Evaluation

Question 2

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT

REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

'A social group is a group of people who interact with one another and share the same characteristics such as age, ethnicity, class, interests and gender.' For example, below shows a comparison between one of the representations of twins (right) and our film opening which challenges those stereotypes.

The dominant representation of twins

One of the most common portrayals of twins is as incorrigible rascals. As a duo, they wreak havoc. They team up to create mischief and parents of twins will acknowledge that there is sometimes a measure of truth in this characterisation, and certainly, it has been a popular theme for a long time.

However our media product particularly challenges this generalisation of twins. This is done by turning our protagonists against each other. Breaking the stereotype by altering their compatibility through the narrative and Mise en Scene.

On the other hand, twins can be the ultimate symbol of good vs. evil, this is an extremely popular theme in soap operas. Among a set of twins, one twin is good, while the other is evil. Often the good twin is blamed with the evil doings and must fight to restore their image.

This representation is supportedby our finished media product. We deliberately used binary opposition of a villain and victim (Grace and Tamsin), by doing this we challenged the 'mischievous teamwork' view of stereotypical twins.

REPRESENTATION OF GENDER

We exploited a dangerous and possessive personality of our protagonist, challenging the stereotypical role usually assigned to women in psychological horror films (weak and vulnerable). We broke the conventions through the use of our narrative and body language used by our protagonist (the evil twin), as well as even having a bold costume, much larger than our victims (the good twin). Our other main character, Tamsin, does however reflect the qualities of the typical representations of women, through the high-angle shots looking down on her to show her submissiveness and framing Grace (the evil twin) in a constant position of power on camera (e.g centre of the shot or closer to the camera). Ultimately, this juxtaposed the physically dominant and controlling role, men usually convey.

AGE

When using twins or sisters in modern psychological horrors, many films use younger children who innocent and inexperienced of society to shock and excite the audience if they have a change in personality (e.g the child is exorcised). By subverting our expectations of children as non-threatening entitles, horror genre films are able to force doubt into our natural assumptions, which can be used as a staple as an effective horror.

However it is become extremely common to use children as 'evil' characters, and has now even become a genre tradition, therefore it is easy for people to automatically assume that the child is usually the wicked character.

Our media product challenges age presentation of twin children in horrors by using two young adults in our opening, this will shock the audience as older people stereotypically play the responsible and reliable protagonist in horror films.