How does our media product
represent particular social groups?
Our cast is predominantly made up of young Black British girls. We decided to embrace the stereotypes of young black girls growing up in London. Our opening falls under categories such as; Gender, Ethnicity, Age in terms of representation.
Gender
Women are highly represented in our film opening due to the fact that the cast is predominantly made up of females. All of the themes presented in our film opening are stereotypically female themes as they include struggle and/or caring for another person. As these themes don't normally influence males in everyday life they are not heavily featured in our opening, but may have made an appearance later in the movie. These themes are carried forward through our characters; the hood rat, teen mum and young carer who are all seen to live in either deprived conditions or have to care for an individual.
In the film industry women are usually portrayed as ; playing passive roles, being in need of protection and needing male support (not independent). We decided to break these conventions by creating strong independent characters, that are actively handling their various issues on their own. Such as; the teen mum who is loving and caring towards her child, also is going through everything on her own. Much like in Precious as although she is shown to live with her mother has no support from anyone but herself and is constantly abused.
Precious carrying her baby
Teen Mum from our opening carrying her baby
Ethnicity
The whole of our cast is made up of Black girls. This is because the genre of our film opening is Black Feminist Drama, and so would connotate themes of single parenthood, unemployment etc. One of the themes we strongly try to convey in our film opening is one of independence in the black community and so represents black women in a positive aspect. we show this at the beginning of the film by displaying an urban definition of our title "Sistas".
Age
Teenagers in film are usually represented as delinquents that go around causing trouble and are lazy individuals. In our opening we decided to embrace this stereotype and so represented teenagers in a negative aspect. The hood rat character from our film could be compared to Danielle from the movie "SKET" in the way that they both are hard individuals who are the product of their environment and hardships they have faced in their lives. They are both presented to live in an estate which suggests they live in poverty.
Danielle from movie "SKET" leaning up against the wall Hood rat from our opening leaning up against a wall, doing nothing with her lifeRepresentation of Social Groups
By Sophie Douglas
Representation of Social Groups
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