HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT

PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

Within my thriller opening sequence my production team and I decided to contain generally the same type of social group which our target audience could appeal to the most. We decided that this would be skilled working class and middle class which we would depict through the clothing and general mannerisms expressed through the protagonist Amy and Sean. I’ve decided to analyse and evaluate the particular character Amy as with both followed stereotypes and conventions and challenged them through her.

INTRODUCTION

The character Amy played by Sarah Taylor-Warner is a middle class female who’s still in education with the idea suggested that she’s still living at home with her parents. This original idea of a conforming ‘damsel in distress’ was challenged by the introduction of her relation with criminal activity and being in debt with the villain of the fi lm. This undiscovered rebellion is also seen within other character from other fi lms such ‘The hole’ and ‘Hard candy’ which contain similar characters.

AMY

These character presents their middle class and quite posh upbringing through their clothing and appearance. They do both however appear quite diff erent with Liz Dunn being quite desperate and slightly disturbed but this is due to more of a physical infl iction that has happened within their narrative which we did not contain in ours to make the underground desperation more apparent visually which we decided to avoid.

The character Amy however is a little diff erent from Liz in respect to role in fi lm with Amy dying also immediately which challenges the idea of the damsel in distress being the reward.

COMPARISON TO LIZ DUNN IN THE HOLE

These characters do share a similar age of around 15 to 17 and there’s more of troubling problem they suff er from which does not appear so on the surface but they have diff erent motives. Amy is desperate for survival as she is in danger and could be killed by the villain while Hayley is actually sort of the antagonist, infl icting sadistic violence against others. This therefore shows that challenging conventions and stereotypes was actually done more eff ectively with Hard Candy which shows that ours would be more relatable, but not as original.

Their clothing is quite diff erent to with the rebellion being more apparent with Hayley while Amy conformist ways are shown through her clothing. This is more evident in how Hayley wears a hoodie, which is considered quite rebellious while Amy wears quite typical and in fashion clothing.

COMPARISON TO HAYLEY STARK IN HARD CANDY

After compar ing the character Amy to other s imi lar female protagonists f rom other thr i l ler fi lms, I found that my des i rable depict ion of a middle c lass woman who is s l ight ly menta l ly d is turbed was not incredib ly s tereotypica l . Th is might be due to how i t ’s only a three minute fi lm so i t would be quite hard to establ ish a c lear s tereotype but noth ing is real ly that obvious with in these three minutes so the character is not that s tereotypica l . Th is can be seen through her act ions which are not very predictable or can be eas i ly assoc iated with the soc ia l group we intended to port rayed. The only p lace th is doesn’t real ly apply is through Amy’s c loth ing but th is is not ent i re ly stereotypica l as i t ’s only meant to make her soc ia l c lass more obvious without i t seeming off ens ive or b latant . Addit ional ly , after conduct ing a soc ia l group who watched the fi rst draft o f the opening sequence, they d id not spot any issues in respect to any of the characters being stereotypica l and fe l t as i f that a l l o f the characters would su i t the target audience quite wel l . So i t would appear that the character Amy is not portrayed in a s tereotypica l way.

The character of Amy however might g ive qui te a negat ive refl ect ion on the part icu lar soc ia l group she fa l ls under due to her t roubles with cr ime and the impl icat ion that she does drugs. However , th is could be interpreted d iff erent and some v iewers but g ive her p i ty as she is a v ic t im and nothing more than that . This therefore might mean a negat ive stereotype is impl ied but i f I could I would not fi x th is problem as i t ’s a key point to the narrat ive and i t is not extremely off ens ive so i t would not degrade many people to the po int where i t would have a negat ive eff ect on the fi lm as a whole.

CONCLUSION