EVALUATION QUESTION 2By Rebecca Clarke

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

SOCIAL GROUPSA Social Group is a collection of people who interact with each other and share similar characteristics and collectively have a sense of unity. Media products often represent different social groups throughout society. These social groups can either challenge, meet or develop certain stereotypes. Within our film opening ‘Bonnie’ we are representing age, gender, mental ability and social class throughout. To ensure that we represent these social groups correctly we need to research each of them to allow us to gain information and understand each group accurately.

SOCIAL CLASSSocial Class is the division of a society based on social and economic status. Upper Class: a class of people above middle class, having the highest social rank or standing based of wealth and family connections.Middle Class: the social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business people and their families.Working Class: the social group consisting of people who are employed for wages, especially in manual or industrial work.Underclass: the lowest social stratum in a country of community, consisting of poor and unemployed.

SOCIAL CLASSEach social class often has their own stereotype and the media represents them in specific ways. For example upper class people are often considered as very “snobby” and wealthy, with large houses and expensive items. Where as underclass is often associated with people that are very poor/ living on benefits and or living in a council house/ homeless. Within our work I think that we have represented our main character Joel as underclass. This is because he has very little money and is living in a derelict building in the middle of the woods. Even though the social class isn’t defined through costume, it is shown through other aspects of mes-en-scene like the setting and the actors behaviour. Also you can see that he doesn’t really have many possessions, as he only has a sleeping bag and the news paper articles about the passing of his wife and daughter, this can also help people associate Joel with the underclass because he doesn’t really have the money to buy anything for himself.

A FATHER FIGUREA Father is often seen as the head of the house or the ‘breadwinner’ and the ‘protector’ of the family. They are the person that earns the money and provides for their family and is caring and protective over everyone. Within our media product we developed this stereotype of a father. This is because Joel, the main character is a loving and caring father that feels like he has let down his family so he wants to find their killer, but there is a plot twist because it turns out that Joel is in fact his wife and daughters killer, he has a development of a multiple personality disorder and so when his murderous side comes out he completely forgets about his caring fatherly roles, and the same for when he is in his caring state he doesn’t remember what his murderous side does.

MENTAL ABILITY AND DISABILITYMental ability and disability is often represented in the media. Often males are represented as mentally able and females are the ones that they protect. Mental ability is often presented positively and mental disability is presented negatively. Like they are unable to care for themselves and always have to have someone there.Within our film opening we made Joel as a mentally disabled character. Not only does he have a multiple personality disorder but one of his personalities has gone insane with guilt for letting his family down. We have followed all the stereotypes of mental disability because we have shown that Joel cannot care for himself. However we have also challenged this because in the end he has his young daughter help him get over his guilt and leads him to his death.

GENDERGender is always represented in the media. Females are often seen as weak and in need of a protector or guardian. They are also shown as quite bossy or controlling where as males are often represented as more chilled out but are very protective and are the dominant gender. Within our work we had two characters of both genders. Joel and Bonnie. Joel is the father of Bonnie and is supposed to protect her, however he is the opposite of the male gender stereotype. He needs Bonnie to protect and help him. He is a weak and vulnerable character. Bonnie helps Joel through his guilt and even though she is actually dead, she still looks over him and is a strong character.

AGEIn the media age is often represented in the way that the younger you are the more vulnerable and innocent you are and so the older you are the more independent, powerful and stronger you are.Within our opening this applies, but is also challenged. Bonnie is a very young little girl, who is shown wearing a white dress to show her innocence, that is murdered but you don’t know that she is dead in the opening. She is almost the guardian for he father Joel. Joel is around 35 years of age and is very vulnerable and not very strong at all in the opening. However throughout the rest of the film Joel begins to meet the stereotype of a strong, powerful middle aged man.

CONCLUSIONTo conclude our film meets, challenges and develops the stereotypes of different social groups that are represented within our work. We wanted our film to be different and stand out so we thought that meeting every stereotype would be very predictable and boring. We didn’t want our film to be your generic horror film that follows everything by the rules. we wanted a twist and I think we achieved that in many different ways, including the development of the stereotypes of social groups.