Michael Sutherland, 34, of Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, who was found 23 years ago on October 9 by local fishermen.
The fact that there was a body found at our primary location of Weybourne Beach in North Norfolk helps to add depth, dimension and meaning to our use of this location. It does this by adding a fairly eerie and foreboding feel as it strengthens the idea that something bad could happen to the victim Sam in our narrative whilst being followed at this location.
From the 1st February - 8th March on weekends and during half term, I took part in the regional BFI Film Academy with Culture Works, in which we produced a short film as well as organising a showcase event to screen our films at.
As the narrative of our thriller production consists of both a teenage victim and antagonist, I decided to do some research into teenage/young adult antagonists in thriller texts.
Kazuo Kiriyama
In the film 'Battle Royale', Kazuo Kiriyama is an exchange student who joined the Battle Royale programme (a game designed to have students kill each other) for his own entertainment instead of being taken forcefully. As the game begins he rapidly becomes the most dangerous and feared player.
Lola Stone
In the film 'The Loved Ones', Lola Stone is a high school student who kidnapped her classmate Brent Mitchell, who happened to be her latest victim with the help of her father, also her lover. It began when Lola asked Brent to prom but he rejected her because he already had a date with his girlfriend Holly. Lola and her father then proceed to torture Brent, as well as threatening to kill his mum and Holly.
Seth and Jonah
In the film 'Seconds Apart', Seth and Jonah are twins with a dangerous ability: telepathy; their powers of which being much stronger when they work together, where they can tap into people's worst fears and cause them to hallucinate. Between them they devise a sinister film project in which they manipulate their victims into killing themselves in all sorts of ghastly ways and film it, then review the footage asking one another if he "feels it" yet. What "it" may be is never really said, but it appears that the brothers are using their telekinetic abilities to experiment with the minds of people around them in order to understand or "feel" something that they can't grasp.
Gogo Yubari
In the film 'Kill Bill: Vol. 1', Gogo Yubari is a young associate of O-Ren Ishii and a severely disturbed 17-year-old Japanese schoolgirl who takes a sadistic delight in killing. She was O-Ren's top assassin and personal bodyguard. Although The Bride gives her the opportunity to walk away, Gogo takes her on with a large meteor hammer with sharp blades hidden within it, almost overcoming the Bride by strangling her savagely with the chain. Out of all the enemies that the Bride comes up against, Gogo is the only one that almost kills The Bride in 'Kill Bill: Vol. 1'.
Doubt
Yoshiki Tonogai's manga series 'Doubt'revolves around a fictional mobile phone game called"Rabbit Doubt".The players must find the wolf, or killer, amongst their group of rabbits as they are picked off one-by-one. Six players of this game find themselves trapped in a building with one of the group already dead; to avoid the same fate, the remaining five must play a real-life game of "Rabbit Doubt" and find the wolf (liar) hiding among them.
Adam Jackson
In 'Conflicted' - episode 20 of the 4th series of 'Criminal Minds'-Adam's mother, Rosemary, died when he was five, causing Adam's stepfather, Mark Harrison, who had been abusive towards Rosemary, to begin channelling his aggression towards Adam. Mark would beat Adam, force him to wear girl's clothes, and possibly molested him. To cope with the abuse, Adam developed an alternate female personality that referred to itself as Amanda, and took the abuse for Adam. Years later, Adam -as his alternate personality 'Amanda'-begins killing and raping males who he sees as substitutes for his step-dad.
Due to being one of my favourite fims, i decided to do a contextual study of 'A Clockwork Orange' in relation to my previous post identifying the thriller conventions explored in Kubrick's screen adaptation of 'A Clockwork Orange'.
'A Clockwork Orange' is a film adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 1962 dystopian novella of the same name; released in America on 19th December 1971. Alex is a charismatic, sociopathic delinquent whose interests include classical music (especially Beethoven), rape, and what is termed "ultra-violence". He leads a small gang of his friends - Pete, Georgie, and Dim- whom he calls his droogs. We follow Alex on the horrific crime spree of his gang, his capture, and attempted rehabilitation via controversial psychological conditioning. They use classical conditioning - learning through association- through aversion therapy to try and condition Alex to despise violence.
Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensations in order to stop the specific behaviour.
The most famous example of classical conditioning is 'Pavlov's Dogs', where he conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. In this case, food acts as an unconditioned stimulus where the dogs natural salivation at the food is the unconditioned response. A neutral stimulus - a bell- would receive no conditioned response from the dog. During conditioning, the food would be placed in front of the dog whilst the bell rang; which would produce the unconditioned response of salivation to the food. After conditioning,the conditioned stimulus - the bell- received the response of the now conditioned response of salivation at the sound of the bell alone.
In the case of Alex in 'A Clockwork Orange', it would be plausible to assume that the discomfort Alex is being exposed to acts as an unconditioned stimulus; where his natural reaction to this discomfort is the unconditioned response. Therefore, violence is a neutral stimulus as he has never been opposed to it, partaking in it regularly; and so for him to observe violence receives no conditioned response. During Alex's 'treatment', Alex would be subjected to discomfort whilst shown a series of violent images; which would produce the unconditioned response of Alex's discomfort. After 'treatment', the conditioned stimulus alone - any type of violence- would receive the now conditioned response of feeling sick/uncomfortable when thinking about or seeing violence after he's finished treatment and is released back into society.
Reception and Controversy Along
with Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Wild Bunch (1969), Dirty Harry (1971), and
Straw Dogs (1971), the film is considered a landmark in the relaxation of
control on violence in the cinema. In the United Kingdom, A Clockwork Orange
was very controversial and withdrawn from release by Kubrick himself.
In the United States, A Clockwork Orange was rated X in its original release.
Later, Kubrick voluntarily replaced approximately 30 seconds of sexually
explicit footage from two scenes with less explicit action for an R rating
re-release in 1973. Because of the explicit sex and violence, The National
Catholic Office for Motion Pictures rated it C ("Condemned"), a
rating which forbade Roman Catholics seeing the film. In 1982, the Office
abolished the "Condemned" rating. Subsequently, films deemed to have
unacceptable levels of sex and violence by the Conference of Bishops are rated
O, "Morally Offensive".
Although
passed uncut for UK cinemas in December 1971, British authorities considered
the sexual violence in the film to be extreme. In March 1972, during the trial
of a fourteen-year-old male accused of the manslaughter of a classmate, the
prosecutor referred to A Clockwork Orange, suggesting that the film had a macabre
relevance to the case. The film was also linked to the murder of an elderly
vagrant by a 16 year old boy in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, who pleaded guilty
after telling police that friends had told him of the film "and the
beating up of an old boy like this one." Roger Gray QC, for the defence,
told the court that "the link between this crime and sensational
literature, particularly A Clockwork Orange, is established beyond reasonable
doubt". The press also blamed the film for a rape in which the attackers
sang "Singin' in the Rain".
Christiane Kubrick, the director's wife,
has said that the family received threats and had protesters outside their
home. Subsequently, Kubrick asked Warner Brothers to withdraw the film from
British distribution. In response to allegations that the film was responsible
for copycat violence Kubrick stated: "To try and fasten any responsibility
on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong way around.
Art consists of reshaping life, but it does not create life, nor cause life.
Furthermore, to attribute powerful suggestive qualities to a film is at odds
with the scientifically accepted view that, even after deep hypnosis in a
posthypnotic state, people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with
their natures.” The Scala Cinema Club went into receivership in 1993 after
losing a legal battle following an unauthorized screening of the film. It was
only after Kubrick's death in 1999 that the film reappeared in cinemas and was
released on VHS and DVD.
The Parker–Hulme murder case took place in the city of
Christchurch, New Zealand, on 22 June 1954, when Honorah Rieper was killed by
her teenage daughter, Pauline Parker, and Pauline's close friend Juliet Hulme.
As a child, Parker had suffered from osteomyelitis; and
Hulme had suffered from tuberculosis, and was sent by her parents to the
Bahamas to recover. The girls initially bonded over their respective
illnesses, but, as their friendship developed, they formed an elaborate fantasy
life together. They would often sneak out and spend the night acting out
stories involving the fictional characters they had created. Their parents
found this disturbing and worried that their relationship might be sexual.
Homosexuality at the time was considered a serious mental illness, so both sets
of parents attempted to prevent the girls from seeing each other.
In 1954, Juliet's parents separated; her father lost his job at Canterbury College and planned to return to
England. It was then decided that Juliet would be sent to live with relatives
in South Africa—mainly for her health, but also so that the girls would be
more effectively, if not permanently, separated. Pauline told her mother that
she wanted to accompany Juliet, but Pauline's mother made it clear it would not
be allowed. The girls then formed a plan to murder Pauline's mother and leave
the country for Hollywood in the United States.
On 22 June 1954, the body of Honorah Rieper was discovered
in Victoria Park, in Christchurch, New Zealand. That morning Honorah had gone
for a walk through Victoria Park with her daughter Pauline Parker, and Juliet Hulme. Down the path, in a wooded area of the
park, Hulme and Parker bludgeoned Rieper to death
with a brick placed in an old stocking. After committing the murder they had
planned together, the girls fled, covered in blood, back to the tea kiosk
where the three of them had eaten only minutes before. Major lacerations were found about her head, neck, and face,
with minor injuries to her fingers. Police soon discovered the murder weapon in
the nearby woods, and the girls' story of Rieper's accidental death quickly
fell apart.
The trial was an astonishing spectacle, with speculation
about the girls possible lesbianism and insanity. The girls were convicted on 28
August 1954, and each of them spent five years in prison as they were too young
to be considered for the death penalty. They were later released, and adopted new identities.
As a generic character type of Thriller texts is a 'psychotic individual', i carried out some research into psychopathy and empathy.
In
the early 1800s, doctors who worked with mental patients began to notice that
some of their patients who appeared outwardly normal had what they termed a
“moral depravity” or “moral insanity,” in that they seemed to possess no sense
of ethics or of the rights of other people. The term “psychopath” was first
applied to these people around 1900. The term was changed to “sociopath” in the
1930s to emphasize the damage they do to society.
Psychopathy can be described as an aspect of personality or as a personality disorder. As a personality disorder, it is characterized by enduring antisocial behaviour, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behaviour. As an aspect of personality, it represents scores on different dimensions of personality found throughout the population in varying combinations.
A psychopath could be described as a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.
In this scene of Tarantino's 'Jackie Brown', we see the character Louis - the 'psychotic individual'- kill Melanie in a public place in broad daylight.
The fact that Louis shoots Melanie in a public place - such as the car park- in broad daylight portrays him as a fairly psychotic character as he has not been secretive about the murder; and seems to show very little recognition for his actions, along with the fact that he still talks to her as if she's beside him; when she's laying dead on the floor after being shot twice.
Psychopaths
exhibit antisocial and aggressive behaviour, as well as emotional and
interpersonal deficits including shallow emotions and a lack of remorse and
empathy. Studies suggest psychopaths have atypical responses to distress cues
(e.g. facial and vocal expressions of fear and sadness), including decreased
activation of the fusiform (part of the temporal lobe and occipital lobe, located
between the inferior temporal gyrus and the parahippocampal gyrus) and
extrastriate cortical regions (the region of the occipital cortex of the
mammalian brain located next to the primary visual cortex), which may partly
account for impaired recognition of and reduced autonomic responsiveness to
expressions of fear, and impairments of empathy.
