Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film contains some very difficult themes, because of this it wasn't possible for us to completely adhere to particular stereotypes or archetypes. In our sequence and film as a whole, our characters go between adhering to one stereotype and challenging another because of their complex natures.

Gender Stereotypes: 

Representation of Young Men in

 "The Inbetweeners Movie" (Ben Palmer, 2011)

In "The Inbetweeners Movie" there are constant references made by the male characters about "pulling" and having sex. This is even shown through the choice of costumes, their intentions are made clear by their shirts which support the slogan "Pussay Patrol".

Representation of Young Women in 

"Legally Blonde" (Robert Luketic, 2001) 

"Legally Blonde" puts emphasis on how social young women can be. "Elle", a young woman aged around 21 years old makes conversation with any and everyone that she meets, regardless of whether they want to or not. This is especially shown in the scene where she instantly befriends a nail artist.

Representation of Young Women in our film

Representation of Young Men in our film

In some ways you could say that Jess and Alex have their roles reversed. Alex takes on the stereotype generally associated with young women in the respect that he is very caring, with Jess taking on the male associated stereotype of being emotionally disconnected.

This role reversal can also be seen in the film "Now is Good", from which we took inspiration for our characters.

 

Clip from "Now is Good"

(Ol Parker, 2012)

  Age Stereotypes:

Nathan in Misfits
 Misfits is a prime example of youth being portrayed as ignorant and rude in a British television series. They are shown to openly ignore the advice of others and in fact throw it back in their faces on multiple occasions.

Jess in Pulled from the Rough
In our piece Jess feels no way about pushing Alex against the wall and shouting at him at the top of her voice. Even though Alex is trying to help her, she openly rejects his help.

Other Stereotypes:

Students

The stereotype of students is that they are constantly out drinking and tend to be quite unkempt and messy. Their bedrooms reflect their wild lifestyle and will be completely unorganised; since students are perceived to drink a lot it would be expected that their room is full of empty alcohol bottles and cans. 

In our piece Jess conforms to this stereotype as can be seen through our use of mise-en scene, this is connoted to our audience by her bedroom being a total mess and littered with bottles, cigarettes and other remnants of the perceived student lifestyle.

 Jess' room has clothes strewn across the floor

with empty bottles of beer all over the place.

Jess' bedside table is covered in mess from her exploits.

The way Jess is initially represented in our opening sequence is not in fact the full picture, the audience become engaged with the story as we begin to fill in the remaining parts. By showing Jess' true nature piece by piece, we make the audience want to continue watching the film and find out more.


When making our film opening and the concept for the entire film itself, we felt it important to portray young people as being much more than what they tend to be portrayed as in the general media. The fact that a stereotype is just a stereotype and is only a means used by society to categorise people, be it right or wrong. People are individual and are much complex than a stereotype may suggest. In our film opening Jess is shown as very rude and uncaring, but in fact she is the opposite. 

As you can see by looking at the narrative structure section of question 1, the reason for her acting the way she does in the opening is because she cares immensely for her dead boyfriend. We conform to the stereotype in the opening to 1) provide a familiar view of people to audiences  2) add depth to our characters' personalities and develop them past the superficial ideas of how people are supposed to behave.