The document represents several social groups in the opening scene. It portrays mental health through the protagonist Darren's activities which seem normal at first but hints he may have mental health issues. This creates a binary between sanity and insanity. Darren is also represented as a young, white, British male who appears middle class based on his clothing. His vulnerability is emphasized through being killed by the antagonist. Younger age and middle class are portrayed as regressive through Darren's victimization. The clip also represents a patriarchal society through the absence of females and males being portrayed as stronger and having more power and status.

1. Q2. HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR
SOCIAL GROUPS?

2. The main, most predominant representation of social groups in our clip
is mental health. Through Darren’s activities in this opening, hiking
through the woods and exploring a caravan for shelter, the audience
would not assume he has any issues with his sanity or mental health.
This is shown through Darren's non-verbal language in the clip, for
example: his disappointment when he realises the bottle of beer in the
cupboard is smashed and empty (shown below). In society, this is
culturally marked as normal as drinking beer is often stereotypically
something you would to do relax or engage in social interaction. This
therefore shows sanity progressively.
A binary opposition between sanity and insanity
(the difference in mental health) is then created
when the antagonist becomes involved in the
sequence. Mostly through the use of flashbacks,
the audience becomes aware that the protagonist
may kill for pleasure due to mental health issues
because of his actions in these flashbacks. This
creates a representation that conforms to
dominant ideologies that those with mental health
issues are a problem to society/ cannot become
integrated into society- making this representation
regressive in this way.
Darren
The only characters featured in our sequence are a young, white British male as well as a
masked, male antagonist- this is the only information revealed from the opening. Apart from being
both male, the representations of these characters differ majorly.

3. Through his costume, Darren can be seen as
a middle class young man. There is nothing
within Darren’s clothing that would strike any
audience as unusual or catch their eye.
Because of this, emphasised by his non-verbal
language and role in the sequence, Darren is
represented as both innocent and a victim; this
therefore displays his vulnerability,
constructing an opposition to stereotypes that
all males are brave and not considered as
vulnerable in society, a residual ideology.
His age is guessed to be around 18 years old,
this again can construct his innocence in this
clip as young people are iconic of being
nothing but innocent victims in many horror
films like ‘The Woman in Black’ (Watkins,
2012). This also builds the representation that
younger social groups are more defenceless
in society as Darren is killed at the end of the
sequence.
The male race is represented to be stereotypically braver and stronger than females in society- reflecting
patriarchy, another residual ideology- one of the reasons for this being because of the complete absence of
females in our opening. The second reason for this being the fact that Darren enters the caravan alone, and
explores the entire caravan despite of the dangers becoming increasingly aware to him- representing his
bravery and conforming to past stereotypes that males have more authority in society compared to women
who back down more easily and have less status. This is further emphasised by the way the male antagonist
overpowers and kills Darren at the end of the sequence, the male power and superior status shown by a
lower camera angle shot and character blocking to show him to be larger than Darren.

4. Overall, age is shown as regressive in
this clip, this is due to Darren’s
vulnerability shown through his
activities, costume and non-verbal
language from both characters, for
example: the antagonist covering
Darren’s mouth- taking away his ability
to get help or overcome his enemy.
Darren’s death also constructs
ideologies that younger people have
less status in society because they have
less power than others, they are
therefore often stereotyped as inferior.
Class in this clip is less obvious to interpret, Darren is represented
as middle class- this makes it difficult to make any conclusion on
how class is represented in this clip as this is often determined
through dialogue and clothing, in which the sequence has no
dialogue and clothing that reveals little about the person. So, in
conclusion middle class must be also represented as regressive in
the clip as the only character you can make any decision about
class is with Darren, who is killed.
Our clip challenges many other horror films which use the iconic convention of ‘the final girl’. This is
significant as it breaks the progression shown for the female gender in alternative horror films. This
overall contributes to the negative stereotype, that, with the absence of the female gender in the clip
and the use of an all male cast often shown to be superior- that the ideology of a patriarchal society is
dominant in our clip, reinforcing inequality inbetween different genders.
An example of ‘the final girl’
iconography used many horror films,
this one being ‘Halloween’ (Carpenter,
1978).