Evaluation Question 2

Our media product shows specific social groups through the use of gender, sexuality, class and age.

The opening of our film focuses on two characters, Liam and Alfie. Liam is an average teenage boy who comes from a normal upbringing in a middle class environment; we can see this through

the mise en scene and clothing choice of the character We can see that the setting that Liam appears in can be associated with his character representation as we see him in a family home and across the field, a place in which he plays football.  In comparison to character Sam from Kidulthood who appears in a rural environment wearing primarily tracksuits which are stereotyped to be ‘chav’ clothing. We can further see he is from a low class from the dialect he uses which often includes slang. Liam likes popular clothing brands such as River Island and SuperDry.  He enjoys activities such as football and game consoles including Play Station and Xbox. Liam is representative of our target audience as we looked at attracting teenage boys primarily and females as well as our secondary audience. We as the audience would assume a teenager with this particularly interests would find their younger sibling irritating and would spend free time with their friends.

However a diverse relationship is created in this opening sequence which challenges social groups for teenage boys. Liam appears to be acting as a father figure towards Alfie as we see no presence of either a Mother or Father in the opening sequence; however we as viewers presume it is either one of them filming the videos. These mannerisms portray him to be a caring character, much similar to Charlie from 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'.  The onscreen relationship shown is alike the relationship we see between character Cook and his younger brother in TV drama skins. Cook is a character who enjoys getting drunk and taking drugs and gets in trouble with the police on a regular basis, however when he is with his younger sibling he appears as a role model and looks out for his brothers best interests. 

Alfie on the other hand is presented to be your stereotypical male infant. We can see this through the actor’s performance of Alfie as he imitates the clothing and mannerisms of his older brother Liam, which young children tend to do. He appears to interact with props which would be considered as the norm for a boy of his age and ethnicity. These props include drawing pens, lego ad a train track. This is further emphasised through the outdoor activities he participants in such as hide and seek and football. Football in particular follows the male social group as it is an activity which is stereotypically male revolved.

The gender stereotype can also be classed as challenged in our opening sequence. Due to the fact that it is visually clear to the audience that Liam is upset. Stereotypically men don’t tend to express their emotions openly; therefore these mannerisms break the stereotype. This can be seen through Liam appearing in a trance and being oblivious to people trying to give him help. However on the other hand this also supports the stereotype that males perceive that they don’t need any help from anyone; especially females. A final stereotypical gender observation can be seen through character Policeman Waters. Although he is only featured in our production phonetically we can detect that he is a male. Commonly policemen appear to be males rather than females. To conclude our media product both builds and challenges social groups mainly through the gender stereotype. This is beneficial as it helps us to target our audience.