How does your media product represent particular social groups?

1. AS Evaluation Question 2:
How does your media product
represent particular social groups?
Sarah Byard.

2. Which social groups are represented?
• In our film opening, we represent
ability/disability because of Jess’s mental
health, gender in our use of female actresses
and age in our use of 16-17 year olds for all
the characters.

3. How mise-en-scene represents age.
This guitar represents youth
and teenagers because a
stereotype of teenagers is
that they all think they’re
Dark musicians and they all want
clothing to be in bands, because the
also shows whole ‘rock n roll ‘ lifestyle is
the moody attractive to them as it is
teenager exciting.
stereotype
The notebooks represent youth and being
a teenager, as Jess is, because teenagers
have lots of exams (insert comment about
hating exams here) and schoolwork. It’s
not evident in this picture, but in the film
it is more noticeable that she is studying.
Having her revision not only shows her to
be young, but it also adds normality to her Notebooks,
character, something lacking in the first see? Google
section. never lies.

4. People always say that teenagers are
lazy and just mooch about in their
pyjamas all day if they don’t have
school and that they stay up til all hours
doing God knows what. We showed
this by the dark lighting and by having
me sit in my pyjamas.
People also think that after
spending all the night playing xBox
or watching TV, they then go and
spend all day causing chaos at
local parks and terrorising the
locals. Here is me and Jess in a
park, not terrorising the locals, but
being in a park nonetheless.

5. Flowers are traditionally used to represent
Butterflies also represent youth youth. This is because they generally bloom
because they don’t live to in Spring, a time of renewal and new life. By
adulthood, but also because the having thisrepresent Jess, they represent
blooming of a butterfly from the youth.
cocoon is reminiscent of the
coming of age that teenagers
experience.

6. How editing represents age and
gender.
• In the ritual/murder scene, there is rapid
intercutting, not only to create tension but to show
the rashness of the decision and how quickly the
mind of Jess changes. This is a stereotypical view of
teenage girls; people always think they’re emotional
wrecks who have enormous tempers.
• It also shows the stereotype that teenagers have
stormy tempers, because it’s fast-paced, like people
assume the temper of a teenage girl is.

7. How sound represents age.
This space looks too blank, so here’s
some Google pictures of moody
teenagers.
The voiceover at this point is
quite sulky, how people expect
teenagers to be. She says “fine,
I’ll do it” quite moodily.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLuEY6jN6gY&
feature=relmfu
Like that.

8. How cinematography represents age
and gender..
Teenagers girls are typically quite open with
emotions and enjoy being the centre of
attention. We chose close ups for this reason;
however, we subverted the expressive rule,
because in the main close-ups, they’re
expressionless. This was because these aren’t
ordinary teenage girls, as you can tell from the
ritual.

9. How mise-en-scene represents gender.
This is the
As we said in our ability/disability whole nature
video, these images represent thing being
Jess and her innocence. These feminine. I
also represent femininity must say, the
because daisies and nature in Snow White
general are considered pretty or clip is quite
‘girly’ things. sexist…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXgMFNaQUUU – Snow White clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OaxejZBe0M – Sleeping Beauty clip.

10. Look at the dresses and
the pink and the whole
being female. Dresses,
obviously represent
femininity because men
don’t traditionally wear
dresses . The pattern on
the dresses are also
feminine because they’re
This man flowery and, as we’ve
being the discussed, nature = girly.
exception…
Also, pink is considered a
‘girls colour’. Jess is
wearing pink, therefore,
she must be female.

11. How sound represents gender.
• The scream in the dream sequence is
extremely high pitched and feminine. It is not
expected that men scream or show any fear;
however, it is expected that females are
forever victims and are allowed to scream so
that a man can come along and save them.
• /rant.

12. NOTES.
• We cannot do any comparisons with male
characters to infer dominance etc., because there
were no male characters.
• We also could not compare the teenaged
characters to any older/younger characters,
because there were none.
• Note: there is no real analysis of Hannah in this,
because it’s quite messy because Hannah’s not
real so it would be how we represent an
imaginary person? It could be how Jess wishes
she could be, but it’s quite hard to analysis her.