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

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.

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.

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).