Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product, like many opening sequences of thriller films, particularly the sub-genre of psychological thrillers, is ambiguous.  To create a greater enigma and to fully grip our audience we decided to reveal as little as possible about our characters.  What we did reveal was a suggestion of the relationship between our two characters.  Our representation of social groups was limited deliberately.  However, we did convey a representation of gender.

Our proposed film, as a whole, aims to convey an interesting and varied representation of women.  We wanted to undermine the stereotype of women as submissive by constructing a complicated protagonist, who is realistically contrary in her character.  Rebecca is not a submissive character but she is also not a strong character; she allows her anger and trauma from past experiences to overpower her judgment and as a result she becomes a vigilante.   She avenges others as a way to sate her own thirst for revenge.  In the full version of our film it would be suggested that Rebecca is a victim of rape or possibly sexual abuse; she had, however, missed her opportunity for revenge in the past.  Unable to vent the rage and trauma of her own ordeal, Rebecca’s anger has diffused to include any perpetrator of a similar crime.

Both of the characters that feature in our sequence are enigmatic.  Rebecca is working-class and from socio-economic group D whereas Tom, our antagonist, is middle-class and from the socio-economic group A; this is not clear through our sequence because we have no dialogue and our costume is simplistic. 

A film which represents women in a similar way is Hard Candy (Slade, 2005). 

 Ellen Page plays Hayley in Hard Candy, a seemingly innocuous 14-year-old, who is revealed to be a ruthless vigilante.  It is alluded to, but never clearly stated, that Hayley has been sexually abused herself and as a result feels it necessary to punish peadophilic murderers.  Hayley is represented as merciless and determined, yet simultaneously damaged and vulnerable.  This is how we wanted to represent our protagonist – contradictory in her character which, ultimately, is realistic of human nature. 

As a psychological thriller our film would revolve around our protagonist’s mental state/issues rather than the plot.  Some psychological thrillers are concerned with a ‘battle of wits’ between the protagonist and antagonist, eventually through which one will emerge a victor.  Our thriller, however, would deal with the protagonist’s lack of psychological equilibrium.  The plot would be the motive which would eventually reestablish the balance in Rebecca’s mind.