How does our media product represent particular social groups?
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Disability: One of the biggest stereotypes to do with disability in film is that the disabled person is weak in comparison to a fully abled person. This can be seen in the film “Hush”. In this film, the main ‘damsel in destress’ is both deaf and mute. She then has to escape a masked man who has the intention of killing her. Due to her disabilities, she is put at a disadvantage and is therefore is portrayed as weak in comparison to the abled, masked murderer. This shows that ‘Hush’ reinforces the disability stereotype. However, False Indigo challenges the disability stereotype as Charlotte is portrayed as the strongest character. This can be seen from her use of weaponry, as well as the scene of her killing an animal. These bursts of rage, due to her disability, clearly makes Charlotte the strongest character in comparison to her fully abled peers. This can be compared to The Joker in the Batman series; The Joker is mentally unstable; however, he uses this to his advantage, therefore making him strong.
However, it can also be argued that False Indigo does reinforce the disability stereotype as Charlotte is not in full control of her own imagination. This can be seen as real life events are portrayed negatively in her head: when she is colouring in, but thinks she is cutting up an animal. This lack of control makes Charlotte seem unstable and therefore weaker than her mentally stable friends and family. This theme of characters being mentally can be linked to Lenny in ‘Of Mice and Men’. Lenny has clear learning difficulties, which means that he needs someone smart to take care of him. He is therefore weaker than his peers, due to this mental disability.
Ethnicity: Both of our main characters in our film are mixed race, this is very unusual for pretty much all film genres, but especially in horror as most main characters are usually white. There is a lot of stereotyping of race and ethnicity in horror, the films are usually aimed at a white audience and have a predominately white cast, with a few ‘token’ PoC. In percentages, 74% are white, with 11% are black, 4% are Latina, 4% are Asian, 3% from other places, and 4% other. The most famous horror films such as ‘The Shining’, ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Psycho’, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, ‘The Conjuring’ and ‘The Babadook’ all have a white main cast with an average of about 0-2 non-white cast members. It is a cliché that ‘the black guy dies first’, implying that they are less important characters, and are inadequate to survive in the horror scenario. Token black characters are also used for comic relief, playing on the racist stereotypes of black people. Since our film has a predominantly non-white cast, the main character is mixed race, and the last person to survive is not white, and we don’t play on any racial stereotypes, it breaks a lot of film clichés. A horror film that addresses this issue is ‘Get Out’ which tackles themes of racism and puts it into context for a white audience. Although the cast is about 50/50 black and white, since the film is directly about racism, it has to cast black actors. The only horror film that features a lot of non-white actors is about the characters not being white, this suggests that they are only black for plot points and the theme of the film, white characters are still considered the ‘neutral’ race. Our film challenges this point as the races of the characters are of little to no importance to the plot, showing that white people aren’t just the default race.
Age: In our film opening, we challenge the stereotypes surrounding age that are common in horror films. This is because both main characters are children as Charlotte is 12 years old and William is 14 years. In many horror films, such as Annabelle, children are seen as innocent and vulnerable. In Annabelle, the child is represented as vulnerable and in danger throughout the whole film. However, in False Indigo the main character, Charlotte Adams, is only 12 years old and she is represented as evil and dangerous because she murders innocent people, which challenges the stereotype that children are innocent. On the other hand, some horror films, such as The Ring, challenge the stereotype that children are innocent because the main character Samara, who is a young child of around the age of 12, is and evil person who kills innocent people after 7 days of them watching a particular tape. Furthermore, it is unusual to have both main characters as children in a horror film. For example, in Insidious, the main characters are all middle aged which uses the forms and conventions of real media products. However, both main characters in our film opening are children, which challenges the forms and conventions of real media products.
Gender: In our film introduction, we believe that we do both in terms of challenging and reinforcing the gender stereotypes. For example, we have used a 12-year-old girl in our film and we think that she challenges the stereotypes in a way that she has the most power as she is only imagining the shot of her brother dragging her out. Although from seeing just the opening scene you may believe that she is a damsel in distress as her brother drags her out of her room and for the fact that she has a mental illness, this means that she is all doing it to herself so in the viewer’s eyes she is weaker and seen as more vulnerable. This opinion will change when you see the rest of the film as she turns out to have the most power over her brother. Further on in the film the audience would find out that she kills her older brother of 14 years old. You also could say that for the boy we also reinforce and challenge the negative and positive stereotypes. For example, we show him as powerful and with more power this reinforces the gender stereotypes, but, as that was an illation or not real and he gets killed so if we had the rest of the film it would soon change to challenge the stereotypes.
Kathryn Damallie 