EVALUATION - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

On the left I have a picture of the girl in my opening scene, and on the right I have the girl from the opening scene of Scream 4.

A big part of these films is the representation of girls, especially teenage ones. I tried to recreate this image that they are given in my piece so that it was obvious what kind of film it was.

One main aspect of the representation is having blonde hair. Blonde girls have a stereotype of being 'bimbos' meaning that they are very dumb and clueless. This is very effective when in the opening scene of a horror film because you know that they will be killed as you know their type and you know they will do all the stupid things like follow the bang, or go upstairs in the dark.

Another main aspect is the fact that they are teenagers. This is used because teenagers are often known as not really fully grown yet and maybe a bit immature. This is also used because teenagers are most likely to become scared more easily than older people if they hear noises or see something peculiar. However, there is the other kind of teenager who think that they are smarter than they really are and may act more confidant and not scared when they are. This adds even more effect to a horror opening scene because you know that they are fighting for their life and you see them fall apart.

Makeup on these girls is always neutral, as if she is just at home doing nothing. This also gives off the idea of innocence, that they are not fake and are real people who don't really deserve to die.

I tried to recreate the outfit that I have seen in many other horror films on the girl in mine. I did this by giving her normal dark wash jeans, which as you can see, are very like the girls in Scream 4. I then decided to give her a plain coloured tank top as these as very common within the age group and genre but I added a jumper over the top to show that it was cold. I think that I recreated the outfit very well as the girl in my film looks like she could play this role in a real horror opening scene. However, the only thing I didn't do was give her any earrings which are also big within horror films, as you can see, in Scream 4 the girl has big dangly earrings as this represents the age group even more.