Representation by Joshua Hurst

The media including film and movies present different type of people in
different ways normally basing their appearance and personality on
stereotypes. This is because the public associate certain things and
actions with particular people. This makes it easier to convey to the
audience the characters personality by using well known and sometimes
inaccurate stereotypes. There are many different categories which have
stereotypes;
gender,
sexuality,
ethnicity,
class
and
status,
disability/ability, age and regional identity.
An example of a stereotypes used in films is, disable people portrayed as
weak, incapable and inferior towards able bodied people. This is because
in society they are displayed as dependent on able bodied people.
However, many disable people are physically and mentally very strong
and superior over the able bodied. For example, athletes in the
Paralympics are capable of doing everything which able bodied athletes
do in the Olympics.
Even males and females are shown differently through television and film.
Men are normally the protagonist and the one saving the day because
they are seen as stronger and more intelligent than females. However, the
antagonist (villain) is also normally a man with something unique about
him like an accent. In contrast females are displayed usually as helpless
and dim witted and normally the ones who need saving, the damsels in
distress . However, these stereotypes are not a fair representation on
gender roles in society because there are many female bosses and female
police officers who have dominance over men.
In our opening scene we are portraying the little girl as helpless and
innocent because she is small and white. This is evident by her mum
calling her to take her home as she is incapable of doing this herself. It is
clear the girl is innocent as on her phone she has saved a purple heart
emoji next to mum, this is a very childlike thing to do. She is also seen
as defenceless and that anyone could overpower her because of her
height displaying her vulnerability to the audience making them
empathise with her more. Also this will make the audience feel protective
over her as if she was their own child or little sister. In the next part of the
opening sequence she is displayed as being physically incapable of
inflicting harm on anyone because of how small she is. The use of a high
angle shot showing her petite figure emphasizes this displaying how she is
smaller than most things.
In our opening scene we have a Monster playing the antagonist in dark
clothing which limits you being able to see it. The size makes the monster

intimidating and presents it as strong so that it could overpower most

characters. The figure acts animal like when hiding in bushes/trees
portraying the unpredictability of it which installs fear into the audience
because they associate big beasts as harmful and deadly. The audience
will associate it with danger because of how hidden and discrete it is. This
represents it as being mysterious and adds fear and peril to the film
because of how the audience are unsure of the appearance. The monster
is also represented as being ugly and scary looking due to the makeup put
on its face. In films ugly people are usually represented as evil and never
the good guys . This representation is very easy to convey to the
audience because they will instinctively know by looking at the monster
that it is evil.
The representations of the different characters in our opening sequence
are instantly clear to the audience because we have based them on real
stereotypes making it easy to interpret the persona and personality of
them. We have based the characters in our opening sequence on
stereotypes and pre-conceived perceptions, which people have to certain
individuals makes it easier for the audience to understand how the
characters act. This means there is no need to display any sort of back
story for the characters because it is already clear how their character is.