Character Stereotypes

Jake – the alpha male

Our first main character was Jake, someone who was playing two best friends behind his girlfriends back.

He was someone who was set out to appear masculine, and is an idealised version of many of the audience members. It follows Lacans mirror

theory, of reflecting themselves in the soap, with a character that many people watching would aspire to.

He had some stereotypical young male clothes on, such as the low cut t-shirt and baggy jeans. This created the image of him as a modern stereotypical male, and so the audience could quickly identify what type of character he was.

To add further to this image he was also a boxer, and there were shots of him in his boxing gear training. This is viewed as a macho sport, so was a good one for our characters profile. This further emphasises the Lacan mirror theory, as the audiences aspire to be more like the characters on screen.

Gary – the closeted gay male

To contrast this character, we also had Gary who was the opposite of the alpha male stereotype. He was a quite feminine character who was coming out as gay.

This type of character we felt was quite unique to the soap genre, and would give a difference from the general characters that are present in every soap

The clothes he wore were very feminine, such as a vest top + purple lycra pants We used lots of pink, such as with this gilet. This created a very strong representation

of his sexuality. However I feel that the costumes were slightly unrealistic, and is something that could be improved on if I were to do this again

Props such as a piano were used to reinforce this stereotype. We conformed to lots of gay gender representations in order to create a stereotypical gay guy.

Sophie + Georgia – stereotypical females

Sophie and Georgia were two best friends in our storyline, and Sophie was seeing Georgia’s boyfriend behind her back. This is a cliché storyline that has been used in much soaps, for drama, and is a storyline that is widely representative of the soap genre. This is because it has lots of different parts to it and will interest the audience.

In the trailer the things they involved in are very typically feminine things. These are things like:

Going for coffee Doing make up in the mirror Talking about boys etc.

This helped to create the stereotypical female characters

This conforms to Judith Butler’s gender theory, in that stylised acts over a period of time establish the appearance of a gender. To act like ‘a woman’ is to act using the stylised acts that society has set as the expectations of what is expected from men and women over time. This is called the ‘gender ideology’.