Evaluation - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents certain social groups by their stereotypes, this is extremely common in psychological horror genre as the aim is to represent certain social groups as weak. However, the last scene in the film does not conform to these stereotypes therefore converting ideologies of social groups.

In our film the character Lucy is a young girl that is struggling with psychological problems, this instantly represents her character as being weak which conforms to the stereotype of females as they are often represented as weak or vulnerable. During the bathroom scene there is a whip pan which is used to show Lucy’s movement and her state of mind. She sees something in the mirror and whips around to look at it and turns back to the mirror where she’s sees the person again which puts the character under the stereotype of women being the damsel in distress. However, in the last scene Lucy’s character converts the ideology of females. During this scene she gets frustrated by another character in the film (Joe), the two share an altercation before Joe pushes her leading to Lucy stabbing him. This would usually be seen as something a male would do rather than a female.

Another character in our media product is Joe, although he only appears in the last scene he still converts and conforms to stereotypes and ideologies of males. During the first part of scene three, Joe conforms to the stereotype of males as he is quite assertive and dominant. For example he says “I’m not the one that deserves to die you freak” and “We were never friends, you’re just a psychopathic bitch’” this shows he is less sensitive to other people’s feelings. After this he goes to grab Lucy but she stabs him. This converts ideologies of males as during this time he is represented as being vulnerable and submissive.