Evaluation of Distribution Institution

Presented as a DVD extra, but can be viewed here:

From left to right: Sarah, Shannon, Leah, Lewis

Evaluation of Representation

Representation of Women

• Our piece focuses on the relationship between three family members; the mother and the two daughters, therefore it seems productive to analyse the representation of women and teenage girls in our extract.
 
• In our genre of film, it is not out of the ordinary to see some of the main characters as teenagers or younger as they are seen as more naive and more vulnerable therefore make for a better victim. However they are also known for not listening to instructions or following advice which inevitably leads them to danger or harm. If we have a look at how our teenage characters are represented in our piece we can see that they have characteristics of both representations; rebellious and also vulnerable.  

Classic vulnerable child stereotype

• We can see that they are rebellious and sly by the way that the younger sister sneaks into her room and steals from her drawer, this can be seen here:

• This is, although more extreme, seen in the media in examples such as the London riots where one of the main issues was teenagers stealing from shops. Although it is on a much more extreme level, the idea of stealing and being rebellious is a common view of teenagers in today’s society.

Teen looting

 

• We also can see that they are represented as vulnerable during the conversation scene between the two sisters. The use of mise-en-scène plays a massive role in showing off this representation by the way that they are both under a blanket and are both sitting close to each other on a sofa.  This shows that they are vulnerable as being under a cover often represents some kind of protection against something and shows that they both feel exposed and in need of comfort.

• Children are often used as being the victim in other thrillers such as ‘The Woman in Black’ as only children are affected by the curse that the woman brings upon them. This shows the true vulnerability and shows that a child’s mind is much more easily deceived than one of an adult. This is useful for the genre and shows how often media representations are driven by genre needs.

 

 

• The mother is represented in a way that matches the way in which the ‘evil’ stepmother is represented in some Disney films. This is due mainly to the dialogue between the two sisters as they talk about how their mother is never at home very often and they also, in a very scared way say “Mum's home, run!” which implies that their relationship with her has an element of fear. This gives the audience the impression that the mother doesn't really take notice of the girls which is one of the attributes of the ‘evil stepmother’ as mentioned.

 

• With a comparison of these two photos we can clearly see that the mother in our clip also shares the same mannerisms as the ‘evil stepmother’ from the Disney films. They both have this slight grin on their face which is often a big give away that something is being planned or that things are going to plan.

 

• The tracking shot from behind and the use of the all black costume gives the audience very little information about who she is and what she is like. The use of props and music however do make her out to be a very strange character as the music doesn't quite match the action that she is doing. This creates a very strange sense that something is not quite right as giving flowers is a sign of generosity and the music does not give off that impression.

• Critics such as Pickering feel that using common stereotypes as we have done can be dangerous and harmful, as they reinforce social conventions and perpetuate social views that are "biased and limited".
• While we have used two well-established female stereotypes, I don't think we fall into this category as the representation of the girls is generally sympathetic and their vulnerability is as much to do with their age as their gender; while the 'evil stepmother' stereotype is one that has its effect by going against the general perception of society that all mothers love their children and would do anything for them. It woeks in the thriller genre exactly because it is what the children will be least expecting,makig for a more exciting plot.

 

Evaluate your representation of specific social groups in your piece.

Representation of Women

• Our piece seems to focus on the relationship between the sisters and their mother, and shows mainly a representation of females as it is an all-female cast in the first two minutes. Two of our characters are young girls and there is also a mother. 

• Young people/children usually fit well into our genre as they are vulnerable and suit the victim roll well. However they are also rebellious and mischievous, putting them in dangerous situations as they are stereotyped as bad listeners and curious, which gets them into trouble. So one factor that has affected our representation is genre conventions and the needs of the narrative.

The children in 'The woman in Black' are seen as innocent

 until they are possessed.

The characters in our film play as sisters who are close, yet also mischievous

• These representations are usually shown in children's film such as Cinderella, where there is a evil mother and an innocent child. 
  

The evil stepmother in Disney's 'Cinderella' creates 

a negative view of mothers as she is sly and horrid

The evil mother in our film is also sneaky as we can see 

from her eerie laugh at the end of the sequence

• We reinforced the stereotype of an evil stepmother by making her cook an unusual brew, making her seem more mysterious and frightening as the audience does not know what is cooking in the pot.

The unusual stew that the mum makes adds to her scary persona

• Theory surrounding representation in thrillers mainly focuses females and young people, and is therefore relevant to our film. Lacey suggests women, and especially teenage girls are often victims in films. This is because society is trying to take revenge on them as a disruptive influence. 

Sidney Prescott plays the innocent female teen role in scream

• Lacey goes on to also suggest scary films tap into deep-rooted social fears. The role of the ‘evil stepmother’ is already a common fairy-tale stereotype that people have from childhood. All the roles played by characters in our film links back to Lacey’s theories. For example, women are the victim in our films. The two sisters are afraid of their mother, and what she might do to them. And a mother that turns on her children is socially more unacceptable and frightening than other villains.

• I believe our victim stereotype works because girls are seen as more of an easy target, and are seen to be more vulnerable than boys in media terms. This positions the audience to feel sympathetic towards the girls, building a relationship between them. Also teenage girls are stereotyped to be very superficial about their looks, and through media repetition they are often perceived to be very curious. This could show that society is going against them as they are a disruptive unwanted influence

• Young females are presented in different ways in psychological thrillers. They are usually vulnerable and an easy target, and are usually the people who die or get killed first. This is because they are seen to be irrelevant, and of not much use to anybody. 

• This is a negative representation as the women are usually killed off without even being given the chance to show themselves to the audience and also the fact that they are considered irrelevant to the plot. This is also reinforced as the protagonists of psychological thrillers are usually male, as they are seen to be more macho and strong whereas women are portrayed as the weaker sex. There are no men in our sequence allowing the women to make an impact on the audience
.

In 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' the women are killed off first as they are weak and give in

•   Another representation of young women in psychological thrillers is that they’re deserving of their torture/death. Most of the girls victimise and bully the killer or villain first. They are shown to be rude and arrogant, and belittle the future killer almost making it reasonable for them to be killed as they deserve it. This is also a negative representation of young women and I do not feel we have used this strerotypical representation. Although the girls are curious, they are likebale characters who do not deserve to be terrorised.

Summary

• We do use female stereotypes - the evil mother and the princesses who need to be saved (Propp)
• We do this to create the narrative set up we need to get the audience interested in our film.
• The representation of the girls is sympathetic and mainly positive
• The representation of the mother is ambiguous at this stage and becomes negative alter in the film. We do not think this is a damaging representation as the whole reason this stereotype works for thrillers is because it reverses the convention of mothers being loving and caring. The reversal in a thriller actually tends to reinforce this main stereotype.

Evaluation of Representation

Evaluation of Representation of Women in our Piece

• Our cast consists of all women, a mother and her two younger daughters.

• In the first 2 minutes, all the characters are shown as having 'issues' - the girls are scared of their mother and don;t know what happened to their father; the mother visits a grave and makes soup but still seems sinister. Immediately women are seen as falling into two classic archetypes - the villain and the princess (Propp). The younger girls are seen as vulnerable as they’re young and innocent, perfect victims.

'Princess' archetype for female characters

• However the other actress in our film is the mother who we eventually find out as an audience to be the villain. We can compare this to even a simple fairytale Disney film, Cinderella, Repunzel, the ‘evil’ stepmother being cruel in one way or another to their daughters.

• This shows that in media, age can possibly redirect the representation of women. She is in fact a mother and mothers have a representation of being loving, caring and warm. However it does fit into the ‘wicked stepmother’ stereotype which is also common in media, where the older woman becomes jealous and therefore evil.

Wicked stepmother archetype

 

• The two children are represented in two main ways in the thriller. They are seen as adorable and vulnerable, we show this with the shot reverse shot interaction of their close conversation about their mother. Their emotions show how they feel and by the way they are sitting both wrapped up in covers and their body language shows they can have a close relationship, the softer side to a child.

Conversation showing a vulnerable side

 

• They also show a rebellious and cheeky side at the same time. This is important because if they did not disobey their mother at times, the plot could not move forward. However, it also reinforces a common stereotype about 'stroppy' teenagers found in e.g. soaps such as "Eastenders".

Stroppy teenage girls in Eastenders

• The sisters relationship also have two sides to it which can represent the way children are, we see a teasing relationship as siblings try and irritate each other as we see at the start by Erin teasing Shannon with the love letter.
 
• On the other hand we see a protective and closer side to both of the girls as they feel distant towards their mother and comfort each other on the sofa. This shows that although there is a sisterly competitiveness between the two, they see family as the bigger importance and again links into the fact that they represented as the more potential victims; this can suggest that their youth is more important then their gender when we are looking at representation, which is usually more complex than just looking at one specific social group.

Confrontation

Looking for love letter

• By making our ‘villain’ a female, we are still within horror / thriller conventions but what is more unusual is that our female villain is indeed a mother and we do not know what her suspicious motivation is yet.
• I think that this changes the female representation a little. The representation of our mother is mixed. She is shown as a warm and motherly-like in the use of her costume and the acting style of the actress.

 

Motherly stereotypes

•  She is also seen by cooking the girls’ dinner, which is also a stereotypical thing for a mother to do for her children and usually connotes caring. What she is wearing makes her look like a regular mother. Adding this together, our representation on the surface is not a negative one.
 
• However as we look more into the sound and dialogue, there is a different picture. She is never at home with the children, she suspiciously firstly visits a grave and we see she has blood on her hands. Sinister non-diegetic music plays when she appears. This then questions what the mother is truly like and gives a negative representation as some mothers aren’t all what they stereotypically seem to be like. It also breaks a social convention which can make it seem more threatening.

Soup cooking - music makes this seem sinister

• This mixed representation is important for our narrative as the key 'hook' for the audience is what the mother might really be like. So here we see that representation is dictated by genre conventions as well as social conventions.

 

Evaluation of Representation in Coursework

Evaluating the representation of a specific social group in my piece

 

 

SOCIAL GROUP - WOMEN

• Throughout the first 2 minutes of our filming the two sisters are represented as vulnerable and weak, however they are seen as rebellious and mischievous at the same time. 


• Therefore our film offers a mixed representationof women.  There are only female characters shown in the first two minutes of our film. The mother is portrayed as a wicked mother which taps into a classical female stereotype of the evil older woman carrying out a revenge on younger women. 

Close attention paid to sisters and their relationship

 

• The sisters are represented in a positive way where the audiences feel sympathetic towards them.  This is reinforced through the dialogue used, costume and the camera angles used. For example there is a use of POV shots, to allow the audience to feel more emotionally attached to the young girls. The teenage girls also receive the most screen time, therefore allowing the audience to feel sympathetic to these characters. They talk about missing their dad and not being sure what happened to him, making them seem alone and vulnerable.

Shows relationship and huddling under blanket suggests vulnerability

 

• When filming the opening sequence we weren't focusing on how we would represent the teenage girls and the mother in the story. We were just trying to create an interesting narrative. It is only looking back that we see that we have used an almost fairytale like narrative with the children being slightly scared of an older woman who seems friendly on the surface but might not be.
• Our film has many stereotypical elements. It starts off with the two young girls arguing over a letter. Teenage girls are often represented as argumentative and catty as shown in the first two minutes of the film. Our film has a similar representation to the film 'Mothers Day' where there are teenagers who also behave in this stereotypical spoilt way as well as a mother who is the murderer. They have portrayed the teenagers in the same way we have, such as being argumentative and mischievous teens. This is both a common media stereotype and an important narrative one - if they weren't like this, they wouldn't be curious or disobedient enough to go into the room they've been banned from.
• Having a young cast of mostly teenagers/ children is often found in psychological thriller films. This relates back to the idea that they often seen as more susceptible and young, therefore they fit into a perfect victim role. These teenage girls are arguing which gives a sense that they almost deserve to get in trouble. Lacey suggests that horro films act as a collective revenge on women and teenagers, and the same might be true of thrillers. This reinforced in our extract by using actresses that are young and look vulnerable and are conveyed to be innocent through dialogue e.g. the soft converation on the sofa.

Shows curiosity and disobedience

 

• Teenagers are represented in two different ways in thriller films; there are usually the vulnerable and weak youngsters however there are also the types that are ignorant and rude. On the other hand in a lot of thrillers there is usually a teenager who is conveyed as the killer that is seen as out of control and is a threat to the people around them.For example in the film Adulthood teenagers are represented as villains and disrespectful.

• Where as on the other hand teenagers are represented as vulnerable and weak, as seen in the film 'Insidious'.

• We have combined these two representations to create characters who are sympathetic enough for the audience to care what happens to them but rebellious enough to move the plot on and provide action.

• On the other hand through the first 2 minutes of our film, the mother is represented in an ambiguous way, which allows the audience to wonder what her role will be. She does not necessarily do anything bad, but it allows the audience to get a sense of what parent she could be through the use of music in particular as the non-diegetic track that plays whenever she appears is quite sinister, and we also see that the girls are scared of her reaction if she catches them by the door. She is making soup for them which seems loving, but might be more sinister.



Loving and kind mother from "Twilight"



Violent mother from "Take the Lead"

 

• There are two main media stereotypes of parents, there are usually parents who are portrayed as loving and generous  to their children, often seen as responsible careers and there are also abusive parents at the same time who are against everything their children do. In this film we have represented the mother as a parent with psychological issues that will arise later on in the film. This is due to her abnormal behaviour that she is conveying to the audience in the beginning of the first two minutes. 

Soup making seems sinister

 

Visit to mysterious grave

Coursework Before Taking A Break

Here is the coursework as it is before we take a break from it; we will be evaluating what we have done so far and then coming back to make any final changes.

 

Cut for Audience Feedback