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.