Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation Focus: Teenagers

These are the general stereotypes other people have about teenagers:

• Troublesome
• Criminal
• Drugs
• Alcohol
• Uncontrollable

Examples of teenagers in films/tv shows who follow these stereotypes:

Here are some of the teenage representation steretypes we followed/changed:

• suggests rebellion
• she appears sober and steady - suggests she's not out of control
• not typical drunk teen
• put straight in the fridge - she doesn't actually drink it.

Our female character, Dani is wearing a white jumper which connotes innocence, and we made sure Dani's clothing wasn't too girly so that the audience would still see her as a strong character. We created a binary opposite by making our male character wear a dark jacket and trousers. This suggests there will perhaps be a conflict between the two characters or they could be leading different paths. 

We have stuck to some of the stereotypes of film as we decided to have the female character being kidnapped, rather than the male character (who is going to try and save her) as we wanted to make the film believable. However, because we don’t show Dani again after the kidnapping, there is still the chance (in the audience’s minds) that she’ll become the ‘hero’ and defeat the Italian dealers. 

Another film which shows young women being at the mercy of men, is Hostel Part 2 (Roth, 2007). It also uses the idea of the antagonists being from a different country to the protagonists which is the same in our film:

We also stayed with the representation that teenagers are very technology based, by having Dani text her boyfriend, so the only communication in the opening was via text, which suggests again that she is quite cut off from the outside world.