Within their media film opening, young people and women are primarily represented. Young people are portrayed as getting into troublesome situations by using tarot cards to summon dark forces, depicting them as self-destructive. However, the film subverts the horror genre convention of women as victims by featuring a female antagonist killer. This representation relates to theories around the male gaze and binary opposites used to create tension for the audience.

1. Evaluation
By Ryan Griffiths

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
• Within our film opening we have mainly focused on the representation of young people
and women. Within our film young people are represented as troublesome as from our
synopsis we can determine that these young people are getting involved in things that
they shouldn’t be ( i.e. using tarot cards to summon dark forces.) which would be
portraying them as self destructive This can further be related to Ann Gould’s theory
which states that young people within the media are represented as
• Part of Artificial tribes
• Sexual
• Nihilistic
• Violent
• Self destructive

3. How does our media product represent
particular social groups?
Although the teenagers that are shown within our film opening do not portray these
traits actively as they have already been killed although the audience may assume
that because of being this way these young people have killed for example being
violent is demonstrated by the murder of the two teenagers and due to it being a
murder there was likely to be struggle between the teenager and what killed them.
Furthermore these teenagers are shown as being part of an artificial tribe within our
film opening as it is not just a single young person who has been murdered but
multiple which would show that these young people are very dependent on and
orientated around friendship groups and are unlikely to go to to many places by
themselves and due to the setting of our opening being a sleepover we as audiences
will be expecting to see at least two young people starring within this video.
However within our video these teenagers are not represented in a sexualized
manner however there is also a balance between the representation of males and
females however due to our use of cinematography we might argue that women are
represented as vulnerable through the use of high angle shots which might represent
them as being vulnerable and could possibly be linked with Laura Mulvey’s theory of
the male gaze which is also associated with the representation of women within the
media.

4. how DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT
PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?
• Within our media film we have chosen to investigate how women are represented
within the horror genre and applied this to our film by looking at the conventions of the
horror genre. According to the conventions of the horror genre women are likely to take
up the role of the victim who is trying to escape from a male antagonist. However
within our film opening we have chosen to subvert this stereotype and have chosen to
include a female antagonist as a killer within our film which relates to the influences
that we have taken from the films Insidious and The Woman in Black, these are both
horror films that feature a female villain and their victims often include younger people.
This could possibly be related to the male gaze theory as we see in this particular film
opening that females are represented as weak or victims that have become victims
and do not take on heroic roles within this media text. Finally our film opening could be
related to Levi Strauss’ theory of as we have have included the use of the binary
opposites as we have included the use of the contrast between good and evil and light
and dark and also between the feeling of safety and isolation which will create a tense
atmosphere for the audience who are watching our film.

5. Horror Genre conventions