Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Before creating our film, we researched about different social groups used in thriller/murder-mystery films. A common stereotypical character found in most of these films was a bully, which in almost every film were black males. A common stereotype with black individuals is that they are exotic and criminalistic. We used our media product to represent this by allowing Ben to play the bully as he is a black male.

Stereotypical bully

Bully used in our film

One of the other characters included in our film was a victim. This character gets his phone stolen which could be seen as bullying. In most films we had researched, most victims to bullying were scrawny white teenagers who were involved with 'geeky' activities such as reading or playing the piano. With this in mind, we decided to allow Mortada to play the victim as he was fulfilled these requirements and is also the reason why he was playing the piano to allow the viewers to identify he is a geek/victim. We represented geeks as being vulnerable and not being able to stick up for themselves as in our film the victim relied on his guardian angel to solve his problems. However, this supports stereotypes found in society about geeks as they are seen as being defenceless and rely on a greater power to help them.

 

Stereotypical victim to bullying

Our victim to bullying