MAIN Post 12.2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film we had to make sure we showed the characters profile well making sure we represented each characters social status. Our main character is Sophie, a young 15 year old teenage girl as you can see from the photograph to the left. I believe our character represents a female teenage social group well as she is a typical teenager at a public school, who has pressures from various aspects in her life. Having to deal with a mother that never has the time for her, the stress of GCSE'S and typical social pressures it seems that Sophie is any regular teenager, if not slightly lonelier then others. Her costume as seen in the photograph consists of a blazer, tie, school shirt, black tights and a black skirt. Sophie's appearance signifies to the audience that she is in school and with her dress being somewhat 'scruffy' it links to her background story of not caring about her appearance, instead choosing to be focused on school work. The audience also see Paige who wears the same school uniform however her's is 'smarter' and more formal, which puts her in the same social group as Sophie but also shows a contrast between the two girls. I believe our media product here represents her in her social group well because of the specific costumes we picked for Sophie to wear.

The other main character in 'Behind Blue Eyes' is Alan, Paige's father and Sophie's abuser. Alan is expected to fit into a social group of someone who know's how to dress well, but someone who has a dark secret. Wearing a smart dress shirt and plain black trousers with black shoes Alan's character is put in the social group of an 'average joe', meaning he doesn't want to be recognisable in a crowd, showing he has some sort of sordid secret. Alan is a middle aged business man/maths tutor so is expected to dress formally however he is rather conservative choosing to keep himself off the radar. 

Here are two images of characters (the victim and the abuser) in both film and television that represent the social groups our characters belong to. We researched into characters that went through similar story lines and found that television brought up the subject of sexual abuse and grooming a lot more in comparison to film, perhaps because it would not be an obvious hit in the box office.