How are social groups represented in our media product? Evaluation Task 2

How is Age, Gender, and Ethnicity represented in our thriller? 

It is quite hard to represent all of these things clearly as there is only two characters in our opening sequence. Age is represented in many different ways throughout our thriller, firstly throughout the clothing. Our middle-aged victim's age is represented through his smart suit, which is not considered to be an outfit a younger man would wear and our assassins outfit of a black turtleneck and black chino-type trousers is the clothes of a younger, fitter man. The age of the victim can also be displayed through the inside shots of his house and bedroom, which will be mature and simple, with a plain basic bedroom setting with a few personal belongings, indicating his older age. 

Gender is represented in a variety of different ways, again through clothing as the all black that the assassin wears is a much more manly outfit than would be seen if we had used a female assassin and the same with the victims clothing, if we had used a female victim, we would probably have put her in her everyday clothes instead of a suit. The black in the assassins clothing could be used to show the dark nature of the character and contrasts with the light coloured pyjamas that are seen on Bobby, representing his good natured character. We seem to have created a ideal of a very male dominated world, especially the violent side. The reason we chose two men is for our target audience as from my research it appears that thrillers like ours appeal mainly to men, so by using two men, we can hopefully appeal more to women, as well as appealing to the men of our target audience for the action and violence of our thriller. I think gender is not represented particularly well as one male is malevolent and vicious, killing another and the other male is weak and inferior. The males in the audience could also try to relate to those seen on screen. 

The ethnicity is a big factor in our thriller as our assassin is of an asian ethnicity whilst our victim is of a White British ethnicity. This works with a stereotype that those of an Asian ethnicity are good at martial arts and would therefore make good assassins. We did not do this intentionally but we instead played with the already preset stereotype that we in 'the west' have of those in 'the east', that they would make good assassins. We are not the first to play to this pre-existing stereotype as many films include a ninja or Asian assassin, including such film series as 'James Bond'. The idea was not to put a negative light onto Tommy, but instead highlight and enhance the stereotypes that were already there, which does stereotype the Asian character to be the assassin. Tommy, in himself managed to portray a dangerous and mysterious assassin. Bobby is portrayed as the innocent, friendly, older character who is the victim while he sleeps. We ideally wanted the audience to feel sympathy for Bobby and feel scared or Tommy, without feeling negatively of Tommy. The power that Tommy has over Bobby can also be used to show China's power of England as China is one of the world's most powerful and upcoming countries. The lighting also demonstrates this as Bobby is well lit, and Bobby is in the shadows.