Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Gender• In my film opening there is both a male and a

female character.Female;The first character shown in my film opening is the female Protagonist. In the short amount of time we see her we are able to see that she is asleep in bed. From this the audience can infer that she is well behaved and doesn’t stay up late. This is supported by the idea that girls are better behaved than boys, which is supported by my film opening as she is asleep but the male character is awake.The female character also follows the ‘girly’ stereotype as her bed covers, although are not a typically girly colour, have flowers on. The use of Mise-En-Scéne here shows that she is not typically girly but still feminine as flowers are seen as a feminine feature.

GenderMale;The second character shows in my film opening is the Male antagonist. The first time we see him he is holding a knife. As the audience hasn’t yet seen his purpose for the knife, him doing this suggests that he is careless. This supports the stereotype that boys are more reckless than girls so are not as careful. Then we see the boy looking at himself in the mirror. The typically male stereotype is that they don’t really care about their appearance but as he is looking at himself in the mirror it shows to the audience that he does care. By looking at his face the audience can see that he is distressed and angry, so it is apparent that he doesn’t like the way he looks. This would be slightly unusual for the viewers as it is more often that the female characters are worried about their appearance.

Teenagers• In my film opening there is two different

characters, both teenagers and hey are both presented in very different ways.

Female teenager; The first teenager is the female protagonist. In my film opening she is in bed asleep. This could be interpreted two different ways by the audience. The first way is that she is lazy. The most common stereotype of teenagers is that they are very lazy and as she is asleep it conforms to this stereotype. The second way this could be interpreted is that she is tired as she works hard or that she is sensible so sleeps at an appropriate time. This challenges the stereotype as teenagers are usually portrayed as staying awake all night, however as she is a female it may not seem as unusual as female teenagers as seen in society as being more sensible than male teenagers.

TeenagersMale teenager;The second teenager shown in my film opening is the male protagonist. This character challenges and conforms to the stereotypically suicidal person. It is becoming more and more common for teenagers to be depressed/ suicidal so as the suicidal character in this plot is a teenager, it conforms to the idea that teenagers are often represented as being ‘over emotional’ or ‘dramatic’. However this character also challenges how suicidal teenagers are represented because in the media it is most common for female teenagers to commit suicide in both reality and films. Through this is am trying to show to the audience that gender and mental illness are not related.Similarly as this character is wearing all black he could be seen as part of a Goth/Emo subculture. Both of these subcultures is predominantly teenagers and are all portryed, mostly by the media, to be depressed or over dramatic. Therefore this character represents teenagers to be over dramatic and gothic teenagers do follow their stereotype.