Task 20 - Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent different social groups? 

Cara - Georgia Pilbro
Age - 18
Gender - Female
Stereotypes - Age & Sexuality

Firstly, to address the "Age" stereotype (teenagers) we made the character "Cara" prone to making brash decisions and also aggressive. All these can be seen within our media product where Cara picks up the glass bottle (a brash decision) and then proceeds to strike the male character (Fabian) with it thus showing her to be aggressive. 

Also to address the "Sexuality" stereotype, they are generally emotional. This can be seen within our opening scene where Cara shows many different emotions - Jealousy, sadness and then anger. We showed this, firstly when the couple walks past her (she looks back) and the camera pans to track them implying that from cara's point of view they're the ideal couple. Her looking back shows her interest in them (she's jealous). Next, we see her being sad when she's walking down the lane with the camera tracking her from her left side. The lighting her is much cooler than the warmer colours in the previous scene - implying that in this scene her mood has changed into sadness. Lastly, she shows anger through picking up the bottle and then hitting the character Fabian in the dome. 

Also the sexuality/gender stereotype was incorporated in our media product. Females are generally seen as weaker and more emotional than males, they are submissive and are just "side-characters". This can be seen in our opening sequence where the drunk dad abuses her daughter, Cara. This scene was meant to show that the world that she lives in is a patriarchal society, where the males have dominance over the females. However, we did challenge this stereotype as Cara, becomes a killer towards the end which is generally the role of middle-aged men within media - to be the main villain of a film/show.

Fabian - Justice Richie
Age - 18
Gender - Male
Stereotypes - Age, Ethnicity, Sexuality

Our victim in the opening sequence was the male character, Fabian played by Justice Richie. We decided to challenge the "ethnic" stereotype because we felt that this would make our opening sequence unique and different. We did this by using his costume to tell the audience that he's not poor and more importantly not a criminal. We made the character wear, vans, jeans and a hoodie instead of what black boys would normally wear on British TV, where they are normally depicted wearing, big puffer jackets, gloves, Nike air max 90s and baggy jeans.

Also, due to Fabian's age (18) we found that this would be a great way to represent the stereotype that, most boys this age are promiscuous especially those of black ethnicity. This wasn't what we initially thought about but as the filming progressed, we found that we could incorporate this stereotype (all because we wanted a reason for Cara to beat someone down) as most boys in our generation are like this.

Drunk Dad - Freddie Searle 
Age - 45
Gender - Male
Stereotypes  - Age, Ethnicity, Class & Status

The father to our protagonist, is a drunkard. This is stereotypical of those in their middle-age, in real media they are often described as unattractive, dominant over others & that they have no real connection with their children. The last point is especially important for our media product as this is where the abuse plays a role, we felt that by using this as a guideline we could accurately depict this social group - Which I think we did really well. 

The father is seen as drunk and boring, not really leaving the house - this is evident through the bags left on the floor and the bad state of their flat. Also this goes really well with the "Class & Status" stereotype, this is due to the fact that they are of the "lower-class" hence why the dad doesn't work, has no family values (has a broken family) and that he's a bad parent - this is normally the stereotype for lower-class" families within real media.


To conclude, I felt that we represented all these social groups fairly well. Teenagers as emotional beings and middle-aged men as boring people with bad parenting skills. I feel that these accurately depict the social groups that are generally found in real media. Though we did challenge some stereotypes to give conflict and add variety to the film.


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