how does your media product represent particular social groups?

1. THE TRUTH BEHIND THE CHARACTERS IN
PROJECT PURSUIT
Amber claims that her groups opening scene represents multiple social groups including gender, age, sexuality
and class, here is what she has to say about it:
How does your media product
represent particular social groups?
As from the start of deciding on
characters, my group and I have wanted to
defeat a few female gender stereotypes
focusing on the female character Agent
Boyer. Typical spy-thrillers represent
women as weak and vulnerable and we
challenged these conventions by including
a female protagonist and making her look
independent and strong throughout most
of the opening scene.
However, at the end of the chase scene,
Agent Logan proves to be the
stereotypical strong male by capturing
Agent Boyer. Throughout the opening
scene we portrayed Agent Boyer as strong
and independent so other women would
aspire to be like her. We did this because
the male character will always be the most
dominant character in spy-thriller films-
even the protagonist gets captured/ caught
up in the disruption at some point such as
in the film Salt where the female
protagonist gets captured and tortured at
the start. It creates enigma for the
audience as well as they will wonder why
Agent Boyer has been captured after she
has proved to be so strong at the
beginning which will intrigue them into
watching the rest of the film to find out if
and how she escapes.
On the other hand, we challenged
vulnerability stereotypes, and we wanted to
portray our female protagonist as a slightly
stereotypical sex icon. To help us with this
representation, I researched into feminism. I
noticed that in the film Die Another Day,
Jinx walked in a ‘sassy’ way out the water
and was viewed from a males eye which
inspired me to incorporate the male gaze
theory into our opening scene. As a group,
we achieved this theory by the pan and static
shot her and her group took of my legs
walking sassy and glamorous to attract a
male audience.
To help with the costume idea, I researched
the film Salt and looked at Agent Salts
representation. Agent Salt is played by
Angelina Jolie who is seen as a glamorous
sexy woman not only in films but also in the
real world which is the reason she looked at
this film for inspiration. From this research,
we decided to dress Agent Boyer in subtle
heeled boots to represent her as glamorous
with the heel and also ready
for action as they are boots. The heels
defined her walk and represented her
as a high class woman who looked and
felt like a woman. She was dressed in a
black blazer to show sophistication and
professionalism and tight black
clothing as it shows off her curves.
One reason we chose Amy to be the
actor for Agent Boyer was because she
has curves and curves are seen as sexy
from a male’s eye.
She wore discreet makeup to look
naturally pretty so women would
aspire to be like her. However, Alfred
Hitchcock who was a thriller film
director usually used blonde women
when he wanted a sex icon in his film
such as Eva Marie Saint and Kim
Novak. Traditionally, blonde women
were seen sexier than any other hair
colour, but to break this traditional
thriller stereotype, we used a
ginger/red haired actor as we wanted to
represent our female protagonist as
intelligent and blonde has the ‘dumb

2. blonde’ stereotype. However, Agent
Boyer was represented just as
glamorous as a traditional blonde
stereotype as she had her hair tied back
to make her look ready for action and
determined.
We portrayed both characters as
heterosexual in the opening scene as
this is the most traditional sexuality.
This is shown through Agent Logan’s
strength as he is represented as
masculine which is a stereotypical
male characteristic and it is a
stereotype that most homosexual men
are weak and ‘girly’ so don’t show
strength or masculinity.
The characters are 22 and 19. We
represented them both as mature, high
class and professional which
challenges the stereotypes of a typical
young adult as most like to go out to
parties and go drinking. However, even
though they not be very relatable to
our target audience besides being
similar ages, the target audience may
feel the duty of care for the characters
so will create a stronger bond. The
reason for this is because at the start of
the opening scene and during the chase
scene, Agent Boyer is represented as
strong, independent and sexy so our
female target audience will aspire to be
like her making them want to watch
the film.
Our male audience will want to watch
the film as Agent Logan is represented
as masculine when he captures Agent
Boyer. Men will aspire to be strong
like Agent Logan making them want to
watch the film. Also as men like sex
icons in films and 19 year old females
are stereotypically represented as sexy,
grown up, curvy and glamorous, we
portrayed Agent Boyer like this in our
opening scene due to costume to again,
make it appeal to men.