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Representing Social Groups

Question 6 of Evaluation

Various different social groups are shown within my film opening, these are typical stereotypes of which the audience are easily able to recognise and interpret into the specific categories intended by us.

Introduction

The three different social groups I believe we have successfully interpreted is: Gothic/emo, typical popular high school jock and the ‘it’ girl. These all have different contrasting stereotypes which helps the audience strongly tell between these groups.

I have taken into account the various typical conventions shared between gothic characters which sets them apart from other categories. After some thorough research I noticed similar patterns within chick flicks in representing Goths and emos and these are what we have used in order to represent them in this same way to ensure the audience recognises the social group intended.

The Goth Girl

The classic stereotypes put into place and thought by most around us believe that Goths are rather moody, dark, mysterious, listen to heavy metal genre of music, wear dark/black clothing and tend to keep their distance from others and themselves to themselves. We believe this is how we have represented our gothic character within our film opening and have done so to ensure that the audience fully recognise which social group she is from so therefore they are able to easily interpret what that given character is like. As you will see in our opening film piece, the character has darkly coloured ‘scene’-like hair, dark lipstick and eye make-up along with mainly black clothes and is also seen to be give off quite a moody, uncomfortable atmosphere to those watching her.

Our Goth Girl taken from a still of our film opening

By creating this character to be so recognisably gothic by ensuring strong stereotypical conventions have been used, the audience are able to recognise that she has been portrayed to be like the typical moody, mysterious Goth helping to interpret what the characters initial personality and self is like saving a great deal of time working this out.

This is a character quite often seen within most high school chick flick movies and are commonly known for their lack of common and general knowledge, popularity with the hot, attractive girls around school and are usually portrayed to be extremely good looking and handsome. I believe that we have represented this character of ours in the same manner in order for the audience to just make assumptions to what the character is like; good looking, popular and someone who all the girls want but also a little dumb and naive about his game play.

The Jock

The ‘jock’ is represented and included in various chick flicks such as in the popular movie ‘John Tucker Must Die’, he is portrayed as extremely popular around the high school especially with the girls, quite cocky and because of this the girls within the movie decide to get revenge upon him from being so ‘big headed’ and playing along girls (an idea we have with our film narrative).

I and my group have been successful in interpreting these stereotypes into action within our piece to re-create the typical social group character being ‘the jock’. The character within our opening appears to be very appealing to the eye as seen in the photography both female characters possess but also very cocky and naive because of it due to the fact we see him texting both girls, arranging to go on a date with both, both females having the same photograph of him, that he is playing both of the girls along thinking he can get away with it. We have portrayed him as the stereotypical high school jock effectively, popular with the girls, cocky and good looking.

Image of ‘Josh’ the Jock within our final piece

These are seen in most if not all chick flicks set in a high school, she is the girl that everybody wants to be, pretty, popular and confident. The ‘it’ girl within a very famous and well-known high school chick flick would be Regina George. The female who is seen to be quite ‘up herself’ and rather arrogant towards the rest of the school students, especially the ‘unpopular’ social groups such as nerds and they also don’t tend to mix with Goths; the contrasting character we have chosen to compete with the ‘it’ girl.

The ‘it’ Girl

We have created our ‘it’ girl character to be that of attractive, very girly, popular, outgoing and confident. This is due to those strong stereotypes developed over the decades through various media products. It helps the audience immensely with knowing what the character is like and also ensures they know what social group she is in which is the ‘it’ girl by recognising this from the character’s appearance.

Our ‘it’ girl taken from a still in our film opening

Overall I believe all social groups; Goth, ‘it’ girl and jock have been represented in the correct manner and have been represented in the stereotypical way which was what we intended to do.