2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our opening sequence of a film was the genre of a horror film. Throughout this film we presented many social representations which can be broken down into sub cultures such as age, gender, and disability.                                                                                                                                                                         

The social representation of age is apparent within our horror film due to different ages of the characters and killer. Within the film there are some differences in the ages presented. There are mainly teenagers in our film as the target audience is young adults aged fifteen and maybe older up to the age of around twenty-five. Plus, by focusing the film around teenagers it reaches our target audience as this social audience would be encouraged to watch the film as the age of these characters help make the film seem more realistic as they can image that it could be them in it. Other factors such as location help support the social representation of an age. The location is set in a park which is commonly associated with younger children and teenagers which is the social group we are portraying in our film. The age of the killer is unknown which added further to the common mystery that is found conventionally within horrors that nobody knows who the killer is as no glues are given away which adds to the fear of the unknown. However the costumes and physique of the killer does give some clear indication that they are older than the victim ‘Lucy’. The social representation of age can be stereotypical linked to the idea that older people have more dominance over younger people. This can be linked to our horror as the killer who is older does have the power and dominance over ‘Lucy’ and ‘Josh’.                                                                                                                                        

Gender is another sub culture shown within our horror. There are three characters of girls in our horror and two boys as well as the killer whose gender isn’t really shown due to mystery of the villain. We wanted to have an even balance of genders in our film as we wanted the target audience to be both genders instead of limiting it to just one. If we had been bias with one gender then it could affect the audience that watched our horror opening. Our victim in our film was ‘Lucy’ a female which can be stereotypical linked to the gender of women getting into danger such as the “damsel in distress” scenario. We felt that having the victim as a girl could help with appealing to the target audiences of both gender as males would want to watch the film as it’s a males instinct to protect a women so would create pathos towards the film. In addition females would watch the horror opening as they would also feel sympathy towards the victim and creates the realism that it could have been them. The social representation of gender can be represented in our film to show the older killer has more dominance of the victims which could be because he is older and has more life experience which links to the stereotypes associated with age that older people have more dominance than younger people.                                                                                                                                           

Disability could be a social representation that is shown in our opening horror as you could argue the mental state of the killer is a form of disability due to his mind and thoughts not being normal but psychotic. This social representation can be classed as a sub-genre of a physiological horror as the killer is based around an urban legend of ‘The Child Collector’. We took inspiration from the film ‘Red Dragon’ as it’s based around another urban legend.