The document discusses how a media thriller represents various social groups through its characters. It analyzes the portrayal of the protagonist father Tom, the therapist Fern, the mother Shannon, daughter Angela, and son Ethan. It represents them through typical stereotypes of age, gender, class and roles to allow audiences to relate and feel more emotional impact when tragedy strikes. The document acknowledges they could have better justified the stereotypes with more time.

1. Question 2
Media Evaluation
How does you media product
represent particular social groups?
Shannon Lewis and Cristina Shaw

2. In our thriller, we considered the
different types of social classes and
how we could use and challenge
stereotypes of these classes. For
instance, we considered age, gender,
class and family and job roles.

3. The Protagonist/Dad (Tom)
We present Tom in a very stereotypical
way in the flashback scenes of being a
typical father figure and business man;
he wears a shirt and tie, showing he is
the head of the family and provides for
Adult, 37 them.
Male
Tom is also presented as the modern
Middle class
man as he treats his wife and children
Business man
White, English with respect and helps out with doing
typical womanly jobs such as putting
food out on the table, which challenges
stereotypes.

4. The Protagonist/Dad (Tom)
We also show in our thriller opening that Tom is ‘well off’ financially because of the
locations in the flashbacks: The Dining scene setting has modern and artistic features
of props e.g. Colour coordinated objects (the purple also helped to give a warm glow
to the scene), and on the Stairs scene the stairs itself were very grand. This also
supports the idea of Tom and his family being middle class, as the middle class are
typically fancy well-off.
In the woods and therapy scenes however, Tom is presented as someone who is
mentally fragile. We choose to make him wear mix-match shoes and odd clothing
which instantly suggests to the audience that he is insane. We wanted this to contrast
against the flashback scenes as we wanted to show the message of how something as
traumatising as losing your family can change a person mentally.

5. The Therapist (Fern)
Fern is presented very stereotypical for
someone who is intelligent and
professional; she wears smart clothes,
glasses and has her hair tied back in a
tight bun.
She is also financially ‘well off’ and well
educated: her clothing and office
presents that as they are modern and
new.
Adult, 28 A therapist is quite a well-respected job
Female and she is represented as someone who
Middle Class is a guide and knows what they’re
Well educated
talking about.
Not enough is really known about her,
for her to represent a social group very
well.

6. The Mum (Shannon)
Shannon represents a typical housewife. This is the stereotype that the woman is
the one to cook and look after the children.
We show through what she is wearing that she is quite a modern mum. She wears
sensible clothes, none of which are revealing. They’re quite casual, yet mature. She
also wears trousers, where they stereotypical mum would wear very feminine
clothing like skirts and dresses, for instance.
Although she has no dialogue as such, when she addressed Tom she appears to be
happy and respectful. When she talks and interacts with Ethan (the young son), she
is caring and motherly. We chose to represent her like this, to give the impression
that this is just an everyday household.
Although she has no dialogue as such, when she addressed
Tom she appears to be happy and respectful. When she
talks and interacts with Ethan (the young son), she is caring
and motherly.
We chose to represent her like this, to give the impression Adult, 34
that this is just an everyday household. Female
Middle Class

7. Angela (Daughter)
Angela represents the social group of typical young
teenage girls. We show this through her clothing:
She wears a girly floral dress and has her hair in
bunches. She helps out with setting the table, which
is what typical younger teenage girl do, as older
teens tend to be more rebellious and lazy. She can
be seen as being a “perfect daughter”, one that
parents would wish their own children to be like.
Realistically we would use a different actress and
work on this stereotype more to emphasise this.
We chose to represent her in this way, for the
audience to feel more sympathetic to her when she
dies and to send the message that the actions of
others can effect the innocent.

8. Ethan (Son)
Ethan represents the social group of young
children (particularly boys). They are
typically the most innocent people.
We made him wear a lot of blue and just
everyday clothing. We chose this because
it’s a typical boy colour.
He plays around with the placemat which is
a childish action that is stereotypically what
young boys do.
We chose to make him as representative of
a normal young boy as possible.
The message is pretty much the same as
Shannon and Angela.

9. We used a variety of social types, mainly through age and gender.
We did try to stereotype these social groups, this allows the
audience to identify and relate with the characters, which
makes it more shocking and had more impact when something
bad happens. This also allows the audience to have a stronger
emotional engagement with our opening overall and will feel
more when the family die, and when Tom goes “insane”. We
suggest that he was so close with this family that it corrupted
his mind and he couldn’t handle it.
Social groups similar to them would be able to relate to this family
and understand why the father has gone a bit crazy.
If we had more time, we feel that we could’ve put more effort into
justifying the stereotypes of the certain social groups
mentioned. We represented them mainly through mise en
scene such as hair and make up.

10. We used a variety of social types, mainly through age and gender.
We did try to stereotype these social groups, this allows the
audience to identify and relate with the characters, which
makes it more shocking and had more impact when something
bad happens. This also allows the audience to have a stronger
emotional engagement with our opening overall and will feel
more when the family die, and when Tom goes “insane”. We
suggest that he was so close with this family that it corrupted
his mind and he couldn’t handle it.
Social groups similar to them would be able to relate to this
family and understand why the father has gone a bit crazy.
If we had more time, we feel that we could’ve put more effort
into justifying the stereotypes of the certain social groups
mentioned. We represented them mainly through mise en
scene such as hair and make up.