As Media Studies- By Matthew de Ath

1. Representation
BY MATTHEW DE ATH

2. Representation within ‘The
Book’
 In this evaluation I will discussing how The Book shows
representation of age, gender, class, ethnicity and
region.
 In our project, we used micro-features to display
representations of the horror genre and these five
areas.
 We tried to represent our characters so that they
conformed to ideologies and so that they would
appeal to our target audience.
 I will be answering How does you text ‘represent’
age, gender, class, ethnicity and/or region?

3. Age-Susan
 We wanted to show a contrast between the ages between
Susan and Katie using the characters mise-en-scene.
 The mother’s costume is meant to display her as an old
fashion, traditional mum. This is shown by the dull colours
and the wool fabric iconography of old age.
 The mother is represented to be ordinary, to lull the
audience into a false sense of security. This is shown by
her actions and the setting. We placed the character in a
child's bedroom, displaying her tidying and cleaning
stereotypical roles for a mother.
 This type representation can be seen present in other
horror films such as Misery were Anne is shown to be at
home all the time.

4. Age- Katie
 We wanted to represent the daughter as innocent
un till the jump scare at the end. Therefore created
pictures displaying Katie in her childhood.
 Representation of child in mainstream horror films
have been twisted to make them seem creepy,
supernatural and evil. This new ideologies of
children can be seen used in The Shinning, Sixth
Sense and The Ring.
 We represented Katie as the antagonist by making
her hold a knife, iconography of violence and by
additionally giving her dark make up suggesting
her to be evil and supernatural.

5. Gender
 Both of our characters are female, this follows the mainstream convention of
horror films, to display the female as the victim. This can be used to make
the audience sympathize with the character and become more indulged in
the film.
 We presented Susan as weak and feeble by using close up shots to showing
her facial reactions and her little control throughout the sequence. This can
be seen in the film as she runs up and down the stairs to find information,
suggesting to the audience her powerlessness over the situation. This
conforms to stereotypes of women in all types of genres as being weak and
helpless compared to a dominant male protagonist.
 This can be seen in such films as Psycho.
 We wanted a female antagonist to challenge this ideology. As we present
the female character as strong, dominant and controlling. Additionally, the
atypical representation challenges the mainstream antagonist of most
horror films.
 What Culture - ’Of the top grossing scary movies of all time, most of the
villains are male, with the exception of The Exorcist and The Ring.’
http://whatculture.com/film/10-
badass-female-horror-villains

6. Class
 We depicted our family in the sequence as middle class.
This can be seen by the location and size of the
house/setting that they film is set.
 Ideologies of middle class are that they are; ‘in control’,
settled, ‘normal’ and having good family values.
 This is therefore subverted in our sequence as the
opening title display a picture of a dead child.
 Additionally, the sequence uses the lack of dialogue to
suggest the un-normal life this ‘family’ lives. The mother
only speaks one line of dialogue.
 This subverting of the stereotypical family format can
also be seen in such psychological films as the Sixth
Sense.

7. Race and Ethnicity
 In mainstream horror films the cast is stereotypically
white, with racial minorities having peripheral cast roles or
none at all.
 A study by The Center for the Study of Women showed
‘Within the films that are examined, the study showed
that "only 12% of all clearly identifiable protagonists
were female in 2014".[6] And within those low
numbers, most were still white (74%), with 11% being
black, 4% being Latina, 4% being Asian, 3% from
other places, and 4% other.’
 Our film follows this high percentage with the female
protagonist being white. This is to conform to other
horror films and represent the white female as weak,
helpless and powerless. Seen in such films as Psycho and
Friday the 13th (Slasher Sub-genre).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_
horror_films

8. Region
 Stereotypical representation of the Southern
English population include; being in the center of
culture, modern, classy, clever, richer, middle class.
 This can be seen our sequence displaying the
mother watching the TV, this scene uses a mid to
close up, jump zoom to show a modern TV and
slick white table. This iconography suggests to the
audience the region of the film.
 Another scene is the walking of the dog which
suggests the southern country side location as she
walks through the isolated park.
 The can be seen present in Se7en, which is set in
New York and is shown through establishing
shots.

9. Conclusion
 Our group tried to conform to most stereotypies and
ideologies of the horror genre and psychological sub genre
to make sure our film was appropriate to our target audience.
 We used mirco-features to achieve this aim.
 We used atypical representation to challenge stereotypes and
question the audience, thus connecting our piece to the
psychological sub genre.