How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representations of AgeStuart Hall argued that youth are represented negatively in media in order to show that adult authority is in charge and needs to be so. Therefore young people are often the subject of moral panics, like after the Columbine shootings and the murder of James Bulger. However in our product the protagonist was a young person. The lighting is bright which symbolises innocence. Also, the character is shown to be leisurely cycling through the forest. This all signifies that he is a good character, which goes against the dominant ideology that young people are a threat. In fact, in our opening sequence, the antagonist, who is seen to commit a murder, is an adult. This challenges the dominant ideology that adults are the main purveyors of justice and are always in the right.

Female RepresentationsOur product conforms to the dominant ideology of women being the victims. Molly Haskells book From Reverence to Rape, details how women are often victimised in films (Especially horror). The victim in our film is a woman, who is the killed by a man. This signifies that women are weaker. This has dangerous effects on women as it makes them believe they are the inferior sex. The victim presents a stereotypical representation of a female character. She is wearing a dress, has long hair and is even seen to be wearing heels. This categorises her as a stereotypical Princess character type, as established by Propp.

male RepresentationsOur protagonist is a boy. He does most of the detective work and is highly intelligent. This suggests that men are more intelligent than women. The main protagonist and antagonist are male which is common in films. Men are often over-represented in comparison to women, and are given the most diverse and complex roles. This means that female issues are often over-looked or underplayed. And, this also means that female characters become restricted to, as Betty Friedan says in The Feminine Mystique, the roles of housewife, girls or whores.