1. Question 2
How does your media product represent
particular social groups?

2. GENDER, ETHNICITY, R
EGIONAL IDENTITY &
CLASS

3. • In the main task it clearly gives a stereotypical representation of a young female, as they
are often portrayed as vulnerable and innocent. Through the use of long shot in the stairs
scene you could see how isolated the area was and how vulnerable she is to whatever danger
is to come forth.
• Furthermore her clothing if not anything else, throws her right into the stereotypical
traditional feminine woman or in this case girl. They are often shown as being girly, needs
rescuing, scared etc and the medium long shot shows the signifier of a pink jumper but it
signifies innocence and purity which is the key thing in the opening sequence because it
makes the audience want to know what will happen to her. It’ resembles the protagonist in
when a stranger calls since they are both females and have similar outfits and isolated areas
which connote something.

4. Usually the female protagonist is a white blonde haired woman or girl which is mostly seen
in horrors e.g. Drew Barrymore in Scream. Although our thriller is not of the horror
sub-genre we wanted to incorporate that sot of element into our opening, and pushed
the stereotype into an archetype by using a black dark haired young teenage girl. The
use of mid shots, long shots and close ups show this clearly.

5. Furthermore, the detective in
our thriller is a male. Our
audience can recognise that
the typical male profession
is seen in the opening clip
with the medium close up
shot. Detective is known as
Detective Nick
Rice in Law
a males job which means our
abiding citizen opening did not challenge
and Detective any stereotypes because we
Morris in our
thriller
also used a male to portray
that profession. This is
similar to the detective in
Law abiding citizen which
Jamie Fox played the
detective Nick Rice.

6. The detective will mainly be of white ethnicity and they are seen as
good, pure, heroes or strong. But because the population in Britain has
become much more diverse recently and current society is much more
used to mixing with people from all different cultures and
backgrounds, we used & developed the stereotype slightly by using a
black male as the detective. Below is the detective in our thriller and
Mark Whalberg in ‘The Departed’.

7. To the right is the antagonist in our thriller
opening, teenager Shakilus Townsend part of a gang who
killed another teenage boy and Jay from ‘Kidult hood’
who are all representative of the stereotypical male
youths in north, south and east London.
The middle picture is a news report from 2009 about
the Honey trap killing in south London.
In addition our antagonist is young and carries out an
attack on the protagonist. This presents a stereotypical
negative view of youths in today’s society so our
audience can relate to what is happening.
When we were choosing the gender that we wanted for
our antagonist, one of our original ideas was to use a
female as the antagonist and a male as the protagonist
because we wanted to challenge the stereotypes but we
decided to stick to the stereotypical view and use a
male as the antagonist. Our antagonist is the negative
stereotypical view of London youths today because
they’re all seen as violent & mischievous. For example
‘Kidulthood’ the males are represented as
troublesome, aimless youths. This shows through our
antagonist and his clothing which are black combats and
a black bomber waistcoat. But we know that not all
youths are like that, some just fall into that category
because of clothing.

8. • Within our opening, three classes are represented.
• Middle class: Detective
• Lower middle class: protagonist
• Working class: antagonist

9. We used only Middle class, working class in our opening. The
detective is of Middle class because of the way he is
dressed which is smart and he’s in a authoritarian position in
society. Whereas the protagonist is of lower working class
because he looks rough and results to crime which usually
comes from people who are struggling. The antagonist is of
higher working class because the technology she uses which
is seen as luxury items, which young adults and teenager
could relate to because its the trend of society at the
moment with young adults/teenagers.