Question 2: How does your Media Product represent a particular group of people?

A Social Group is defined as two or more people that share similar characteristics and ambitions which can create a sense of togetherness with the way they correlate each other.

Social Groups and Representation

Social groups in media texts like film, music videos and print are represented in a similar if not exact way that society normally perceive them as. This helps the audience know what type of person the characters are through the way they dress and the way they act, this is called stereotyping. An typical example of this is a group of teenagers wearing hoodies, they are often associated to people who are up to no good and often commit crimes.

In our Film opening, we have represented the youth as: mature, serious, casual and fun.

Age and Representation in our Film opening

For example, in this scene Mark is portrayed to the audience as a mature, young man. This is because he approaches the female protagonist Jessie in quite a casual way which is showed by the swinging of his left arm and also by the fact that he already has a fiancée which shows that he’s making a serious commitment.

Dan is represented as a fun, energetic character. We can see that he’s currently in a school classroom which shows that he’s a sort of higher authority compared to student like a teaching assistant.

The Mise-En-Scene in this scene shows that these characters meet at a place where apartments are a background, this is a place where young adults like to meet. Although the actors are teenagers, the clothing choices of the actors and the surrounding area makes the characters look and act more mature.

Gender and Representation in our Film opening

In our film opening, there are a equal number of female and male characters in our film opening. However the opening would still fail the Bechdel test as even though there’s a confrontation between the female characters, they don’t directly talk to each other and men is the topic of discussion. On the other hand, there is a female protagonist but again is dependent on men because she’s desperate for love.

Typical stereotyping of Men and Women in film result in the man being the dominant person, completely independent and sees the woman as someone for them to control and power over. Meanwhile the woman is seen as weak, defenseless, dependent on the male and a sexual object for the arousement of men with the use of makeup and revealing clothes. Most films old and new fail the Bechdel test which is a test of equal gender representation set on three requirements: One, there are at least two female characters, Two, the two females talk to each other and three, they talk about a subject other than men.

Race, Ethnicity and Representation in our Film opening

In our Film opening, there’s a lot of diversity as we have included a range of races and ethnicities within our opening. This was also done in a way that doesn’t discriminate any of the races. This goes against conventions of Romantic Comedy Films as most Rom-Coms use White Caucasian actors to portray characters.