Representation

Introduction: In this blog post i am going to study representation in social drama type films. Understanding how stereotypes are presented, and how i have presented them in my personal opening sequence.

Representation: To represent something is to describe or depict it, how something is built up in the mind by description or portrayal. It is probably the most important key concept in film, TV and media studies. It breaks down the way we think about certain groups of people and can depict cultural differences, and its all about the way that people, ideas and events are presented to us. Everyone stereotypes and thats a fact, here is a list of some stereotypes.

• The royal family (posh, snobby, wealthy, popular)

• British accent (cockney 'alright geez' how's it goin'? posh, 'Tally ho' old sport, this weather is exquisite)

• Sexism ( A man goes to work and earns the money, the woman stays at home and cooks and cleans while looking after the children)

• Sexuality (Being gay is wrong and immoral. Any feminine man is gay and any masculine woman is lesbian.)

3 critical questions that need to be taken into consideration and thought about.

• Who is represented (Age, gender, class, region, ethnicity, sexuality)
• Identify a lack of representation
• Deconstructing how they are being represented (Technical and cultural codes) to the audience

Understanding the difference between what is real and what is represented is vital to our understanding to any media text.

Representation of Social drama: Social class is the main focus while looking to Social dramas representations. The reason social class is some important in social dramas is because that is what we judge people on, by their occupation, income, manners, background and education. You have the upper class, often people inherited with wealth and known best for their money, then you have the middle class including industrialists, professionals, shop owners and business people. Then last but not least the lower or working class people whop are agricultural, factory workers and some miners. In my case I portray myself as a lower class teen, you can judge this by the clothes I wear, a hoodie, baseball cap and tracksuit bottoms. Also throughout filming my opening sequence I use basic forms of transport such as trains, the audience can instantly tell what class i belong too and can have a very basic understanding of my background all down to the stereotype. So overall I feel that i have carefully thought about how my character is being represented and should cause no offence due to my basic imitation.