Evaluation: Question 2

Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The protagonist within my film follows the stereotype commonly seen in horror films. This is because, Niamh (Isla) plays the role of the damsel in distress and the ‘dumb blonde’ who gets killed first due to curiosity. It also follows the stereotype of the leading teenage girl as she is caucasian with blonde however. However her role in the film opening is subverted through her costume and does not encode the representation as she is wearing plain jeans, trainers, a jumper and a black coat which is not stereotypical for a girl to where and has connotations for what a male would stereotypically wear. This subversion of the stereotype can also be challenged through her make-up which is very minimal and natural when normally women wear lipstick and eye liner in horror films. On the other hand I still wanted to identify Niamh’s character as a girl so I decided that it would be best for her hair to be down.

In addition, another stereotype that is seen in teenagers is that they are always on their phone on social media. At the start of the scene I used the phone as a prop for the teenagers to hold which supports the stereotype. I used this prop to encode the representation as I believe it the teenagers watching the film would relate to the characters.

Also, within my film opening even though I decided the follow the stereotype of women with the damsel in distress I also subverted the stereotype with the antagonist. This is because in horror films the antagonist is normally a male and if it is a women they have promiscuous connotations. The subversion is seen through the mise en scene where she is seen wearing all black with trousers, a jumper, a coat and a black bag. However, her identity is unknown until later on in the film so if I could change anything I would show her female gender more in the film opening. Not only this, by stereotypically women are seen as weak and not in control within horror films and in my film opening the female antagonist clearly subverts this. Throughout the scene the antagonist is in control and is far from weak when she grabs Isla (Niamh’s character).

Another way the stereotype was challenged was the location as stereotypically in horror films when the scene is in a forest it is normally at night, with low-key lighting. However this was subverted in my film opening as the scene was filled in the day time so the lighting was more high-key. If I could change anything it would be to have the scene set at night but it wasn’t possible as the camera quality would have been bad. To make up for not having low-key lighting I made sure the weather was gloomy and unpleasant to add pathetic fallacy and still meet the conventions of the horror genre.