Jess Gell-Question 2-How does your media product represent particular social groups?

'Dixon of Dock Green'

The main groups represented in our thriller opening were policemen and mentally ill/disturbed people. As we were trying to appeal to a mixture of mainstream and independent audiences, we made our characters both challenge and conform to their stereotypes. For example:

Policemen:

The weapon-clad Simon
Pegg in 'Hot Fuzz'

The traditional, perhaps more old fashioned stereotypes of policemen are that they are smart, reliable, trustworthy and law-enforcing, such as in the 1950s police drama 'Dixon of Dock Green'. However in later years some fictional policemen have had more active, daring roles, such as in 'Hot Fuzz' and the 70s police drama 'The Sweeny'.  However, although these policemen are slightly more daring, they aren't really corrupt. We wanted our policeman to be more corrupt such as in 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Bad Lieutenant', as there was more room for the psychologically damaged element of the character, which conforms more to the thriller genre. Although our main character didn't conform to the conventional stereotypes of a 'regular' policeman, he did still conform to the stereotype of the corrupt and mentally disturbed policeman. For this reason we felt our film was still a mainstream film as pose to an independent one as the main character was still a stereotype and not the kind of rounded and developed character that would appeal to an independent audience.

Mentally Ill People:

Daniel Craig in 'Dream House'

Admittedly, our representation of the mentally ill is not a very positive one, as it features someone who is psychologically ill plotting to kill his colleagues and burning their portraits, however, this negative stereotype of the mentally ill is typical to mainstream thriller films such as 'Dream House' and 'The Orphan', where the mentally ill characters cause the deaths of others.

'The Orphan'- Isabelle Fuhrman is
responsible for the deaths of many people