4 meanings Documentary Analysis - The paedophile next door PDF

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Documentary Analysis/Final assignment for Introduction to Cinema....

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FACULTY OF APPLIED & CREATIVE ARTS

Four Levels of Meaning Present in the Documentary Film “The Pedophile Next Door” (2014) by Rudolph Herzog & Steve Humphries

NAME: NUR AZMINA SYAFIQAH BINTI DOLHAN MATRIC NUMBER: FACILITATOR: ENCIK _________ GKS1013: INTRODUCTION TO CINEMA DATE OF COMPLETION: 9/1/2019

4 Levels of Meaning in Documentary Film “The Paedophile Next Door”

The documentary film that I chose is “The Paedophile Next Door” directed by Rudolph Herzog and Steve Humphries. This documentary is about Steve Humphries in which he meets and talked with the victims of pedophile, the doctor and the pedophile itself and find out about their experiences. Steve Humphries examines failures in policies and legislation to protect children from abuse. This documentary is also about how to keep children safe and how we can effectively protect our children. The first level of meaning that I am going to analyze is referential meaning. This documentary is set in Britain. Steve Humphries is a historian and a film maker. I can see that he cares deeply about child protection. He went to meet Sarah Forsyth, who was abused by his own father when she was 3 years old and Ian McFadyer who was the victim of his pedophile teacher. He also meets Doctor Sarah Goode to find out more about her research. She is a Doctor that used to be a senior University lecturer and researcher specializing in pedophilia in which she believes she lost her job because her ideas were so controversial. She stated that not all pedophiles want to harm children and she stated that the best way to protect a child is to understand pedophiles. She once tried to contact the pedophiles directly by logging on to online forums where pedophiles congregate. He also meets Jonathan Taylor, a pedophile hunter. He logged into a popular chat room website and pretend to be a 13 year old girl and not long after that he receives a lot of messages from men. Lastly, he meets Eddie, who was the pedophile that Dr. Sarah Goode meets online. The second level of meaning is explicit meaning. One of the messages that this documentary tried to convey is we need to think differently about pedophiles. Do not judge them

immediately because not all of them like we expected. We need to think differently about them instead of demonizing all pedophiles we should encourage as many as possible to seek help before they become worse. For instance, we can see Eddie is a so called “virtuous pedophile”. He stated that abusing children and viewing images of child pornography is not acceptable. Even though he realized that he is a pedophile in his mid-20s, he never did anything bad or show his attraction towards children. Instead, he tried to change. He also stated that abusing a child never crossed his mind because he did not want to do that kind of thing. The third level of meaning that we are going to analyze is implicit meaning. From this documentary we can see that when Sarah Forsyth showed her pictures when she was a child she looks sad this is because she is suffering behind the closed door. She did not want to tell people about what his father did to her because she loves his father and she thought that she is special. But his father actually lied to her by making her feel as if she was special to him because he just do not want to get caught. Dr. Sarah Goode said that the number of sexual abuses towards children are like 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 8 boys. This shows that girls sexual abuse is more often happened compared to boys. The fourth level of meaning is symptomatic meaning. Sarah Forsyth was abused by his father at home and later she was sent to a Care Centre but unfortunately, she was being abused there too. This shows that the community and the authorities less concerned about what happen around them. The communities also do not care and think negatively about all pedophiles. We can see that Eddie confessed that people will think that if you are a pedophile then you will harm children. He explained that a person like him actually needs help from people instead of saying “Do whatever you want”, they can say “Listen, I can help you” instead. Somebody that realizes that they are pedophile has to make a choice about how they are going to live their life. When Eddie realized that he is a pedophile, he chose not to act on his attraction to children. He knows that harming and abusing an innocent child is not acceptable In conclusion, the documentary film “The Paedophile Next Door” manage to give us a lot of knowledge and information about pedophiles. The sexual abuse by pedophile nowadays are becoming more rampant. We need to be alert on our surrounding and takes action, such as informing the authorities if we saw something suspicious that lead to abuse towards children. Even though we cannot do much help but at least we tried to help and prevent something bad happening to our children nowadays and in future.

References The

Paedophile

Next

Door

(2014),

Retrieved

January

6

2019,

from

https://www.netflix.com/my/title/80109488 Rebecca Nicholson, The Paedophile Next Door Review, Retrieved January 6 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/nov/26/paedophile-next-door-psychobitches-tvreview Ben Lawrence, The Paedophile Next Door Review ‘frustratingly abstract’, Retrieved January 6, from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/11252951/thepaedophile-next-door-review-channel-4.html...