Evaluation Q2

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Our media product shows two different social groups, wealthy middle class people and low class poor people which is a binary opposition. 

We have used a very stereotypical "Final Girl' as the main character in our opening. However for our preferred reading we want the audience to see her as a "Scream Queen" because of the twist at the end of our opening. She is blonde which is typical for a scream queen but the cothes she us wearing are certainly not. Usually scream queens wearing revealling clothes but we decided to make the girl in  our film as being geeky, yet innocent. For example the jumper she is wearing is covered in items such as penguins, stars and Nintendo Entertainment System controllers. We chose 'Lucy Simpson' for this role because we thought she was the best person for the role and she wasnt afraid of being infron of the camera. Here is a picture of a stereotypical final girl and the actress we chose for our film so you can see the contrast between them.

Our other main character is a mechanic and he is portryed as being poor and working class. This is denoted by his oil covered face and hands but also his dirty boiler suit. We have also used intertextuality to the charater Micheal Myers in the Halloween films as he also wears a boiler suit. It also makes our character look alot manly and potentialy dangerous because only men would be working on a car and he is quite tall which makes him look more powerful. The fact we used narrative enigma also added to the dominance of the man over the woman. Another point that can be made is that when the mechanic goes into the girls bedroom and sniff the girl’s underwear it shows the man as being quite perverted. The man is also seen as being Yorkshire which is signified through the use of his diologue.

 

Gender: As I said above gender does have its place in our film opening as we have both a male and a female character. There is a distinct binary opposition here as we made the male look dominant, powerful and somewhat creepy whereas we tried to make the girl look innocent and vunerable. There are several charater archetypes such as sream queens and final girls etc in the horror genre but as we could only film a two minute opening we couldnt fulfill as many archetypes as we could if we did a whole two hour film. We chose to have a scream queen in our two minute because it is typical of the horror genre and because of the male gaze. If our film ever made it on to the big screen then certainly more males will be attracted to the film because of their being a blonde protagonist.

Sexuality: Both of our characters in our media production are are heterosexual. We also feel that if we were to convert our film opening into a full length film all our cast would remain hetrosexual and there would be no homosexual representations in our film for many reasons. This would be because it would be impossible to find any acters that would be comfortable acting this role but also there are rarely any charcters of this sexuality in slasher films so we would not want to break this convention. Killers are known to be sexually ambiguous which means they are unsure of their sexuality, however in our film we know that the female has a boyfirend as he rings her up half way through the opening.

Age: Slasher movies have a core target audience of a teen to young adult age range, mainly around the age range of 15-24. Both our acter and actress are in this age range as they are both 17 years of age. Just like in our Target Audience post our core target audience is 15-24 year olds and we would probably expect to see mostly males to watch our film. As both are characters are in the target audience age range this would attract our core audience and maybe they would be able to relate to the production more.

Ethnicity: The ethnicity in our production is dominantly white. As you can see the two characters are both white British because the area we live in is predominantly white British. However if we did have the chance to film the rest of our production and we were able to develop on our two minute opening we probably would try and create a more culturally diverse cast because over time and due to immigration laws not being as tight as they are today, England has become a muli-cultural society and this could be reflected in a full length film. 

Class and Status: Our media product shows two different social groups, wealthy middle class people and low class poor people which is a binary opposition. The girl in our film lives in a a wealthy home as we can see quite a few of the rooms inside and the fact that the family hastwo cars also adds to the middle/upper class range. However the mechanic falls under the working class. This is because of the clothes he is wearing but also the fact he has dirty hands and face. The fact he is working on a car shows his class but also labels him as an alpha-male who has power and authority over the girl although she has a greater status.

Regional Identity: Due to our film being set in Yorkshire, regional identity is portrayed by the characters, location and props etc. I feel that our production has alot of signifiers that help to anchor the location of our film. For example the first establishing shot is of the counrtyside and stereotypically people think of people in Yorkshire to be farmers. Another example is our characters both have Yorkshire accents, especially the mechanic. Usually in films the directors like to try and have characters that are upper/middle class and have a southern english accent. People with a Yorshire accent would only be used for comedy affect but because our film is set in Yorkshire it is appropriate to have people with a Yorkshire accent in it. Also the fact the mechanic is working class and asks for four sugars in his tea could also signify he is poor/working class and a stereotypical Yorkshireman.

Physical State: Both of our characters are in good physical state and do not portray any kind of mental or physical disability, however the mechanic does seem to be quite perverse. This is probably because we were not looking for anyone who had a disability for several reasons. Just like for the sexuality section I believe that it would be extremely difficult for us to find someone who had a disability and would feel comfortable acting infront of the camera but also having it shown to alot of people on Facebook and YouTube etc. Again like in the sexuality section it is very rare to see people with disabilities in slasher movies. However, there are some rare cases where there are characters that hace a disability such as Franklin Hardesty from 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'.