section 1: background to the thriller genre

What is a thriller? The critics and theorists responce to defining the genre.

G K Chesterton was the first person to comment on the thriller genre. Thrillers were first created as books in the 1900's and Chesterton said that a thriller is set in an urban landcapes, they supposidly find excitement in everyday life and transform the ordinary to the extraordinary. This initial definition wasn't very specific but it was a good initial idea.
Northrop Frye was the next person to expand the thriller genre and he made the link between romance fiction and thrillers. There is a link between the two because an ordinary person is the hero and we are happy to believe the fictional situations the characters find themselves in.
John Cawelti then said that a thriller transforms the city from a modern centre of commerce, industry and science into a place of enchanment and mystery. He said this could be achieved by introducing "the exotic" into the everyday world for example in lord of the rings with the ring and in Jumanji with the board game.
W H Matthews had a strong idea that thrillers relate to mazes and labyrinths in fiction. He thought the image of Theseus decending into an underground maze full of twists, turns, puzzles and dead ends creates a good thriller. He also thought that to create a sucessfull thriller you must add complex twists and turns so that the audience doesn't solve the problem too easily but it should be designed so that the audience could dedcuse it.
Pascal Bonitzer expanded on Matthews concept and thought up the idea of "partial vistion" linking to when Matthews advocated mazes. He said that the audience should only see so much and what the audience don't see is part of the system of thrillers. Pascal also thought that the narrative picks a wat through the maze for the audience.
Lars Ole Sauberg came up with some interesting ideas of creating suspence. They are hiding something from the audience and delaying or protracting an expected outcome for example in die hard when they diffuse a bomb
The final theorist was Nole Carroll and he came up with the question and answer model. The question and answer model creates suspence by making them asking questions like in the television program lost. Carroll also said that another factor for creating suspence is a battle against odds or the "probability factor" like in braveheart when they are outnumbered. The final method of suspence that Carroll created was the moral factor and this is achieved by having the hero as someone who may have done some bad things and this creates suspence for the audience because it may not be morally right for them to survive.