Representation of Working Class White People

In the film we are showed a white single parent family living in a comfortable home in North West England. Michelle’s Dad works at factory and Michelle works at a carpet store. We can see that they earn enough money to cope but their jobs suggest that they receive a low paid salary. In the film we can see that young, white, working class girls, such as Michelle are represented as being naïve and vulnerable and thriving off male attention. They are shown as being like prostitutes.

Michelle

Michelle’s character is very forward, dramatic and flamboyant; she’s the typical stereotype of a working class young girl. She comes from a single parent family and her father never knows where she is due to his work.

Michelle is not a racist character, she immediately befriends Naseema and ends up in a relationship with Naseema’s brother.

She’s rebellious; she argues with her father several times in the movie about what she is wearing (which is usually an extremely short skirt, leg warmers with heels and a big fur coat) and about what time she is supposed to be in by. The family is very stereotypically out of control.

In the beginning scene Michelle and her mate dress up in heels and short skimpy clothing and wait on the street corners to be picked up by Asian men, this shows that perhaps they don’t get enough attention at home. They are also shown as smokers and sex obsessed. They apply extreme amounts of make-up and we can see from the amount of girls that are hanging around in the same sort of clothing on the street in the scene that its like they think this behaviour is normal.

They are shown as having no self respect, and their only aspiration in life is to get a guy.

http://youtu.be/nZKGnRXZayc

Michelle’s night out

Michelle’s night outThis scene shows Michelle and her friend on a typical night out. They are barely wearing any clothes and are waiting to be picked up by someone. This encourages the stereotype of a teenage girl and exaggerates it making her seem like a prostitute. They laugh at the boys that drive past that are in cheap looking cars and jump up when they see a car that’s nice.

In these shots you can see various teenage girls looking like Michelle, which shows a bad representation of white working class girls and makes them look desperate and lonely. Michelle is found by someone, they flirt a little and she just jumps in the car without thinking of the possible dangers. She leaves her friend. This shows how she has no self respect and doesn’t care about her friend and only cares about getting a guy.

Derek – played by Dean Andrews

In the film ‘Love + Hate’ the character ‘Derek’ is the father of Michelle, who plays a young girl sleeping

with a ‘paki’ who turns out to be the employee of her dad. Derek is a white British man who has prejudice

of other cultures, especially people from Pakistan. He openly expresses his views in the comfort of his

own home towards his daughter and also in his place of work although slightly more subtly.

His racism seems to come from deep within him rather than on the surface as he engages in

conversation with the Pakistani man in work asking what he thought about the war in Iraq etc. and makes conversation with the man, but when he

finds out his daughter has been sleeping with him he becomes very racist calling the man a ‘paki’ and

saying ‘I hate them’. Derek plays a working class man, who works hard in a factory, he is shown to be a single parent who tries his hardest to look after and look out for his daughter but seems to struggle with how to handle her. He is oblivious at first as to what his daughter is doing but after some time he suspects something and ends up talking to his daughters friends to find out what it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PvWd6hOcoA

Michelle’s Dad