Limbo, the main character played by Leslie who is of black ethnic origin, challenges stereotypes of black males portrayed in media. Rather than a disruptive criminal, Limbo is dressed in comfortable sleepwear and speaks intelligently to appear like a typical British teenager. The film also features Li, a Chinese character played by Kevin without a strong accent, working together peacefully with Limbo to show that people of different backgrounds can get along. Both characters break common stereotypes of their groups in order to represent them in a more positive light and appeal to a wider audience.

1. Question 2
By: Rameez Daud

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

3. Limbo
Our main character Limbo, is played by Leslie who is of a black ethnic
origin. The reason for us using him as our “Superhero” was to challenge
the dominant ideology and stereotype that people with a black background
are those who cause disruption is society. This is in fact, a common
misconception by many people today due to the media “brainwashing” the
public. They portray an image that is not always true and can have an
adverse effect on a whole group of people. Therefore, we challenged the
ideology that superheroes are strong, middle aged, white males.
We also challenged the common dress code for British black males who
are repeatedly shown to be wearing tracksuits, hoodies, bomber jackets
etc. We dressed our superhero in pyjamas and a dressing gown. This in a
way, showed a soft spot in our character for comfortable clothes over
uncomfortable, branded clothes with their trousers sagging which is what
the public has become accustomed to due to the media.

4. In addition to this, we set the first half of our opening sequence in the
bedroom of a teenager to achieve that sense of an unorganised, messy
and gaming youngster. This is to show the audience that he like others, is
a “typical” teenager.
Limbos acting and speech were also crucial in our production as he had to
have that British feel in our film to ensure that the audience grasp the idea
of a black British Superhero. For example, if Limbo was to speak slang
which most black teenagers are believed to speak, then our audience
would be disinterested as they would have the misunderstanding that he is
a typical arrogant teenager. We wanted to break this stereotype once and
for all and replace it with a better concept of British black males being quite
calm, understanding and quite intelligent. This would increase our target
audience as many more teenagers would be able to relate with Limbo
rather than just the South West London teenagers as this narrows down
our audience too much.

5. Li (The Helper)
In the media, Asians are illustrated as very knowledgeable, inventive and
dedicated.
In many films, Asians (Chinese/Japanese) are primarily shown to be doing
karate or stunt packed fights. The common stereotype is that they are only
good for their fighting skills however, this is most certainly not true hence
our use of Li (Chinese Character) in a role other than a fight scene. This is
to show that he is welcoming to Limbo who is of a Black background. We
intentionally did this as recently, Chinese people have been shown as very
preserved and very different from Black people. We combined the two to
show that actually, they work very well together. We were hoping to
change the publics views on both backgrounds.
Our actor for Li (Kevin) originates from a Chinese background himself and
doesn't have that strong accent which the media represents. We made
sure of this as we wanted to portray our Asian character as an ordinary
British person. Kevin speaks fluent english without stammering and has
allowed us to break that stereotype.