Question 2 of Evaluation

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The two main social groups represented in our opening sequence are age and gender.

Age

In our sequence, the 2 characters seen by the audience are a teenage girl, Dannie, and her boyfriend, Josh. The purpose of this was to indicate to the audience that Dannie is very isolated, and that the only responsible adult she is in contact with is on a work trip. This ambiguity furthers the gap between the ages, with her and her boyfriend in London, and her dad off somewhere unknown.

Dannie is a typical representation of a teenager, she promises her dad that she is going to just stay at home, but in reality the audience can see that she has alcohol and that her boyfriend is coming over. The alcohol and sexual implications via text conform to the classic teenage stereotypes, but not necessarily in a negative way. Hopefully this will be appealing to our primary audience; teenagers.

Teen stereotypes:

·         Slackers/ Lazy

·         Rule breakers

·         Drink alcohol

·         Take drugs

·         Messy

·         Have underage sex/ Promiscuous

·         Go to parties/ raves

·         Immature

·         Unreliable

Gender

The portrayal of gender in films have traditionally been that the male characters are the heroes/ strong leads while the girls are weaker/ need saving. The horror/ thriller genre is particularly stereotypical in this sense, and often follows these conventions.

In our opening sequence, we followed the conventions of horror/ thriller films to an extent, as Dannie is the person that gets kidnapped and her boyfriend later on in the film is the person that goes to rescue her.

Dannie is the main character in our opening sequence, and seems to have the run of her house at that moment. She is presented as a strong lead in the beginning, managing to fool her dad and organise her boyfriend to come over. As the sequence goes on though, she loses her control of the situation; as soon as there is a blackout. Then the male (presumed via the news report) kidnapper has the power in the situation, and kidnaps her. The arrival of her boyfriend, Josh, restores some control over the situation, but linking to age, responsibility and maturity again, he is initially at a loss about what to do.