Evaluation - 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Females

Perhaps the most important way our film represents particular social groups is to challenge the image of innocence which often surrounds females, and challenging the ‘mans world’ which is seen in most thriller subgenres. To use a simple plot with females as protagonists and victims challenges and replenishes something that would otherwise be very usual. This modern twist on an old story was put in place to make the opening sequence pack more of a punch when the first twist comes in. While we did not follow all conventions of females in film, we did use some which help the viewers make assumptions of our characters. These are that these females are bitchy and underhand in their ways, characteristics of the archetype film woman ‘bitch’. The age of our characters is for them to be young and naïve. These archetypes are used in film, which helps as viewers like familiarity; the whole ‘bitch’ archetype is optimised in Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2005), but while that presents shallower blacks or whites in terms of a bitch or not a bitch, our film offers shades of grey where viewers will have to watch on to clear up who’s the villain of the two. This really goes against the Levi/Strauss theory of opposites, which I feel is outdated and irrelevant to deeper character development of our film. Nothing is clear cut in the opening. This is anchored by the title, Double Edge. We aimed to get more interesting character profiles, rather than simplistic and mundane stereotypes.

How did we do this?

- Make the one which is initially more evil have a consience (samantha)

This is done through the shots of contemplation and pause, like the smoking sequence at the end, effects help illustrate what is perhaps her frustration and indecision,

- Make the audience wonder...

By getting Samantha to call K Williams a bitch the audience wonder whether Samantha is in the right or if she was driven to this by an evil K Williams. This was picked up on by some audience feedback which refered to K Williams as the bitch, so they may have sided with Samantha.

- Using actresses of our target audiences age

By using actresses within the same age range (and same gender) the audience can easily relate to the characters. I think that our representation in particular means that the viewers will need to wait for more information before deciding on who they like or dislike and who is what archetype. We wanted to represent the age group relatively realisticly (young adults).

London

Honestly all that is shown is a quick snippet of a middle class suburban area, will people know its London, I doubt it. Unless their observant enough to read the adress on the envelope I doubt people realise. But it is a typically English mise-en-scen.