The Evaluation Part Five - How does your media product represent different social classes?

Teenagers

Teenagers are negatively portrayed in our film because of how we chose to portray our characters in our full media product. Our main character, is a teenager himself who conveys most of the social problems that we wanted to show in our film. The main character Tate, is an alcoholic, depressed and violent, which some of our target audience may be able to personally identify with as these traits are very common among the youth, especially in today's time. Me and my group wanted bold and brave conventions in our film so that it would stand out among the weaker films. We also thought that these were serious issues that go too unchecked so we wanted to bring it into the light so that our audiences understand the true harm that these items bring. We also bought in the convention of teenage pregnancy  because of Tate's girlfriend getting pregnant in the film with another man. We thought young people who are able to personally identify with being underage and pregnant would need advice and once they saw a strong, independent female, pregnant character they could draw their courage to use as their own.

Men

Our protagonist is a male and presents them in an aggressive and negative way compared to other men in other movies, as to how they usually play the heroes. We subverted this in our film to make our protagonist an antagonist as he is not considered "good" but is actually more "bad". Tate's first response to finding out his girlfriend cheated on him is to go into an aggressive, alcoholic state and chooses not to approach it responsibly. This portrays men as arrogant and childish as Tate doesn't actually address his problem but more runs away from it with alcohol and violence. We wanted audience who can personally identify with this to learn a lesson that they should approach their problems responsibly and not turn to abuse of items to solve their problems in life.

Women

Tate's girlfriend portrays women as irresponsible and disloyal as she chooses to cheat on Tate and doesn't even have any respect for the position that she has put Tate into, only texting him to inform that she's pregnant not even saying it in person. This negative portrayal is intended to nudge audiences on what they shouldn't do if ever encountered in this situation of underage pregnancy. However there are scenes where the audience can really see that Tate's girlfriend is in remorse and regret of her actions which lets them sympathise with her, and understand her situation. It is arguable that she is a counter-type to how women are stereotypically portrayed in films as women are often denoted as wiser, more loyal and anti-promiscuous.

Religion and Ethnicity

Tate's girlfriend is muslim and even though there are laws against sex before marriage she still engages in these activities which are deemed un-moral by her religion and sometimes in society. Tate and his girlfriend's ethnicities are more rare in British Social Realisms as asian people are rarely the main characters. Even when they are subordinate characters they are obedient, shy and intelligent but both of our main characters subvert this stereotype to shock our audiences and break the mould, just like FilmFour aims to do. We had adopted this idea of not having white main characters from the British Social Realism Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and used it to express the lifestyle differences of our characters.