Evaluation- Question 2.

2- How does your media product represent certain social groups?

One particular social group we focused on within our media product was gender. The character of O'Brien is in certain ways conflicted with her particular gender stereotype. For example, O'Brien is an incredibly logical thinking character and puts her clear intelligence to good work. In the audio, within the first few seconds of our film, O'Brien tells the audience how she is "renowned for her studies" earning a "first degree" and "top marks." This shows that even within O'Brien's darkest moments, she is still very self assured in terms of her own abilities and does this with no assistance from anyone else, whereas a typical female stereotype may not have this confidence, especially in a male dominated occupation area such as psychology, which is O'Brien's field of work.

Again, O'Brien also challenges stereotypes with regards to her appearance. Throughout our entire film, O'Brien is not dressed in anything revealing, short of tight. She is certainly not sexualised, wearing very little makeup and messy, unkept hair. We made sure of this purposely for a variety of reasons. Firstly, we wanted to make sure that O'Brien's focus was not on her appearance, but rather on what she had to offer for the audience- her story. In addition, it was important to have a character like O'Brien to challenge this gender stereotype, her main focus is on her studies and intelligence, not on clothes on makeup like a typical  female featured in most films aimed at young people. We wanted O'Brien's character to appear far more complex than that. Her attitude was inspired by Calrice Starling from Silence of the Lambs- another career-orientated young woman who dominates her field of work despite her gender.

However,  in other ways, O'Brien is shown to go along side a typical gender stereotype. This is shown in particular angles when H (the male character) is torturing her. In this scene, we used lots of high angle shots, looking down on O'Brien is a vulnerable position, tied up on a chair below him. These shots show that H is in the position of power (also shown using iconography, with H holding weapons such a knives and using them on O'Brien against her will, as well being psychically threatening, engaging with the male stereotype that H is violent and aggressive, using psychical strength to get his own way.) This makes O'Brien look weak against him, fitting to the damsel in destress role seen often in mainstream films. H is also always positioned above O'Brien in the fight scene, showing he psychically and mentally above her and uses this against her. Furthermore, when H first enters the scene, The lighting shadows his face (similar to when Hannibal Lectre or The Joker are in a position of power against their victims.) This makes him look menacing and powerful, and it is clear that he is the authoritative figure in this situation over O'Brien, going along with the stereotype that the male villain easily dominates the female figure in his presence, making her look inferior and frightened. Similar stereotypes are also shown in other thrillers such as Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.

O'Brien being tortured by H.

We also challenged the stereotype of age in our media product. O'Brien is young, yet is still shown to be very high up in work place and not dependant on others. Her clothing is not typical of someone who has only just come out of adolescence, she is in 'old' in her ways and very informed and again sure of herself. Her interests also seem to differ from the generic interests of someone of her particular age range, O'Brien is never shown drinking or smoking, she instead seems to engage in high culture activities. We showed this through the music that O'Brien plays on a record player (as suppose to an ipod or docking station) which appears to be classical music. Again, this is unusual for someone of her age to have an interest in this genre of sound, it makes her seems beyond her years, yet she is only quite young.