Representation

By Leah NorayGroup 18

What Is Representation?

• In this context, representation refers to the social group that your cast/characters present in the film opening.For example, if our film opening included a character who is an African American teenager into gun crime, he would be representative for African Americans who are in the ghetto and is into gun crime or gangs. Which therefore also gives a negative view upon this social group.

• In our film opening, I found that we have two representations of a social group.One of which is quite dark and the other which is innocent…

First Representation

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• As you can see in this first collage of images, I thought that the dark side of our character and film opening can represent a social group who are quite disruptive, into drinking, smoking, and doing drugs. This could include emos or just ‘outsiders’ in the community. I think our film opening gives a negative view on this social group as it suggests that young adults/teenagers who drink alcohol and smoke can be capable of violent and criminal things, it also suggests that maybe a lot of these people could be mentally unstable like our character as it is hard to identify. Sections of our film opening that represent these groups are shown below:

Second Representation

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• The second representation that I found in our film opening is one of innocence. I found that the other side of our character is very innocent and girly as she is a ballerina. This is representative of girls who love pink, makeup, dancing, etc. I think that this has given this social group a negative aspect as it shows that just because someone may look innocent and harmless to the eye, it doesn’t mean they are in fact that. This kind of image is show quite a lot in thriller movies, for example in ‘The Room Mate’ the girl seemed to be innocent and nice, but it turned out she was a psychopath. This was the type of image we were trying to create in our film opening ‘Split’. Examples from our opening, shown below.