This document discusses common representations and stereotypes of different groups in films and media, including teenagers, women, men, the working class, upper class, Eastern Europeans, and African Americans. It then provides context about how the characters in the author's own film challenge or subvert some of these stereotypes, such as having a strong independent female protagonist, a non-violent male antagonist, and students from a middle-class background.

1. What is representation?

2. Teenagers
• Teenagers in today's society are often portrayed as crazy drug
taking, sex having, hoodie wearing hooligans or happy go
lucky love struck people who only purpose in life is finding the
one.
• Our film includes the typical teenager characters and all our
characters have traits of left wing due to being white and
being well off but right wing due to the busking element and
the mental health.

3. Women
• Women are often represented as either a motherly
figure, a strong independent woman or just an object
of sexual desire. however most of the time the
women is the reason for the narrative.
• In our film the main female protagonist is strong,
independent and doesn’t rely on the male leads for
happiness and adventure.

4. Male
• Men are often represented as either the main
protagonist or antagonist showing either to be a
fatherly figure, a strong outgoing man, or a subject of
attraction for the women but more often than not
men are the driving force in a narrative.
• Our male antagonist is not represented as muscular
or violent which goes against the stereotype of a
leading male protagonist. He is in love with a girl and
instead of the typical female character chasing the
male we have swapped gender roles in our film.

5. Working class
• The working class are either represented as stupid
and stubborn or their represented as humble,
hardworking, welcoming people.
• Our characters are students and therefore don’t have
much disposable income to spend on clothes and
expensive outings. Our characters are also not old
enough to live alone and therefore don’t have any
economic status due to them not owning their own
home.

6. Upper class
• As with the working class the upper class can be
represented in different ways the upstanding, clever,
kind and beautiful or uptight, snooty and
judgemental.
• Our film doesn’t really include upper class characters
but our characters are from a B-C2 demographic
background.

7. Eastern European
• Europeans in films have become a stereotypical
action film villain trait and therefore are represented
as scheming, lying backstabbing, people with a knack
for diabolical schemes or they become the exotic
love interest, who is well cultured and refined this
has become a stereotype in many romance films.

8. African American
• This particular group has been represented in
many different ways not often good either a
working class, gun wielding, gang member or
an evil leader who will kill anyone who crosses
him and even in horror film more often than
not the ethnic member of the party is used to
demonstrate there is a real killer.