This document discusses the conventions and themes commonly found in gangster-crime genre media. It identifies stock narratives around corrupt police, revenge, crime families, and star-crossed lovers. Common stock characters are mentioned like mafia bosses, recruits, rivals, and hoodlums. Settings often include cities, nightclubs, mansions, and casinos. Iconography may include drugs, crime, money, suits, fast cars, and guns. The document then evaluates how the described media product did or did not use, develop, or challenge these conventions.

1. INWHATWAYSDOESYOURMEDIA PRODUCTUSE,DEVELOPORCHALLENGE
FORMSANDCONVENTIONSOFREALMEDIAPRODUCTS?
Media Evaluation

2. Codesrelevanttoourgenre…
Stock Narratives and Themes
The main regular themes and narratives for the gangster-crime genre are:
– Corrupt police officers.
– Revenge.
– Merging of close family members into the crime family.
– Starcrossed lovers
Stock Characters
– Mafia boss
– The recruit
– Rival gangsters
– Bankrobbers
– Ruthless hoodlums

3. Codesrelevanttoourgenre…
Stock settings:
– Large, crowded cities.
– Dark nightclubs.
– Large mansions.
– Casinos.
Iconography:
– Drugs.
– Crime.
– Piles of money.
– Suits.
– Fast cars.
– Guns.
– Death and violence.

4. Theconventionsweused.
–The recruiting of a new member.
–Top of the hierarchy mafia boss.
–The tradition of family.
–The use of suits as costumes.
–Large house and a Jaguar to
represent wealth.

5. Howwedevelopedtherecruitingofanewmember.
Our whole film is about the recruitment
of a new member, who would go on to
take over the Adams Family. Our recruit
is Charlie Doherty, a beginner gang
member. Instead of following the
traditional conception of Charlie just
joining a gang, we decided that this was
not enough and we developed it by
concluding that
Charlie should rise to the top of the gang, fully showing his ascent of
novice to leader.

6. Howwechallengedthetraditionoffamily.
Our film follows the Adams Family, a very strong and
powerful family whose connections with each other
are astounding. The two Adams brothers are at the
top of the Adams family, and so they’re relationship
should be very strong. However, we felt that a
ruthless mafia boss would not ruin his threatening
image due to any costs. So we developed our family
as we featured James (the boss) ordering his
brother Frank around, instead of treating him like a
dear member of the family.
Frank Adams
James Adams
while ordering
Frank to ‘get him a
drink!’

7. Evaluation
After examination and after we produced our film, we decided that we should have
paid more attention to the tradition of family as we considered the fact that family
is a very strong value in crime families and we felt as if we should have displayed
this more obviously.
We also felt that we didn’t include many iconography other than the suits and the
car. We felt that we should have paid more attention and included more
iconography to give our film as much legitimacy as we could.