QUESTION 2

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT

REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL
GROUPS?
By Devyani Tailor

Social groups in our opening

sequence
Our opening sequences uses a family. The family is white, and

consists of various age ranges from children to teenagers, and middle

aged adults to OAPs. The socio-economic group that the family is
mainly B-C1. This is a common character ensemble in many genres
including comedy, romance, horror and drama.

Stereotypes
Our main character Ophelia is a 16 year old, white, female.
Stereotypical representations Stereotypical representations
of Teenagers in the media
of women/young girls in the
media
Emotional/hormonal

Sexualised Virgins/Whores

Materialistic

Weak

Anti-social

Vain

Indecisive

Domestic

Uneducated

Manipulative

Rebellious

Maternal / caring

independent

Spiteful

Female Stereotypes
The media stereotypes women by portraying them to have certain
qualities.
Mulveys feminist theory argues that women are often objectified in
the media, since they are only mainly two types of roles they usually
play virgin / whore dichotomy. This is that women either play a
virgin represented as weak, innocent, subservient to men, object to
be cared for. Or a whore sexually promiscuous, sexually strong,
provocative.
McRobbies theory believes that women are manipulated by the
media to act or appear a certain way. The media does this by
socialising women into particular gender roles.

Two Faced female portrayal

Our opening sequences featured lots of females. Our main character is
female, along with the various age ranges of females within the family
ensemble.
There were 3 young females shown in our opening sequence. Two of
which were significant to our narrative. Firstly Ophelia is 16 years old
and is portrayed as being slightly anti-social, as she is always looking
miserable and upset during her birthday party. This follows the
conventions of teenage representations in the media. However as a
female, Ophelia challenges the vulnerable (virgin) stereotype included
in Mulveys theory. But there are also no indications that she follows
the whore representation of women in Mulveys theory. Ophelia is
portrayed as being independent, anti-social, but flawed, as there is the
indication in our opening sequence that Ophelia killed the victim.
Generally Ophelia challenges typical female representations of women
since she is not weak (as she was capable of murder), she was not
sexualised but still presented as not being innocent. Therefore she fits
Propps villain character.

Two Faced female portrayal

The other female in our opening sequence is Coral (Ophelias best friend)
who is the victim. It is clear that Coral would fit into the innocent and
vulnerable representation of women in our opening sequence. However
our film idea would contradict this because Coral is actually quite a
powerful character in our film who abandons Ophelia, which is the reason
why Ophelia eventually kills her. So although she is presented to be a
character which needs to cared for in our opening sequence, through out
our film idea she shows independence which challenges the stereotypes
of women in the media. We did this because it is more realistic that a
teenage girl would seek independence but would not have full control
over her life. This would also relate slightly to our target audience, as we
aim our media product at teenagers or young adult females, whom a
majority of which are not all vulnerable but more independent.

Ensemble
representation
Representations of families in the media
Affiliative
Dysfunctional
Socio-economic groups B-C2
Traditional / nuclear family structure married
heterosexual couple with two biological children.

The family ensemble in our opening sequence is not as relevant to the narrative
as Ophelia and Coral. However we used them as a plot device to portray the
equilibrium. We represented the ensemble in a conventional way. This is because
we wanted the target audience to be able to identify with the characters shown
in order to appeal and engage them. Our representation follows the conventions
of having an affiliative family, who are happy and sociable. They are part of the
B-C1 socio-economic group and do not show any signs of being dysfunctional
throughout the opening sequence. Although our film idea begins to show
dysfunctionality because of Ophelias mental health issues. This is where our
target audience will most likely not be able to relate which is why we would class
our target audience to be part of the explorer or struggler category in Young &
Rubicams audience theory.