2. How does your media product represent particular social groups: females perspective

"Hi, My name is Georgina. I subvert the generic stereotypes of young women. I defy the view of women being vulnerable and weak. In some audiences eyes i could be seen as crazy. However in some cases the underlying message of empowerment will become clear. In this case we wanted audiences to become oppositional towards the character. This way the audience will question and engage with our film."

From the very beginning of producing this thriller opening I felt very strongly about raising relevant and up to date issues through our characters. When working as part of a group sometimes everyone's ideas don't fit well together and it can be very difficult to convey your point of view or to raise awareness of a subject matter in a couple of minutes. Obviously with it being a thriller opening as well we had to compromise and try and make our characters fit in to the genre or sub genres, even if this meant using extreme exaggeration of a characters beliefs or characteristics to get the message across to audiences. I feel that feminist perspectives need to be brought to attention via the media. I think audiences everywhere respond better to A) celebrities they look up to, B) Films that make them question their ideals and C) Characters which they can relate to. In my case I wanted the lead roll to be a empowered woman who wasn't going to let the male in her life dictate her decisions, however to keep it fitting with the genre of film we had to create some scary aspects to her character and dramatize all her decisions and upon reflection her character might not present the ideals we have easily and clearly to audiences. This is where the reception theory becomes very relevant to our thriller. We left a lot of mystery for audiences within our first couple of minutes, we did this in order to create extreme responses or questions. I wanted audiences to go away thinking about our film and in turn questioning themselves and their ideals.

At the beginning of the year I read about a feminist perspective theory called "The Male Gaze" by Laura Mulvey. In this article she outlined the various ways in which the male gaze works in media texts. Here are the nine general ideas:
1. The representation of woman as a sexual fantasy and from a heterosexual male point of view.
2. Scopophilia- the pleasure involved in looking at other peoples bodies.
3. Objectification of female characters.
4. Patriarchal society.
5. Active male and passive female.
6. Men - controlling subjects.
7. Women as an image.
8. Men do the looking and women are there to be looked at.
9. Needs of the male ego.

In our film I wanted to use this theory as a way of contrasting and subverting the typical roles of women in the media. This is why we reversed some of the typical roles around. For example we made the male in our film passive and the female active. We don't present our female character as a sexual fantasy or objectify her, instead we give her the power and make the male the victim.