EVALUATION QUESTION 2

HOW DOES OUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

Our cast is made up of young Black British girls, so we decided to embrace the stereotypes of young black girls. Our opening falls under the categories of ethnicity, age (representation) and gender.
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Women are highly represented in our film opening due to the fact that the cast consists only  of females. All of the themes presented in our film opening are stereotypical female themes as they include struggle, pain or caring for others. These themes are presented through our characters of a hood rat, teen mum and young carer who are all seen living in destitute conditions or have to care for another individual.

In the film industry women usually play passive roles, are in need of protection and are not really seen as independent. We decided to break these conventions by creating strong independent characters, that are actively handling their various issues on their own. The teen mum who is loving and caring towards her child, is going through everything on her own (no parents or male partner). Much like in Precious as although she is shown to live with her mother and has no support from anyone but herself and is constantly abused.

                                     Our young mum and Precious with their babies.

 Teenagers in film are usually represented as delinquents that go around causing trouble and are lazy individuals. In our opening we decided to embrace this stereotype and so represented teenagers in a negative aspect. The hood rat character from our film could be compared to Danielle from the movie "SKET" in the way that they both are hard individuals who are the product of their environment and hardships they have faced in their lives. They are both presented to live in an estate which suggests they live in poverty.

                                           Our character and Danielle from 'SKET'

One character from our opening (the Young Carer), presents strong feelings of independence (has a job and looks after sibling) and could in some way be compared to Big Momma from the movie "Soul Food". This is because she tries to keep the family together on her own whilst caring for everyone in it.

                                                        Our carer and Big Momma

Binary oppositions

We have a teen mum that lacks a male partner and is living on her own without any parents. She is struggling, which we made visible through our mise-en-scene of the house being messy and her using the couch as her bed. The hood rat is against society, refusing to apply to having to go to school and being social. Instead she dresses how she wants to; Black track suits , big hoodies and beanies that hide her face, this makes her look like a rebel. Lastly the young carer who is independent and looks after a sick sibling and has a job, Society has it the other way round, she would be looked after by her parents, would be in school instead of working and an older relative would be caring for her sick sibling (parents/grandparents). Our film challenges the way teens are stereotypically presented in films and instead take a more realistic approach to it.