Patrycja Przewlocka - Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our protagonist was a school a student - this was a character we thought the audience could identify quickly.  Seeing as we wanted to appeal to both the independent and the mainstream audiences, we wanted to create a main character which could be stereotypical, yet with a surprising twist. 

Serial Killers:

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer vs. Our Unknown Serial Killer

We decided to completely challenge and confuse the stereotype of a serial killer in our film. We felt that this would appeal to our independent audience more, whilst also shocking the mainstream. In our film we decided to NOT represent them as old, creepy men, like those in older thrillers such as Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal, but we wanted our serial killer to be a young aryan girl. This complete contrast would not only shock, but add irony to the film, which was our main goal. Additionally, the serial killer in our product is the protagonist, which further challenges the stereotype as serial killers are usually the villains.

Students/teenagers:

Kidulthood shows a conventional representation of teens

We followed the typical stereotypes of detention students: constantly bored, and angry, which adds to the image they already have in the media. We decided to base the characters of our thriller on The Breakfast Club as although it is an older film (1985), it represents teenagers in a similar way to more modern films like the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Our detention class is nearly empty, putting the characters in the position of outcasts, which is a typical media image of teens. We took the idea of 'detention=bad' to the extreme, as we made one of the detention students become a serial killer. We also used the mise-en-scene of the empty classroom, by making it messy in order to show the common idea that teenagers are messy themselves. By positioning the teens sparsely around the classroom, we reinforced the idea of cliques, further enforcing the typical media view of teenagers. However, after a long consideration, I feel that we should have presented the teens in a more positive way; they are our target audience after all. 

Women

Taken

Conventionally in thrillers, the main cast is almost always male. Our group decided to challenge this idea, and have the protagonist be a female. However, we also went against the stereotypical image of a woman; in films such as Taken, the women are shown to be helpless and very weak. Visually, women in films also always appear to have long hair, soft features and wear light colours in order to make them appear innocent. However, our protagonist challenges all of those ideas. First of all, she is the protagonist of the thriller. A similar idea has only been explored in a handful of films such as Kill Bill, or Wanted. This was in order to surprise the audience as we hoped that they would not expect a woman to be a serial killer. The most important aspect of challenging the female stereotype was the appearance of our own. First of all, instead of being blonde and ditzy, our Serial Killer has a very short pixie cut, wears no make up and has definite features. Furthermore, she wears dark colours with bold items of clothing, such as a biker jacket and Doc Martens. This would further challenge the stereotype of a female in the clip, which we hoped would appeal to our audience.

interesting