Task 2 - How does our media product represent particular social groups?

My political / cyber bases thriller conforms to aspects of ethnicity and gender.

In casting we had to be very careful making sure we chose actors that would signify the stereotypical genders we wanted. So for Germany and the UK we chose two white men from a 40 to 50 age range.

This conforms to stereotypical leaders as rarely countries have woman leaders as men are thought of as the dominant sex and the breadwinners; they are also thought to have more of an interest in news, politics and business. In addition Germany and the UK are white bases countries so it wasn’t likely either of them would have black leaders. For France we chose an anti-stereotypical leader and cast a woman. Otherwise it would have been a male predominant based film and I think it’s good to try and get across that woman can be strong leaders and aren’t always the subservient/stay at home wives that just cook and clean, that is just one much generalised stereotype. Using Audrey as the French leader shows that hopefully women’s voices will be accepted one day as important.

For our administrator we chose Alison as she was a good actress, and it is very stereotypical of men important men to have women assistance, I think this is because men are known as messy and unorganised where as women and stereotypically the opposite so important men need a woman to keep them in order.

Although the current President of the U.S. (Barack Obama) is black which slightly goes against stereotypes, we didn’t have the option of a suitable black actor so we decided to go with Roy who fits in with a tall, 50s looking, white leader stereotype. He may not fit the current leader but looking at past Presidents he suits the role well.

For our hacker role we chose Walter from our group as we already had 5 actors it was getting to be very complicated and Walters’s foreign appearance fitted to a Middle Eastern part well.

The ideas development for the rest of the film were along the lines of America and its allied countries were being broken into so needed to join together to ‘eliminate the threat’, but as they were in contact they were being tapped into so the hacking group knew their every move. We decided the breaking in should come from a middle eastern area as that is stereotypically know to cause trouble for the MEDCs in the western areas. Keeping the stereotypes on the story line was to make sure our audience will find it easier to understand who is against who so they can follow the story without a large amount of confusing which could of potentially put them off the rest of the film.

We cast our leaders as 40s to 50s age rang as it is thought that the older you are the wiser you get. There are very rarely young politicians high up as they aren’t as knowledgeable in life so can’t be given life changing decisions, we needed our actors to put across their mature characters seriously.

As it was only 2 minutes and only two of the characters we didn’t try to put across different sexualities in the different characters as it wasn’t a key part in our storyline, maybe later on in the film their could be wives or husbands involved but for now it isn’t very important.
I feel it is already quite evident that the characters (apart from the hacker) are from a high class as they are leaders they have extremely important jobs of running countries, and they all had smart costumes of suits showing their expensive work clothes they can easily afford.

Different Ethnicity is shown in the hacker’s character as Walter has foreign features to the leaders, like his darker shade of skin tone. There will be more involvement of ethnicity developed in the film, as there will be some link to why the western areas are being hacked with religion, as it stereotypically is partly behind foreign attacks.

To summaries we see the United States, one of the most powerful countries under huge threat; this is commonly used in films as an anti-stereotypical action as America is so powerful it is unlikely that anyone would be able to go up against it. The U.S. then go to other countries to for support and to ally so they are all protected.