The document discusses how the media product represents social groups through the characters in the film opening. There is a male and female teenager portrayed in different ways. The female protagonist is asleep in bed, representing teenagers as lazy but also possibly hard-working. The male protagonist is shown holding a knife and looking distressed in the mirror, challenging stereotypes of male teenagers as careless and not caring about appearance, but conforming to the stereotype of suicidal teenagers being overemotional. Both characters represent contemporary issues around gender and mental illness in teenagers.

1. Question 2
How does your media product
represent particular social groups?

2. Gender
• In my film opening there is both a male and a
female character.
Female;
The first character shown in my film opening
is the female Protagonist. In the short amount
of time we see her we are able to see that she
is asleep in bed. From this the audience can
infer that she is well behaved and doesn’t stay
up late. This is supported by the idea that girls
are better behaved than boys, which is
supported by my film opening as she is asleep
but the male character is awake.
The female character also follows the ‘girly’
stereotype as her bed covers, although are
not a typically girly colour, have flowers on.
The use of Mise-En-Scéne here shows that
she is not typically girly but still feminine as
flowers are seen as a feminine feature.

3. Gender
Male;
The second character shows in my film
opening is the Male antagonist.
The first time we see him he is holding a knife.
As the audience hasn’t yet seen his purpose
for the knife, him doing this suggests that he is
careless. This supports the stereotype that
boys are more reckless than girls so are not as
careful. Then we see the boy looking at
himself in the mirror. The typically male
stereotype is that they don’t really care about
their appearance but as he is looking at himself
in the mirror it shows to the audience that he
does care. By looking at his face the audience
can see that he is distressed and angry, so it is
apparent that he doesn’t like the way he looks.
This would be slightly unusual for the viewers
as it is more often that the female characters
are worried about their appearance.

4. Teenagers
• In my film opening there is two different
characters, both teenagers and hey are both
presented in very different ways.
Female teenager;
The first teenager is the female protagonist. In my film
opening she is in bed asleep. This could be interpreted two
different ways by the audience.
The first way is that she is lazy. The most common
stereotype of teenagers is that they are very lazy and as
she is asleep it conforms to this stereotype. The second
way this could be interpreted is that she is tired as she
works hard or that she is sensible so sleeps at an
appropriate time. This challenges the stereotype as
teenagers are usually portrayed as staying awake all night,
however as she is a female it may not seem as unusual as
female teenagers as seen in society as being more sensible
than male teenagers.

5. Teenagers
Male teenager;
The second teenager shown in my film opening is the male
protagonist. This character challenges and conforms to the
stereotypically suicidal person. It is becoming more and
more common for teenagers to be depressed/ suicidal so
as the suicidal character in this plot is a teenager, it
conforms to the idea that teenagers are often represented
as being ‘over emotional’ or ‘dramatic’. However this
character also challenges how suicidal teenagers are
represented because in the media it is most common for
female teenagers to commit suicide in both reality and
films. Through this is am trying to show to the audience
that gender and mental illness are not related.
Similarly as this character is wearing all black he could be
seen as part of a Goth/Emo subculture. Both of these
subcultures is predominantly teenagers and are all
portryed, mostly by the media, to be depressed or over
dramatic. Therefore this character represents teenagers to
be over dramatic and gothic teenagers do follow their
stereotype.