Evaluation 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We created Affliction to stand out from generic teen angst films, we did this by bringing to light taboo subjects amongst teenagers and young adults. These subjects are:

Sexuality

Sexuality can be a very fragile topic with teenagers as they may be unsure of their sexual identity and may be hiding it from society as they feel they will not be accepted the same as the heterosexual mask in which they put on. This is why we created the character Scott within the first 10 second of the opening sequence a very powerful message has been portrayed about Scott, this is done by doing a headshot in which he is looking past the camera while also seeming distracted and then the shot of the phone showing he is unsure about his sexuality. We feel this will help connect with the LGBTQ community when they watch our opening sequence. This challenges the conventional main character as it is uncommon for the main character to be open about their sexuality. This is shown in the opening scene of Easy A when the main character Olive Penderghast tells a story about her and another guy, a heterosexual relationship this is different to our film.

Drugs

Within the group, we discussed with great detailed whether or not to include a drug dependant teen within our product as it is such a controversial topic. We decided we will include as the number of drug dependent teens within today's society is a growing amount and we feel it would help them relate to our piece. We chose a character called Archie to help portray the vast amount of teenagers with drug problems and the consequences that come with that. We thought we would put a risky but powerful message within our opening sequence showing a news article that includes a picture of Archie stating he was found dead due to an overdose. We felt it was important to connect with that particular social group and use it to send a message as well. This again challenges typical conventions found in other teen angst movies, for example in footloose, there is no use of drugs within the opening sequence.

Self -Harming

This topic caused controversy between the group as to whether we should include it within our final product, we ended up deciding we should. We felt as though this is one of the biggest issues within our target audience and that it would be wrong to not include them due to the issue being so big. We created a character called Jimmy. 

His introduction within the opening sequence is, in my opinion, the most powerful out of all of them. It could also be seen as being the most relatable out of all of them. The headshot of Jimmy shows a normal teenage boy but the next shot shows a letter in which Jimmy had written to his parents as he contemplated ending his life. To some people, they may strongly relate to this and will want to watch on and see how it ends for him. This again challenges conventions as teenagers are commonly portrayed as being very happy carefree individuals within team angst movie, an example of this comes from Juno where the main character Juno MacGuff is shown walking seemingly unaware and unphased by what was going on around her, the complete opposite of our character.