How does your media product present particular

social groups?

GenderFemininity:In our thriller we wanted to challenge stereotypes by using a women as our main deviant character. Usually in thriller productions our society would assume the male to be the violent, aggressive character. This is due to women being stereotyped the dumber and weaker sex. However, we wanted to play against the generic archetype of a male villain – hence using a women who knew what she was doing and wasn’t afraid to be violent. I like that Maria doesn’t allow a man to tell her what to do and isn’t bothered by typical social trends such as marriage. Her story, which we see in the flashbacks makes us more sympathetic towards her. I am unsure

Relates to Thelma and Louise.This film also challenges the misogynistic view of females in thrillers. Thelma and Louise like our character Maria show the changing of attitude of the way females

are presented. All of these women are strong and independent. We took inspiration from this film and based Marias attitude the same way Thelma and Louise’s are portrayed.

if we are more sympathetic due to the fact she is female as we don’t seem to be as bothered when she tortures ‘The Man’ despite being taught violence is wrong in any given situation.

Masculinity:

Again by making the female the dominant character, this makes the male vulnerable which you don’t tend to see in many media productions. However, in the flashbacks we see The Man aggressively wiping blood of Maria’s face. This is similar to Kill Bill 1, where we typically see the male being aggressive to the female. By The Man feeling emasculated by Maria being such a strong character, it denies all generic ideas of the male being the stronger sex.

Bill dominating the bride in Tarintino’s ‘Kill Bill Vol. 1’.

Relation to Norman Bates from ‘Psycho’.This character is similar to The Man as they both our portrayed as normal people when looking at them but secretly have a psychopathic side to them. You

could also argue Maria is similar to this too.

Sexual ambiguity:Our thriller doesn’t represent gender equally. Our production portrays this very interestingly as we constantly see the power swap between each gender throughout our opening rather then having one dominant character to challenge stereotypes. However, we see more of our deviant femme fetalle character Maria making The Man defenceless. This challenges usual classic conventions of thriller victims.

EthnicityBoth of our characters our white, British. This is purely because all member in our group were white, British.

AddictedThe main cast of this African-American thriller are Black due to all being related to the main character Zoe. This creates realism between the family members. However, including other ethnic members of cast may attract a larger audience.

anything as it isn’t linked in with the plot. However, I understand the use of certain ethnicities in some films due to the context. For example the main characters in ‘12 years a slave’ our African America due to the plot being based on discrimination against blacks in the 18th century.

Is it relevant?I don’t believe the ethnicity of the cast has any relevance to the outcome of our thriller opening. If we had of casted someone with a different ethnicity it wouldn’t of effected

The representation of YouthOur film included a Male and Female aged roughly between 17-20. This linked to our target audience as it makes the production more relatable to people of that age. The fear we see in the young women’s face whilst witnessing the flashbacks our similar to how the current youth may feel in contemporary Britain when in vulnerable situations like walking home in the dark. This could be because in todays society the youth have grown up able to here about these awful situations on social media and TV where people may have been attacked, raped or murdered in vulnerable situations. This links in with our thriller conventions of the unknown, who should we trust and allows the audience to try and connect the relationship between the two characters.