The document discusses the production's portrayal of various stereotypes regarding class, race, age, gender, and sexuality in films. Regarding class, the house used in filming contradicted the working class setting intended. For race, white actors were used as the primary audience. The actor chosen for age did not fully portray the intended immaturity of a young person widowed. Gender stereotypes were somewhat challenged by portraying the male as vulnerable and the female as stronger. The production used heterosexual characters for their mainstream appeal but attempted to challenge norms of relationships and success.

2. • CLASS: In our production we tried to show some stereotypes, we
wanted to reflect the C2-E income bracket because we wanted the
audience to be able to relate to our product. This is why we chose to film
in a house, however, the house where our sequence is set in is clearly
not a working class house. It is very luxurious and contradicts the
working class. The fact that there is a sense of normality makes it more
uncanny. A more working class household could have probably been
better as they are more likely to accept the supernatural events.
• RACE: We used the conventional couple in Western films : white couple
where one of them is successful and sustains the household. We did
this as they are part of our primary audience. We didn’t get much choice
in choosing the race of the actor, this was due to time. Our last resource
was Mason and he was the only one able to do it, we weren’t looking for
race anymore, it was just a male actor that was willing to portray the
character.
CRAGS

3. • AGE: For our production we thought that the couple should be a young married one as they
would stereotypically not be mature enough for the death of your other half. Mason’s acting
was perfect, however, I think that his character should have been interpreted as more
immature and sad when his wife dies. He acts like an older person would and this therefore
doesn’t help to portray our stereotype of young people being immature when their other half
dies. This couldn’t be achieved as all the actors that we found couldn’t turn up to the filming
days that we chose. This left us with no one the age we wanted able to act in our
production, this is why we had to have Mason (someone who is not old enough) as our
main actor. This didn’t help give the film verisimilitude.
• GENDER: We challenged the stereotype of male being weak as we had the male as our
protagonist being haunted and the woman being stronger in this case (Gauntlett’s theory).
However, the fact that she has to die in order to be in power challenges the idea of the
woman being strong, she has got to sacrifice her life in order to be the empowered person
in the relationship. Some of the shots in the bathroom connote his vulnerability as most of
them are high angles, this shows something/someone is above him and is able to control
him. The medium shot of him taking his tie off connotes that he gives up, something that
men don’t stereotypically do as they are stereotypically strong and determined. Also by
having the woman in the bath it can be argued that she is put in the male gaze and
therefore she is seen as weak. Her in the bath is also playing with the idea of striptease,
Barthes’ theory says that it is the clothes the thing that sexualize a woman. The fact that we
don’t see their naked bodies. This links to our production as you can only see the hand in
the bath.

4. • SEXUALITY: We used heterosexual characters because
our audience is mainstream and the primary audience of
horrors films tends to be mass market. In our production
what we are showing in the fist shots is the couple being
very happy, this is a hegemonic ideology as we are
showing the best in a relationship, however, not all is
happiness as we can see later on in the sequence, it all
ends badly. This is therefore challenging the hegemonic
ideology, which would make the narrative more
sophisticated and would apply to an older audience. It is
normal for independents to challenge ideologies, that is
why we decided to do so and I think we succeeded

5. Men are sensitive
• The producers want you to believe that men’s feelings are as
important as women’s and that they too can be emotional.
– Long shot of him connoting his sadness and that from now
on he is going to be lonely as his wife has died.
• The reality is that everyone gets emotional when someone
dies, even men (those who should never cry) –Medium shot of
character washing his face connotes that he is sad but trying
to wipe the tears and wants all his feelings to go away.
• The society context says that the view on men’s emotions is
changing and hat they are getting less judged when showing
them. – The character is not ashamed to show his emotions,
the shots used show his face, he is scared and sad during the
funeral.

6. • Our production challenges the ideology of the western
world being successful, not everything is perfect in this
world and this is portrayed in our production is the shots of
the funeral and bathroom. The lighting is dim and connotes
disequilibrium, what was stereotypically perfect isn’t
anymore. The icons of success in our production are for
example, the house they own and the smile on their face.
The protagonist is wearing a suit connoting wealth.
• Man and woman are meant to be together, this is a
hegemonic ideology because if in the modern world you
see a single woman, society would think that what they
need is a man and they also think that this is what they
stereotypically want. What society sees is that they need
men to be happy and have someone in their lives.

7. • I don’t think that our representations are challenging
enough for an independent film as we probably didn’t
focus as much on what was going to be our secondary
audience. We only challenged gender, which isn't enough
for a niche audience to be attracted to our product. We
challenged the idea of men being strong, we made our
character vulnerable by the use of high angles and
medium shots. We could have probably challenged race
and class by having a different race to white for one of
our characters. This would have probably help appeal to
a more sophisticated audience.