Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Throughout our opening, we have closely followed many of the main stereotypes of the genre, particularly thing such as gender and age stereotypes in the characters. However we subverted the stereotype in terms of class in the representation of the location. We enforced our ideas mostly through the use of camera work.

Firstly the main stereotype, which is supported in almost every film in the horror and thriller genre, is the gender stereotype. In almost all films, the antagonist is represented as a male, while the innocent protagonist is presented as a female. The general social stereotype between males and females is that men are seen as the ‘strong’ sex with the power and masculinity, while women on the other hand are seen as ‘weak’ , fragile and innocent. We decided to go along with this as we wanted the antagonist to coma across as threatening and the protagonist to come across as vulnerable and helpless, and the general stereotypes helped us to create this contrast in characters. It also mean we could implicitly show the audience the storyline, without explicitly having to show who the antagonist is and who the protagonist is, the audience could just easily infer.

Here are some examples of how we enforced the gender stereotypes in out opening:

As you can clearly see, the female wearing pink, 

is seen running and looking back, showing her vulnerability, while the male on the other hand is seen walking, un-phased, wearing all black,

 showing dominance and masculinity. Another way that the male’s dominance is subliminally reinforced is through the way that the camera work never allows the audience to see his face. This shoes the hierarchy of power between the two as the woman’s whole body and face is shown, showing her full vulnerability while the males face is never shown representing power. Another stereotypical representation of the woman’s innocence is presented through the use of her general mise en scene as a character; as seen in the screen shots, her hair is long and flowing and flying backwards as she runs, adding extra emphasis to her femininity which is stereotyped as ‘weakness’.

Later on in the opening the gender stereotypes are continually enforced, in particular when the female is seen tied up to a chair in the shed. She is shown as weak and helpless in the way that she is disorientated after just waking up, she has her hands tied, and she has seemingly no escape. In the same scene, the male’s shadow can be seen walking past, showing the males superiority in the situation, showing he has all the power.

The next main stereotype enforce in our opening would be the age. We represented the protagonist at an age of around 17-18. This meant that the thought of the character being ‘helpless’ could be enforced more due to the fact that the antagonist could be any age, and a teenage girl most likely will not be able to fight back. This subverts the archetype of thrillers as the films actors are usually a lot older, which can man that the film is more ‘relatable’ tot eh target audience being 15+ as it could happen in a real life situation.

Continuing on from the relatable point, by having the location in a seeming middle class location, this subverts the genre. The stereotypical location for a thrill is either very wealthy or very poor, however by having ours represented in a middle class suburban area, it can be more relatable to the viewer, causing more interest, as it feels more realistic.