Evaluation Of Representation of Specific Social Groups

Representation of Teenage Girls

• Two main representations – 1^st created by Rosie –Tomboyish. 2^nd by Charlie – Girly.
• Slightly clichéd and more American, but familiar to our audience as they are familiar media stereotypes- in ‘Mean Girls’ as well. 
• Expectation is that the moment the stereotype is identified, the audience will relax and look forward to watching events they can predict unfold.
• Predicatability associated with genre texts (Neale) but does lead to narrow range of highly exaggerated representations (Lacey).
• Some critics feel these can be harmful (Pickering) while others feel they "do no harm" if audience recognise them as a plot device and not related to reality (Dyer)

'Cady' from 'Mean Girls'

'Karen, Regina and Gretchen' from 'Mean Girls'

• These representations often the ones most frequently used in teen dramas –also created in the film ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ with ‘Kat’ and ‘Bianca’

• In ’10 Things I Hate About You’ it’s made obvious to the audience that Kat is the ‘loner’ and Bianca is the ‘popular’ one.
• We have tried to replicate this, by composing the shot in the hallway to show Charlie surrounded by friends and Rosie being on her own.

  

• Minimal dialogue  used in our piece and '10 Things I Hate About You’opening – gives audience  chance to get to know the characters through their movements, facial expressions and  non-diegetic music
• At start,  negative representation is created of popular girls. Intentional - wanted the audience to feel sympathetic towards Rosie. The popular girls behaviour isn’t extreme so our piece shouldn’t be harmful towards our audience or affect real life perceptions, as Pickering suggests negative representations may.
•  I agree with Dyer, who suggests that the audience are good at separating media from reality and stereotypes are not bad as long as they ‘do not harm’
•  I expect that our audience will be able to differentiate between the stereotypes created in our piece and real life, as they will have first hand experience of being in school and in that environment. Representations more potentially harmful when take audience outside their own experience and they don't have own experiences to compare against (Hartley)
• Through the use of mise-en-scene, we’ve tried to create juxtaposition through costume and props, Charlie’s room is really girly and colourful, her costume is a pink dressing gown, and when she’s getting ready she’s surrounded by beauty products. In contrast, Rosie’s room is very simple, basic colours like white and blue feature.

  

• Paired with split screen to show contrast between characters - may highlight to audience derogatory stereotypes about women –  our opening focuses a lot on girls getting ready -  stereotypically women take a long time to get ready - might reinforce negative stereotype through repetition of it.

 

 

 

• However, this character clearly 'villain' at beginning - not aspirational and comic exaggeration weakens stereotyping.