TW: Evaluation - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Social groups in relation to our piece and how they are represented

• Mentally ill - the antagonist is partially mentally ill, due to his OCD and meticulous nature revealed. However - portraying a mentally ill person as powerful and strong is reinforcing an emergent ideology which is the product of events such as the increased viewership of the Paralympic Games.
• Young - through the POV shot where the antagonist looks over his victim page, the majority of victims are young. This reinforces the idea that the young are the weakest social group, and can be exploited by adults:
  
• All - we made an effort to ensure that all social groups were represented on our victims page; inclding young, white, old, black, female, and male social groups. 
• Final boy - an archetypal horror character is the 'final girl', who manages to avenge past victims, display great strength, and overcome the brutal killer, leaving triumphant. However - in binary opposition with this, the final victim is a male who is completely powerless. This goes against a horror stereotype. 
  
• Females - during the POV shot of the victims, rule of two-thirds concentrates the viewers' attention on the two females encircled together. This gives prevalence to females - and attempts to evoke sympathy, which therefore implies and reinforces a residual ideology that females are less powerful than males. Moreover - as the females are young, blonde, and attractive - this reinforces the strategy that horror film-makers engage in to achieve a wide audience. Moreover - employing decorative females appeals to the core horror audience, predominantly males.
  
• Male antagonist - the fact we have a male antagonist reinforces a stereotype of horror that the killer is nearly always male, and reinforces the idea of a patriarchal society. This stereotype is reinforced by the film, 'House of 1000 Corpses' (Zombie, 2002) whereby women are presented as objects of male domination, an opening sequence contaminated with sexual bodily horror. Moreover - only men are pictured in dominant iconography, with two men in white waistcoats. This costume is an example of iconography which implies power and status, an aspect of costume which we included in ours also. Therefore - similarly to House of 1000 Corpses, our sequeunce reinforces the residual ideology of a patriarchal society. 
  
  
  

How these representations were technically constructed -

• Strength of mentally ill antagonist - is largely represented through mise-en-scene. Firstly - non-verbal communication from the final victim reveals the fear incited by the antagonist:
  
• Also revealed through camera work - the use of extreme close ups implies accuracy and precision; two characteristics not normally associated with mentally ill stereotypical characters. This proves that the word 'disabled' is ideologically loaded, as it has many conventional characteristics which are both reinforced and challenged by our sequence. 
  
• Canted angles - reinforce the dominant ideology that disabled people are marginalised and different. 
  
• Magnified sound effects - are important, as they emphasise the effect of the antagonist and portray him as more powerful due to the noises he causes being highlighted. 
• Lack of power - 'final boy' - this representation is constructed through an aspect of mise-en-scene, make-up. The lines across the victims face reveal that his destiny is pre-ordained, abd dehumanises the victims, as if they are a chunk of meat.Non-verbal communication furthers the powerless nature of the final victim. 

Potential improvements regarding social groups

• A dominant ideology regarding the elderly is that they are wise, and therefore powerful in that aspect. Therefore - if the antagonist was older, this would strengthen this concept. In binary opposition with this - younger people are marginalised and regarded as inferior and weaker than older people, therefore our text is potentially ideologically destabising, by portraying a younger man as the antagonist. However - if we had the choice, we would've chosen an older antagonist - which reinforces the stereotype of having a mid-thirty year old, white, male, antagonist.