How does your media product represent particular social groups? Ev2

A stereotypical feature of teen angst films is the portrayal of different social groups within a specific age group.

We decided to portray stereotypical characters within our film as we had a scene in a school setting. The different social groups give the scene more depth and more defiant characters. We chose the four main social groups: geeks, chavs, popular girls and sporty boys, as they are the most recognizable.

It also means that within the audience, a person has different groups of people to identify with if they can't relate to the main character. The social groups are also recognized by people who can relate with people from other groups.

We chose to use people we knew who had personalities that could be exaggerated to fit the stereotype of one of the four social groups

Geeks: 

 
The academically perfect student who achieve the highest grades possible but seem to have no life outside of school and homework. In films they are portrayed as unattractive, wearing glasses, braces and clothes that went out of fashion years before the time period the film is set in.

 I played the main geek in our film as I am seen by my friends as academic and quite shy. For the filming, I exaggerated these traits in myself by having a notepad which I continuously worked in as well as wearing stereotypical geek glasses and a t-shirt with digital coding on.This fits with the stereotype in films and the media of a geek as I made myself seem academic and not necessarily the most attractive.

Here is an image of three of the geeks in our film. They are shown doing work which none of the other people in the classroom scene are doing. They fit the general stereotype of geeks as they are all wearing the same style of clothing, even though it is slightly outdated. Taylor's purple jacket is zipped right up to the top, connoting embarrassment or unease within the social environment. He also has facial hair which is not normal within a high-school setting, making him seem undesirable in the context of this film, shown by how far away I am sitting from him.

Chavs

A chav is defined as, "a young lower-class person typified by brash and loutish behavior and the wearing of (real or imitation) designer clothes." They are stereotypically shown as wearing tracksuits and hoodies, smoking and using a vocabulary made up of mostly slang or swear words. Like the geeks, chavs are also seen by most people as socially undesireable, so this is put across in the way that they are represented in the media. Some of the best examples of chavs are shown not in film, but through real life people shown on tv.

Above is the transformation between the people who played the characters in real life and in the film.We got the chav characters in Baby on Board to seem as though they don't really care about school, as this is the typical attitude of real life chavs.This means that the characters fit their natural stereotype as they are acting and behaving with the same mannerism as chavs that the audience will see in the street or their school. Also, there are cigarettes on the table as well as the characters wearing typical "chav" clothing such as leather jackets and hoodies. This also helps the stereotype as by using this mise-en-scene, we are making them seem more realistic to the way chavs are seen in real life.

Popular girls

The popular girls are often seen as the "queen bees" of the school in real life, and so the film industry picked up this stereotype and made it even more real. They are always shown as the pretty girls, loved by everyone in the school and dating all of the "hot" sporty boys in their year and the years above. They run the school and everyone is shown to bow down to them. They often wear stylish, top of the range clothing and  match colour schemes so they look like a tighter group. An example of this in a film is Regina George and the "Plastics" in mean girls.

In our film , we used a few attractive females to play the popular girls, the main one played by Ellen Ryan-Gill.













In the film, the popular girls are all shown wearing the same colour scheme of black and khaki green clothing. This makes them seem like more of a clique, following the stereotype set up in teen angst films where the populars wear the same colours to make them in fashion and very similar. They also have stylish bags on the tables showing that they can afford nice things. Ellen is the person who reads out the note that has been passed around the classroom, showing that she's the most powerful in the class and everyone wants to please her.


Sporty boys

The sporty boys (otherwise known as the "jocks" or "Jack the Lads") are generally shown as the popular boys in the school. An example of this is the Wildcats in High School Musical. In teen angst films, they are shown as the attractive boys in the school, always seen wearing either fashionable, attractive clothes or their school sport team uniform. They usually have props such as footballs, basketballs or other sporting related items as iconography. If they are not shown as sporty, they are normally shown as being the popular boys that all the girls want to date.

 

  




Below are the boys we chose to use for our "popular" male group in our teen angst film. We chose them as they are seen as popular within our school's social groups, and they are also funny and charismatic like the stereotype of the sporty boys. They are also wearing clothes that were fashionable in the time that the film is set, and so this makes them relatable to real life as well as fitting the stereotype of being stylish. They have hairstyles that are all different but roughly the same colours, making them seem different to one another but at the same time a tight group. The group are laughing and joking together, showing that they are a team and all together.