Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main social groups we wanted to represent are teenagers/students, with specific focus on gender roles. The overarching representation of teenagers in our film fits in with the negative portrayal that most real media products adopt, yet our closer inspection of gender roles challenges some of the norms of modern day society in order to make our product seem unique and bring new ideas to the film platform.

The negative view of teenagers today is that as a group, they cause trouble and pick up bad habits, such as smoking and drinking. - seen mainly as delinquents. This is then sown through the media TV dramas such as Skins and films such as Fish Tank.

                                     

This is a clip from our film that highlights the use of props such as smoking/rolling paraphernalia and alcohol bottles in order to suggest the negative stereotypes of teens. 

Gender Roles

In Kidulthood, the stereotypical gender roles have been adopted, with the dominating male gang intimidating the weaker, more vulnerable females.

Lola appears to be the violent and aggressive one towards Marlon and is physically violent as seen when she slaps him. This challenges typical conventions as in abusive relationships, it is normally the guy that is thought to be dangerous. We decided to do this in our film to appeal to males who feel targeted by stereotypical gender roles and to allow for them to not feel that they have to live up to the 'hyper-masculinity' that is so prominent in our society today.