How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Ella Drake

Target Audience• We identified our main target audience through the results

of the survey below. • As the results show, our target audience lay between the

ages of 17 and 20. Once we had identified this we aimed to project it to the appropriate social group.

Social Groups• The main social group represented in our piece would be

teenagers, with ¾ of our actors being teenagers themselves. However, we kept this interesting for an older audience by using actors in their late teens, and making them rather more mature.

• We also represented a stereotypical zombie, whilst challenging some thoughts as mentioned in the previous answer.

• The characters were mostly based off of characters in films or videogames such as Dead Rising. The zombies were mostly based on the George A Romero style, as seen in Night of the Living Dead.

Zombie Focus

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Wounds or injuries and bloodstains

Ripped/Torn clothing

Lopsided stance and gait

Similarly vacant expressions

Male Protagonist FocusClose cropped hairstyle

Casual clothing

No or at least little /undeveloped weaponry for self-defence

Frank West - Dead Rising (2006)

Female Protagonist FocusLonger, ‘female’ hair

Casual Clothing

Boots – versatile footwear suitable for travelling and running.

No Weaponry

Ellen Ripley – Alien films (1979, 1986, 1992)

Although these films are of a different genre, I thought Ripley was a good choice to base a female protagonist on. She is a very strong female character, who would be more than capable of surviving a zombie apocalypse.

Representations Within Our Piece• Both our protagonists work on fear and instinctual

choices, such as the fact the female runs from the zombie, a natural choice to make. This is seen in many horror films, the best comparison to this would be films such as Zombieland, a spoof comedy horror film, in which a hapless hero survives.

• The zombie is seen as being mindless, with no real aim save to kill and eat whoever it sees. This is seen in many older horror films, especially in those by George A. Romero.

Representations of Gender• The protagonists took typical gender roles, such as the

female adopting the typical ‘flight’ attitude when faced with an enemy, whereas the male chooses to seek out and fight the zombie. However, this could also been seen to be subverting the female stereotype, as she is making the more informed choice by retreating and calmly getting to a safe place to record her findings, whereas the male chooses instead to fight.

• This subversion shows the woman to be stronger, in this case with her choice leading to her survival whilst the male gets overpowered and eaten.

• Each protagonist fights a zombie of their own gender, showing the female trait of banding together whilst the men take the ‘alpha-male’ fight, a portrayal of strength.