Evaluation Question 2

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Females

We decided to represent women in a different way than would normally be seen in an action movie. Here is the protagonist of our film, Ava:

We thought that the roles of women in action movies were often highly stereotypical, with women portraying 'the damsel in distress' role and often simply being a love interest for the main lead, male role. 

This is how a female character would traditionally be represented in an action film:

This is Megan Fox in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (Bay, 2010), and she is an example of a stereotypical woman character in an action movie. She is highly sexualised, wearing skimpy clothing and lots of make-up, and plays the love interest of the male lead in the film. We thought it would be much more interesting to challenge these conventions of women in action films, by having a female lead who does not conform to the typical stereotypes. 

We dressed her in more neutral clothing, as opposed to girly clothes, including black boots, black jeans and a green combat jacket. We thought this helped deter the common sexualised portrayal of women, that Ava is a smart and tough girl, who is much more than simply a damsel in distress or love interest. However, she is still a beautiful girl with curly blond hair; making her relatable also to the more girly girls who would watch 'Mute'. 

Teenagers

We turned the traditional representation of teenagers being obsessed with technology on it's head; shaping a world where everyone, young and old, is completely engrossed in their phones all the time. 

While it may seem like a typical portrayal of teenagers at first, with them all on their phones at the bus stop, we also see a younger boy and middle aged woman using technology as well, and it soon becomes apparent that everyone in the world is hooked on their mobile phones, not just teenagers. 

Also, the main three teenage characters completely challenge this stereotype, as they spend the duration of the film trying to stop this dependancy on technology, while the adult characters in the film are the ones trying so desperately to keep everybody on their mobiles.

Here we see everyone except Ava engrossed in their mobile phones: