This document discusses the representation of social groups in a media production and how stereotypes were both challenged and reinforced. It aimed to subvert stereotypes of women as weak by making the protagonist a strong, independent female. However, it unintentionally relied on negative stereotypes by portraying the antagonists as black males due to time pressures. In the future, the creator would choose antagonists from groups less prone to stereotyping to better achieve the goal of challenging stereotypes. They also realized they over-relied on showing the female protagonist as worried about her boyfriend.

1. 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media
products? (i.e. of film openings)

2. The stereotypes about gender are that men are predominantly stronger than
women. From our research we have found out that in the crime genre men are
seen as the emotion less, muscle men like the father from Taken or James Bond.
While women stereotype are represented, as typical housewife who takes care of
the kids. We as a group did not like the way women were represented in society,
like a damsel in distress. So originally we were going to mimic this generic
convention of having the male protagonist, however we came to a conclusion to
make the female the main character because of the way women were represented.
Therefore we decided to make the protagonist a woman, who is a respectable
individual with a job in a high-class area with money, control and power. The way
we showed this is through the Mise-En-Scene with her costume of high heels,
smart clothing like a blazer, pair of glasses and even her femininity through make
up and lipstick (we emphasised this by close ups). Our character ‘Bobbie’ made her
look strong willed as it was dark and she was by herself and in addition her
boyfriend gets kidnapped/mugged so the male in this case is reliant on Bobbie to
save him. So in our film opening we are subverting the stereotype that women are
weak and men are dominant and strong.

3. In my opinion I think we made a mistake because during our whole film
opening we had the strong female continuously calling her husband
and we made her sound worried. If I did this again I would have done
one voice mail so the audience know how she is connected to her.

4. We chose our antagonist to look intimidating and look like people who
can be easily represented as the bad guys. We had a theme of
subverting the stereotype e.g. women who is independent and strong.
But we didn’t realize that black males are stereotyped negatively in
urban London so it was not our intentions to have black males as our
antagonists. A soon as we realized it was too late as we were very
close to film our 1st draft, and we had no time to change the ethnicity of
our bad guys because after our teachers gave us our feedback our
deadline was very close so we had to stay with our characters because
no one else was willing to act for us so we were under pressure so we
stayed with the black males. If I was to do this project again and we
had a theme of subverting the stereotype I will defiantly choose
antagonist who are Asian/white because in society they are stereotyped
as innocent civilians.

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

6. Our media group represents some social groups due to their
stereotype. For example black males in London (urban) are thought of
negatively as in the rob and mug people, they are associated with a
lot of crime in London with knifes and weapon, but this is obviously
not true as this is only a stereotype. In our film opening we tried to
subvert the stereotype like making the female have the leading role,
female is stronger etc. but our original idea was to subvert the black
male stereotype but as the deadline came closer for our film opening
we got put under pressure therefore we had to get the next available
actors who happened to be black. So if we had more time or we had
the chance to do this project again I think I would like to subvert the
stereotype of black people particularly black males.

7. In addition in 2014 lots of women work in high end jobs in offices in big
cities like London, New York, Milan so our protagonist was one of them
type of women. We represented her by her smart clothing, props like
her glasses and her high heels with the settings being in a city with
huge buildings and an office to show her work place. All these features
combined show a successful businesswoman.