Group 30: Question 2 Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

This wordle I created shows some negative representations from our film.

First of all, what is a representation?

Representation is either the portrayal or description of someone or something in a particular way or certain nature. It is the way people in social groups are characterised and recognised by. Representations which are used most often are: gender, race, disability and age. A way of understanding representations is through stereotypes, e.g, women are easy targets, men wearing hoodies are dangerous, etc.

What is a social group?

A social group is people sharing some social relation.

We decided to represent the younger age group through our main character in our thriller film. We did this mainly through the use of mise en scene. Our main character, a young girl,was wearing a lot of make up. This gives the impression that all girls wear too much make up.

In the collages I created on photoscape, it shows social groups represented in mainly negative ways. The positive representation is that men are innocent and good, as the killer is a female. This break general stereotypes and representations. Unlike the majority of films, ours doesn't have many stereotypes because our plot is full of twists and it is unique.

Social groups represented in our opening:

GENDER

Our main character is a girl and that is how the representation of gender comes across in our opening. Our camerawork and shots,like close ups to her face and wide shots showing what she is wearing, clearly show her gender. The make up she is wearing adds to this as it shows her femininity. This is also the stereotype I mentioned earlier.

AGE

Our main character is a young girl. We know she is young through the use of mise en scene- the props. Our main character was holding a teddy bear, associated with children. The close up of her face reveals no wrinkles and that she is quite youthful

DISABILITY

The main character is in a mental asylum and typical stereotypes here are that people who have a mental illness are always confined to a mental asylum and that these people are dark characters hell bent on causing people harm and getting revenge. The setting is a white room, like many asylums, which also gives you a clue about her mental state. An even bigger clue about her mental state is seen when she is circling the name in the book and crossing out her fathers face.