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Dale Luck Primeval AS Media Studies

Representation of Gender

Within the extract, in general the men are represented as being the stereotypically dominant, strong characters, as well as the smart ones, and the women tend to take the role of their subordinates, as well as stereotypical traits of being overly emotional and reckless in their actions.

For example, the man who distracts the sabre tooth from the woman in the digger is seen as both selfless and intelligent during that scene, putting his own life in danger by distracting it from her - this being moments after she attempts to save him but almost kills herself by doing so. In this way you could say that she is seen as protective of other characters, but also that she is both reckless and weak – she didn’t think her actions through, and despite having the aid of a fairly large vehicle and the protection of a glass window she was unable to actually do any damage to it. A few moments later, where she uses the gun to scare off the sabre tooth, she again is shown to be weak when the recoil of the blast almost knocks her over, or at least seems to – this contrasts the farmer at the end of the extract, who experiences very little in comparison when shooting his own gun.

Another way that the women can be seen as different is with the woman at the end who blackmailed the farmer into doing what she wanted – she showed signs of selfishness and stupidity, and yet also manages to become submissive in the scene despite starting off on equal ground with the farmer. Her selfishness shows in that rather than haggling with the man to get what she wanted, she instead showed she was willing to ruin his livelihood in order to do so. Her stupidity is shown by the fact she clearly didn’t think the situation through – to not expect some sort of violent response from a man she’d just threatened to ruin the life of, who she has just said had been breeding dogs to fight each other, is pretty stupid. And, as expected, he does, putting her into the submissive role than most of the women seem to be taking in the extract.

The women are shown to be submissive in all the aspects of the extract – for example, the women are, more often than not, physically lower than the men in each of the shots. Even the opening, with the woman standing side by side with the man whilst talking with him, has her being lower than him – that could just be down to her being a short actor however. But moments later the woman sitting at the table is lower than everyone in the shots, as well as the woman in the final scene being forced down on the ground by the man with the gun, and the other woman that comes to save her being lower than the other men in the group. The women are often put into the background of each of the shots too when the men take dominance in the scene: the emotional woman at the start moves to the car in the background; the table with the woman at it is in the background of the man; the woman towards the end is constantly in the background, even when the gun-man’s dominance is taken away (as the people who save her are mostly men); the woman who scares the sabre tooth with a gun is behind the glass during the digger-attack and just far away in general when she shoots.

The music of the scene also seems to represent the state of the dominant gender character during that specific time – an action-y tone for the men, and basically nothing for the women. This alone could mirror the state of the two genders – that the music is what you remember during a scene mostly, and the women have none, shows that the women take a backseat role to the men. For example, when the woman is blackmailing the farmer, there is no music in the background, but as the farmer takes dominance the fast paced “man of action” music starts up and it remains there to some extent even when the other characters come and save the woman, this being because the

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Dale Luck Primeval AS Media Studies

men are still dominant, even if it isn’t the same man as before. The opening shot also has the male character being empathetic towards the woman, during which the music itself reflects the empathy, becoming timid and soft – that the women don’t have their own music seems to rank the men with a higher level of importance within the scene. Of course, during that scene you could also say that music reflects the woman, but again that ends shortly after when the woman is put out of their minds and the action music starts up again.

The men could also be seen as planning ahead – a man distracts the sabre tooth, another man carefully plants a rock on the floor for some reason (I can only assume it’s to track anything that passes, I don’t know), and the man at the end has a gun nearby in case the (for want of a better term) “shit hits the fan”, which it does. On the other hand, the woman in the digger acts recklessly and puts herself in danger when wildly swinging it, later on is unable to handle the gun properly and doesn’t prepare properly for the recoil (which would have shattered her shoulder, FYI), and the woman in the end scene, as stated above, doesn’t think it through before blackmailing the violent, hench farmer with a gun and a pair of dogs bred to fight nearby to his face.

So, overall, the women take submissive roles to the men in the scene, even when they want to do otherwise, and are comparatively weak and reckless, with the men taking the roles of protectors and the characters that “plan ahead”. In this way, you could say that each of their roles, gender-wise, is stereotypical, and links to the directors apparent use of the Male Gaze – each of the women, even those that take semi-macho roles like the one in the digger, have clothing that tries to show off as much of the neck/breast area as possible, despite the fact that their clothing seems to cover almost every other part of their bodies. The one out of the three women that doesn’t conform to this rule leaves in the first 5 seconds of the extract – that’s got to speak something about why the men seem to be keeping these specific women around, despite their clearly inferior work method to the men. You could also counter than however with the fact that, yes, most of their bodies is in fact covered up with clothing – the women could be seen as aspiring to be as good as the men in the scene at what they do, even showing fairly masculine qualities such as violence and recklessness, and the use of hardly any classic femininity in their clothing design reflects this.