Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our production, we tried to represent 4 different social groups, the younger sister,
the older sister, the thugs and the van driver. Social groups can depend on their
gender, age, social class, ethnicity, regional location and disability; in our production
we showed the character to be different through age, gender and social class. We
portrayed the characters mainly through stereotypes.
The weakest character we decided to represent is the younger sister; we planned to
represent her as a weak character that needed protection, if the protection isnt there
then bad things could happen. Its stereotypical of the younger sister to need the
protection of the older sister. For example, in this shot the younger sister is being
filmed from a high angle. High angles are used to connote that characters are weak
and afraid, this meaning should be apparent to the audience due to her facial
expression showed in other shots and the high angle used in this shot. Also, at no
point during this shot is her whole body shown; only half of it is ever shown. This
could connote that the sisters have similar personalities and are very close, and
since the older sister is no longer with her in this scene her personality is no longer
full and she can no longer perform vital tasks. The audiences representation of this
depends on how much media theyve consumed. Most media products have some
form of small girl character which always gets in trouble somehow, the audience
may just assume that its going to be the same in this media product. This is the
Hypodermic Needle Theory in which people assume things happen because theyve
seen media products portraying this.
Another social group that we tried to show were young men of a low class. This
group are usually stereotyped to be involved in violent actions and thats exactly
what weve tried to represent in our production. We portrayed this group through the
facial expressions, body language and the costumes of the thugs. For example, the
costumes used for the thugs were hoodies which are also stereotyped to be involved
in criminal activity which further goes to show the audience that the lower class
young men are going to perform some role in disrupting the equilibrium for the
sisters. This stereotype is further shown through the use of body language, by
showing the hands in the hoodie pocket is could connote that theyre concealing
something dangerous which they dont want anyone else to see.
The last social group we tried to show were older men, more specifically the
stereotypical van-man. We wanted to present him as an archetype, using all of the
rumours and stereotypes about people who own vans (that theyre all insane
kidnappers). This archetype was created in different ways, obviously hes in a van
and he does kidnap a child which denotes the archetype. The use of a red van
connotes that theres going to be danger and/or blood, which further makes the
audience worry about whats going to happen to the young sister. Also, hes wearing
boots which could connote that hes hardworking and prepared to get dirty, which is
also conventional of the van-man archetype. Whether you accept this archetype or
not is down to the Audience Reception Theory. People who dont know a van driver
may accept these conventions and actually believe them (to an extent). Other people
who watch the sequence may not think the representation of the driver is correct as
they know a van driver.