Evaluation - How does your media product represent different social groups?

Within my media product, I represent only a couple of different social groups.

The first of these social groups is young men, as my character, Sean Saunders, is age 19 and falls perfectly into this category. This character is perceived in the piece as weak and vulnerable, as, in the story, he has fallen victim to another character. This could be echoed for much of the youth nowadays, especially as there is an increasing emphasis upon safety of young people as a result of recent abductions.


However, you could say that this representation of youth is perhaps challenging modern conventions. This is because many young people could be perceived as intimidating and aggressive, especially towards the elderly members of society. Indeed, this is the case in films such as 'Kidulthood' where the stereotypes of young people are represented as just that. Nevertheless, 'Long Road To Ruin' is pinpointing the more vulnerable members of modern youth, which, despite going against modern conventions, still represents a large number of young people today.

Like in this scene, where the high- angled side shot connotes weakness and allows the viewer themselves to seem higher up and therefore more important. This contrasts the intimidating steriotypical image of that portrayed by 'Kidulthood'.








The second social group is represented by my character Dr. Banes, who represents more mature, perhaps those further up the social ladder, members of society. He is definitely the more dominant of the two characters, which is suggested through the use of shadows as it connotes mystery and power. Such characters are used in films such as 'Lord of the Rings' in Saruman.



To conclude, my media product, whilst only representing only two different social groups within the opening two minutes, demonstrates contrasting members of modern society; the naive, innocent, vulnerable youth and the dominant, successful social group.