Subway Stereotypes

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Contrary to critics’ belief of characters being “superficial caricatures”, these characters represent the suffering and and anger of the french youth through spectacle. Most of their characters are passive-aggressive in nature (Gorodish, Nikita or Léon for example), break boundaries, are indifferent and independent, refuse to enter social norms, establish alternative systems and cultures (e.g. le métro in Subway). At the same time, the rest of society representing social order, are portrayed in this films in mostly comic ways, as the characters always watching through surveillance with the sole intention of detaining and/or removing them. This is seen in Subway, for instance, where the ‘young deviants’ are constantly being scrutinised by the…show more content…
Characters, not only seem to be in complete denial about their adulthood but also seem to be ignoring their sexuality: Nikita refusal to become part of the conventional representation of the woman as an object of the gaze leads her to remain child-like throughout the film; Fred persists his childhood dream of having a rock-band with a group of other underground characters that Benson even describes as his ‘flawed characters, lost children’; and Léon’s case is probably the one showing a most obvious regression out of all of them. Before meeting Mathilda, he is an illiterate automaton, who, just like children, only drinks milk and shows signs of being both naive and simple-mindedly asexual through his poor, child-like use of language and facial expressions. Besson describes him as a ’12 year old within a 40 year old body’ which helps explain his and Mathilda’s romantic yet asexual relationship - two 12 year old children, one being trapped in a 40 year old body. Nonetheless most critics failed to see Besson’s perspective and thus accused him of ‘quasi-child pornography’. Interview after interview Besson expressed his dismay by asserting that this film was supposed to be a representation of pure innocent love as part of the growing up theme. ‘Society today confuses love and sex. The more…show more content…
Besson explains that this is because he tries to send the same message in his films. He believes that inside each one of his characters, as much as in his audience, lies a strong self belief that nothing can defeat them, even when that means finding death, as most of his characters all do either literally or metaphorically. ‘Characters retreat into a child-likeness and from there often encounter death’(Hayward, 1998:127), again proving Hebdige’s theory of oblivion as the final
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