This document discusses representations of characters in thrillers and how they relate to social groups. It analyzes the protagonist, antagonist, and victim characters in terms of gender, age, class, race, and sexuality stereotypes. The victim character in the thriller is discussed as a young, attractive black woman who challenges stereotypes of female sexuality and race. The antagonist is left intentionally vague but dressed in stereotypical dark clothing for psychotic male characters. Representations are seen as beneficial for audiences to understand stereotypes but also have room for challenging expectations.

1. Evaluation 2
By Blaise Nkay

2. Representations
Representations are very beneficial for the audience to identify the sort of movements or
acts that are stereotypical due to one’s social representation, it also gives the audience
knowledge on the sort of realistic look at the world population. It also highlights how
society views people under different types of representations.
Types of representation:
Class
Race
Age
Gender
Sexuality

3. Thriller
characters representations
Protagonist - The protagonist is often a character that is known as a prominent figures with the right
motives in films. This character is often played by a male .Protagonist characters can be sometimes
vulnerable and weak but their strong personality always overcomes their weakness.
Antagonists – An antagonist is a character that opposes against the protagonist ,this can be villain
fighting the hero. This character is usually played by a male. It enhances the stereotypes of the male
to intimidating and scary.
Victim - This type of character frequently dies in scenes and is also perceived as being vulnerable and
weak.

4. Representing social groups
In our aim to represent social groups we applied the CRAGS acronym into our work. This stands for class
,race , age , gender and sexuality. Our audience would be able to know what they will expect from the
characters social characteristics due to the stereotypes displayed.
Although our thriller is based in an working class area ,we feel that we have tried to cater for other types
classes rather than the working class group.
Many cultural theorists such as Angela Mc Robbie adamantly believe that men and women are often
represented through stereotypes.
We used the conventions of social groups in thrillers by making our characters stereotypical according to
Vladimir Propp’s theory.
Stanley Cohen also comments that particular groups in society are demonised and marginalised through
media.
C – Class :This is a grouping of whereby people divided according to their economic and social status.
R – Race : A classification of groups according to ethnicity, culture ,linguistics and genetics that make up
a human.
A – Age : The length of time for how long some one has lived for.
G - Gender : The state of being male or female.
S – Sexuality: This describes one’s sexual preferences.

5. The victim in the thriller
In our thriller we decided to replicate the character Marion
Crane from the thriller ‘Psycho'. The character is a young
16 + girl who is trying to escape from her attacker .Her
facial expressions in the picture connotes that she is very
vulnerable , according to her gender ,young women are
stereotypically thought to be innocent angels and very
insecure.
To enhance this stereotype we chose a young attractive
girl to play this role in order to reflect our target audience.
The clothes that our actor wore also indicated that she is
also apart of the women gender .
The audience will be able to relate to the character due to
her appearance within the scene. Through narrative the
victim is presented to be working class. This is because of
where the scene is set in.
The character challenges the stereotype of women being
identified as sexual objects and vindictive gold diggers. We
have achieved this through her dressing style, it is more
casual than it being revealing.
As it is clear in the picture ,the race of the victim is of
Black Afro -Caribbean ethnicity ,stereotypes are also
challenged in terms of race as Black women are
stereotypically thought to be loud and angry ,the fear
shown in scenes opposes the stereotypical thought.

6. The Antagonist in the thriller
For our antagonist character we have also tried
to make it similar to the character Patrick
Batement in ‘American Psycho ‘.The antagonist
is a male who is mentally ill targeting innocent
women.
To make the character more scary the
identity, age and ethnicity has not been
revealed. How ever in terms of dressing ,the all
black attire represents a dark presence.
Stereotypically psychotic men dress in black.