Factors that affect representation:
- Audience positioning - how different categories of audiences react to you
- Interaction between other groups
- Cultural ideology - expectations about how certain characters and groups should react, behave and operate within society
The 7 groups of representation are:
- class
- sexuality
- disability
- regional identity
- age
- ethnicity
- gender
- class: N/A
- sexuality: all relationships and sexual advances seen in the clip were heterosexual
- disability: N/A
- age: depicts all teenagers as only interested in drugs, alcohol, sex and recklessness
- ethnicity: the clip shied away from depicting one of the characters as a 'typical' Indian boy (as the general stereotype is that they are concerned only with strict religious practices and shun alcohol and drugs); he starts a joke about Viagra and engages in the party the same as his caucasian friends
- gender: girls are seen as 'sluts' and are overly sexualised; only two girls are seen in the clip, one of whom forcefully kisses an inebriated boy and the second who is overly inebriated and tries to grab a boy and force him towards her (before vomiting on him). The main male is seen as having taken Viagra, and two others have been seen joking and laughing about it; another male is trying to talk an inebriated girl into 'physical contact', depicting males as immature and sex-crazed
We then watched a short snippet of Luther, an English drama based on the character of a police officer
- class: Alice is seeing as higher class than the others as there is a shot showing her comfortably sitting in a large apartment overlooking the twinkling city
- sexuality: all relationships seen in the clip were heterosexual
- disability: N/A
- regional identity: London is seen from the polar opposites; Luther's workplace in the lower-class part of London which is filled with crime, his wife's town house and posh workplace and Alice's high-class apartment
- age: all characters seem to be in their 30s
- ethnicity: the main character, John Luther, is black. Usually we associate black people in crime dramas as the criminals, yet Luther is interrogating criminals. The beginning of this snippet shies away from black stereotypes, as his name is a typical English name (John) and he uses appropriate and advanced vocabulary. The volume of the music increased as he walked down hallways, including one point where his footsteps were heavy and a loud heartbeat played in the background, showing his power. Camera angles show him as huge and dominating and later, he is shown as violent and destructing, kicking the door. This could play up to the aggressive black stereotype
- gender: women are, at first, shown as the dominant gender. Luther sounds desperate on the phone telling his wife that he has changed. As he walks into the room with Alice, she is seen as meek and mild; camera shots show Luther from behind, towering over Alice's tiny frame until the realisation that she is strong and guilty. There is a 'boxing style' shot, showing both characters from the side as the same size. The police chief is a woman, yet she is shown as strong and masculine, with short hair and a trouser suit - perhaps suggesting that had she looked more feminine she would not have been taken seriously. During the scene where Luther breaks his wife's door, the camera angles are from below, showing Luther as huge and his wife as very small and mild
