How does your media product represent particular social groups?

AS Evaluation Question 2:

Sarah Byard.

Which social groups are represented?

• In our film opening, we represent ability/disability because of Jess’s mental health, gender in our use of female actresses and age in our use of 16-17 year olds for all the characters.

How mise-en-scene represents age.This guitar represents youth and teenagers because a stereotype of teenagers is that they all think they’re musicians and they all want to be in bands, because the whole ‘rock n roll ‘ lifestyle is attractive to them as it is exciting.

The notebooks represent youth and being a teenager, as Jess is, because teenagers have lots of exams (insert comment about hating exams here) and schoolwork. It’s not evident in this picture, but in the film it is more noticeable that she is studying. Having her revision not only shows her to be young, but it also adds normality to her character, something lacking in the first section.

Notebooks, see? Google never lies.

Dark clothing also shows the moodyteenager stereotype

People always say that teenagers are lazy and just mooch about in their pyjamas all day if they don’t have school and that they stay up til all hours doing God knows what. We showed this by the dark lighting and by having me sit in my pyjamas.

People also think that after spending all the night playing xBox or watching TV, they then go and spend all day causing chaos at local parks and terrorising the locals. Here is me and Jess in a park, not terrorising the locals, but being in a park nonetheless.

Flowers are traditionally used to represent youth. This is because they generally bloom in Spring, a time of renewal and new life. By having thisrepresent Jess, they represent youth.

Butterflies also represent youth because they don’t live to adulthood, but also because the blooming of a butterfly from the cocoon is reminiscent of the coming of age that teenagers experience.

How editing represents age and gender.

• In the ritual/murder scene, there is rapid intercutting, not only to create tension but to show the rashness of the decision and how quickly the mind of Jess changes. This is a stereotypical view of teenage girls; people always think they’re emotional wrecks who have enormous tempers.

• It also shows the stereotype that teenagers have stormy tempers, because it’s fast-paced, like people assume the temper of a teenage girl is.

How sound represents age.

The voiceover at this point is quite sulky, how people expect teenagers to be. She says “fine, I’ll do it” quite moodily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLuEY6jN6gY&feature=relmfuLike that.

This space looks too blank, so here’s some Google pictures of moody teenagers.

How cinematography represents age and gender..

Teenagers girls are typically quite open with emotions and enjoy being the centre of attention. We chose close ups for this reason; however, we subverted the expressive rule, because in the main close-ups, they’re expressionless. This was because these aren’t ordinary teenage girls, as you can tell from the ritual.

How mise-en-scene represents gender.

As we said in our ability/disability video, these images represent Jess and her innocence. These also represent femininity because daisies and nature in general are considered pretty or ‘girly’ things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXgMFNaQUUU – Snow White cliphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OaxejZBe0M – Sleeping Beauty clip.

This is the whole nature thing being feminine. I must say, the Snow White clip is quite sexist…

Look at the dresses and the pink and the whole being female. Dresses, obviously represent femininity because men don’t traditionally wear dresses . The pattern on the dresses are also feminine because they’re flowery and, as we’ve discussed, nature = girly.

Also, pink is considered a ‘girls colour’. Jess is wearing pink, therefore, she must be female.

This manbeing the exception…

How sound represents gender.• The scream in the dream sequence is

extremely high pitched and feminine. It is not expected that men scream or show any fear; however, it is expected that females are forever victims and are allowed to scream so that a man can come along and save them.

• /rant.

NOTES.

• We cannot do any comparisons with male characters to infer dominance etc., because there were no male characters.

• We also could not compare the teenaged characters to any older/younger characters, because there were none.

• Note: there is no real analysis of Hannah in this, because it’s quite messy because Hannah’s not real so it would be how we represent an imaginary person? It could be how Jess wishes she could be, but it’s quite hard to analysis her.