Thursday, 14 April 2011

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

In “The Taken” there are only two characters both are male, there is no female appearing on the screen at all. We have used common stereotypes where females are not taking part in some situations as they are not necessary, as well as females can not cope with some situations. Also males on their own give more negative representation.
We also have used the ethnicity of our characters; bad character is black and he is following white character, who is his victim. This is a stereotype that is heavily used in Hollywood productions. Even though sometimes that stereotype is not used in that obvious manner like we did in “The Taken”, black characters have something “wrong” about them, but they not necessary need to be bad character. Nevertheless, black character gives negative representation. In terms of age our characters are in between 18 to 20. This age represents young people who have been recently classified as adults and at that age make one of most important decisions.
We have represented social class/status in our location and costumes. Stereotypes classifying people in the hierarchy upper/middle/working class is frequent in today's society. We have represented it in contrast between our characters; the way they are dressed. The costume of the “baddy” was kept in dark colours, in youth and urban style. Whereas, the victim was wearing white shirt with blue bag and some gold accents in his outfit. White colour is representing him being innocent victim and gold suggests his richer background.


Our location was not incidental, as it is seen as one of most posh residential quarter in the city of Manchester . This is again highlighting the differences between people from different backgrounds with different social status.

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