Question 2- Mrs Georgiou 3184

Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main and only characters in my own film are a small woman and a murdering man who is masked. The victim in our film is a small woman on her way home from work who gets apprehended on her way to her house. We decided to use her for many reasons in our film, she is a small woman so is very stereotypical of the thriller genre as the damsel in distress and cannot defend herself very well. She is also physically weaker than the killer which puts her in a vulnerable position compared to a man of similar stature to the antagonist. This makes it easier for the audience to relate to her, she easily represents a vulnerable woman that the audience knows so the audience will care for her more than if it was a characters who they could not relate to. This can also be seen in men as they naturally would want to protect the woman against harm. Furthermore she wears some white clothing to represent how innocent she is to the audience, which again makes the compare her to the violent antagonist dressed in black. This all builds up to when she is murdered as when it comes to the murder the audience will have more of a connection to her and the killing will be more personal to the audience. This will make them want to continue watching as they want now to find out what happens to the killer.

The second main character is the murderer who is a young man who stalks and eventually kills the woman. The murderer is a man, so that puts him at a physical advantage over a smaller woman and a man is a stereotypical a killer as they are associated with real killers. This immediately makes the audience dislike him simply as he is a man as men are portrayed more negatively than women in many other thriller films. Secondly he is completely covered and we cannot see his face which makes the audience feel uneasy with him. This will make the audience dislike the man which is our objective as it makes the killing of the woman harder for the audience to watch and they will hate him for murdering her. This is one of the most important roles as it gives a reason for the woman to be murdered and makes for a better chase scene and without him no thrills would happen; which is the overall objective of a thriller film. To an audience this is the characters they want to hate, I do this by dehumanising him and this makes him more distant with the audience. This makes scenes feel more terrifying for them as it is someone they cannot relate to and cannot identify.

Overall we used typical stereotypes to represent our characters in our film for many reasons. This helps the audience relate to the characters and to make the experience more traumatic to them. Women are often seen as victims and that they are weaker and scared, this makes the characters much easier to relate to than a male. This is because women feel sympathy for them and men feel protective of the women in the film. If we use stereotypes then the audience can connect this with what they have seen in other films and make the relate it to other thriller films.

Men are often portrayed as strong characters in thriller films, they can either be the killer or the person trying to stop the murder. So it is very stereotypical that they are represented in my film as a negative character. They are often represented as either the killer or a strong character mainly due to the perception that men are strong and dominant, this makes it easier to represent them negatively this is why they are used in these roles.