Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation of gender

    The characters within our narrative present the traditional generic archetypes in the fact that we have a male antagonist Ian Moone and a female victim Sam; the stereotype of females being more likely to be the victim than the aggressor born from Government statistics. The antagonist Ian Moone is also a stranger to our victim Sam, a crime being committed by a stranger being statistically less likely to occur, adding to the fear and tension within our thriller opening. This conforms to the stereotype of males being dominant over females, reinforcing their masculinity. One example of these gender archetypes in other media productions is Marian Crane and Norman Bates in Hitchcock's thriller 'Psycho'.

Hitchcock's 'Psycho' (1960)

Sam  

    We decided to call our ambiguous victim Sam as it is a fairly common unisex name, which makes it seem as if the victim could have been anyone -evoking tension within the audience by making them feel as if it could well have been them in Sam's position.

    Sam's costume was inspired by the character of Richard from Shane Meadows' psychological thriller 'Dead Man's Shoes'. We decided to 'flip' the idea of Richard's style of clothing being used for an antagonist (as Richard 'takes revenge' on those who had wronged his brother Anthony) to the victim as in our narrative, there are points in which it seems as if the ambiguity of Sam as a character briefly leads the audience to question whether or not she actually is the innocent victim they were all lead to believe she was. The use of this costume also help to portray Sam as less stereotypically feminine, possibly suggesting that she may not have much of a chance up against our male antagonist Ian Moone if she was more of a generic female character. 

Richard from Shane Meadow's 'Dead Man's Shoes' (2004)

Ian Moone

    We decided to call our male antagonist character Ian Moone after Sqweegel, a character in an episode of the same name; from the 11th series of 'CSI'. In the show, Sqweegel is an enigmatic male serial killer who goes by the alias of 'Ian Moone' - an anagram for 'I am no one'. As our antagonist is also very enigmatic - wearing only dark colours, following the victim and never revealing his face until the end of our thriller production and also watches and attacks victims in their own homes, much like Sqweegel; we felt that this would be a very fitting name. Also, the last name 'Moone' connotes darkness, lunar and lunacy; which is reflective of him being a psychotic individual - a conventional thriller character type. The last name of 'Moone' is also very significant as our exterior location is Weybourne beach, and the moon controls the tide of the sea; suggesting that Ian Moone is the dominant party and is very much in his element whilst stalking Sam on the beach setting, as it is very much 'his location' due to the connotations of this. 

    Ian Moone is portrayed as violent and seeking dominance, much like the Moore Brothers - with a similar last name to our antagonist; forshadowing the fact that Ian Moone is a dangerous character as the Moore Brothers are a 'serial killing team'. The Moore Brothers are characters featured in the episode 'The wheels on the bus...' from the 8th series of 'Criminal Minds'; where they abducted a bus full of teenagers and decided to create a real-life version of a video game the two were obsessed with, using a large, abandoned mill to stage their 'game', and their victims as their 'characters' in the game; forcing them to kill one another. The fact that our antagonist Ian Moone conducts an attack on a female character - our victim Sam- could suggest that the character is trying to reinforce his masculinity as males are stereotypically more dominant and have more power than women. 

Joshua and Matthew Moore from'Criminal Minds' 8x8 (2012)

     We wanted Ian Moone to have a costume composed of only dark items of clothing, to portray his cold, calculating nature as well as reinforcing his masculinity. The use of a dark costume also helps to reinforce the feel of enigma about the character, making him seem very shadowy and shifty; which would be very beneficial in helping him to execute his devious and repulsive actions that are soon to unfold. This also helps the audience to identify that Ian Moone is the antagonist of our narrative, causing them to feel disgust and distrust towards this character. 

Sqweegel from 'CSI' 11x4 (2010)

Representation of ethnicity

    Both our antagonist Ian Moone and our victim Sam are white British youths, primarily due to the fact that when casting for our production we only really had a choice of actors who were white British as there are few ethnic minorities in our group/class and our school in Norwich. Although, the fact that the attack is on someone of the same ethnicity to the antagonist suggests that he is not conducting racially motivated attacks. This is similar to the British male character Morell -who is also fairly unstable and deviant, much like our antagonist- in Shane Meadow's 'Room for Romeo Brass' threatens another British male with a hammer, his motive unknown, after being rejected by a female character. This link -and the fact our victim is a female of the same ethnicity of Ian Moone- could suggest that our antagonist has a misogynistic view of women; whereas unlike Morell who takes his anger out on a 'surrogate', our antagonist Ian Moone channels his anger in a direct attack towards the opposite gender that he may be prejudice towards. 

Morell from Shane Meadow's 'Room for Romeo Brass' (1999)

    There are some stereotypes that suggest that British people are fairly reserved, which could be seen in our victim Sam as when she thinks there is someone behind her but turns around and there is no one there, the audience can clearly see that she is uncomfortable and slightly freaked out; but we haven't portrayed it in an over the top fashion, like seen in some american films such as the ham acting seen in Sam Raimi's 'The Evil Dead'.

Sam Raimi's 'The Evil Dead' (1981)

Representation of age

    Our antagonist Ian Moone and our victim Sam are both teenagers/young adults, age 17. In our thriller opening 'Beach Comber', Sam is presented as very isolated and distant - which adds to the ambiguity of the character; and Ian Moone is unstable and violent. This portrays youths as isolated and alienated, as well as unsociable and deviant; similar to Nathan Harris form the episode 'Sex, Birth, Death' in the 2nd series of 'Criminal Minds'. Nathan Harris was a school student who had developed murderous and sexual sadistic impulses, and was a suspect of a string of prostitute murders (vulnerable females - like Sam), who was then recommended to be placed in medical care after being found innocent; and later tries to take his own life. 

Nathan Harris from 'Criminal Minds' 2x11 (2006)

    The character of Ian Moone conforms to the stereotypical representation of juvenile delinquents, yet continues to exceed it also with his extreme behaviour of stalking the victim Sam. These characters are binary opposites, possibly reflecting the two polar opposite stereotypes of teenagers: they are either deviant and very aggressive - like how our antagonist Ian Moone is portrayed- or very shy and introverted - much like our victim Sam appears to be. The victim in our narrative Sam shows similar traits to the character Oliver Tate from Richard Ayoade's 'Submarine' , who is of a similar age to our characters and appears to be unsure about his place in the world and is fairly isolated. Similarly to Sam, Oliver can be seen walking on an isolated beach setting, reinforcing how distant youths nowadays may be from the rest of society.

Richard Ayoade's 'Submarine' (2010)

     Whereas Our antagonist Ian Moone is more comparable to the youths featured in Joe Cornish's 'Attack the Block', who are portrayed as juvenile delinquents, and can be seen at the beginning of the film mugging a random female on the street - similar to Ian Moone's random attack on our victim Sam. The deviant youths in 'Attack the Block' are also British, much like Ian Moone.