ೃ⁀➷ REPRESENTATION *ೃ༄

 

Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog! Today I will be talking about the representation in my class.

The "Theory of Representation" by Stuart Hall states that producers can represent a group of people or events in various ways. It also states that stereotypes can be created through a disparity of power, where excluded groups are classified as "different".  In our movie, minorities are portrayed and represented in a variety of ways, either positive or negative. 

However, our film is very stereotypical with our characters. We represented some genders and races in a negative way which enforces a stereotype. For example, my character, the "killer" of the group, is portrayed as aggressive and psychotic. When we developed her character, we also wrote her to have schizophrenia. Doing this, we followed a stereotype of schizophrenia that is usually portrayed through films - that schizophrenic people are violent. This shows how we reduced Maya to a single trait, which is that she is violent. Not only is this a stereotype of schizophrenic people, but this is also a stereotype of black females.  Like other horror shows and films, we also used the mentally ill character to portray them in a negative way, and make them seen as "evil".  

Additionally, another stereotype we follow is the "helpless victim" stereotype. In our film, Maddie is the first victim (and only victim) of the killer. We created a stereotype of female victims, and reduced all other traits of Maddie to only one trait - that she is powerless and weak. In horror films, such as Scream, the first victim is usually a female, which creates the stereotype that women are weak and powerless. Although this goes along with the regular representation of horror films, it also goes against it. In a horror film, there is a "final girl" trope, where the woman who is expected to die survives and defeats the killer. Instead of having a "final girl", we have the "helpless girl". The other girls in the film could also be seen as helpless and needing to be saved, as they are unaware of the crimes going on (they're sleeping at the time of Maddies death), which enforces the traits of women being innocent and defenseless.

 Although we use stereotypes, we all understand that they are bad and that representation of people and things should not be based off of stereotypes or reduced to certain traits. We are a filming group of all girls, and we understand that the stereotype of helpless and weak women is wrong. We are also a diverse group with minorities and understand the consequences of creating stereotypes. We did not intend for our movie to be stereotypical. We have decided to not make any changed to our characters, as we would have to change the roles of our characters, and that would mean refilming every shot we have taken, even the cards each character receives! We do not have the time to change and refilm the entire film opening.