The document discusses how the film opening represents people with mental illness as unstable and unsafe, in line with societal views. It shows a patient transitioning from silent to a sudden violent outburst, demonstrating how mental illness can make someone unpredictable. The film also follows dominant gender ideology by showing the sole female character giving flowers to a male patient, representing women as more caring versus stronger, authoritative men. By using a straight white male character with a severe mental illness, the film aims to show that mental illness can affect anyone and should not be grounds for discrimination. Overall, choosing a specific genre helped provide direction for including aspects that would attract the intended audience.

1. Our film opening mediates the representation of people with mental illness as
being unstable and unsafe. The dominant ideology in today’s society treats
individuals with mental illness or disabilities differently to others, making them
almost segregated from everyone else. The way we have used cross cutting
shows how the patient at a mental asylum can go from silent and sitting in a
corner, to a sudden violent outburst in the next part of the scene. This shows
how mental illness can make someone very unpredictable and so are viewed as
unstable by the rest of society.
I believe we have represented women to be kinder and more caring than men as
we only have one woman in the opening sequence, and it shows her giving
flowers to the man. This follows the dominant ideology in today’s society as it
represents women to be more caring and gentle where
as the men are seen to be stronger and more
physically able, which is shown through the one male
character holding a position of authority, being a police
officer, and the other a patient which has violent outbursts,
showing how his physical strength dominates the women.
We wanted to focus on how a man with mental illness is different from the
ideology of a stereotypical male. We followed the dominant ideology by using a
straight white, male character, but opposed this ideal by giving the character a
severe mental illness. This allows the audience to see that even a person that
fits the ideal of society can have a mental illness, and therefore they should not
be discriminated against.
Overall, I believe our chosen film genre has a very specific target audience.
Although, in some ways this could have been very limiting as we had to ensure
each technique we used or aspect we included attracted a certain type of
audience, it also gave us a strong direction in which to follow which made
choices like gender roles and themes of the film easier to choose.