2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Media products can represent a diverse range of social groups which is mainly shown through gender, clothing, skin colour, age and status. Various stereotypes enhance the diversity amongst society which in my opinion helps the audience acknowledge the modern world in which we are living in when shown through a media product. In our media product we mainly focused around the youth of today. Our character appears to have a fairly modern, middle class background, but his status can be questioned by the audience through his mannerisms when he spits on the floor due to his frustration. The use of swear words that the main character uses can interpret a bad image of the youth amongst society but we were trying to reflect the frustrated mood that our character was in. The character appears to be roughly around 17 years of age with medium hair (a trend within modern society). As a group we believed that there are too many media products placing bizarre characters amongst iconic surroundings so therefore we decided to position a more down to earth character within more rural surroundings to make our opening appear less glamourised.

stereotypical teenager amongst society

Our group also touched on the lack of groups within the society that our character was surrounded in, as he attempts to enter an abandoned pub, in search of some understanding into what has happened within his environment. This helps demonstrate the breakdown amongst society itself showing the abandoment due to the departure of other social groups. We aimed to create this collapsing world through the imagery of the abandoned pub, the lack of people and traffic. I do that believe that social groups were represented through gender and various stereotypes of the zombies, which shows the diversity in society of the youth. We believed that the mannerisms of the rebelious youth would reflect more chaotic destruction rather than adults and old people. We also believe that the character could have a connection with these zombies as they may have once been associated with him. The reaction of the main character when he sees the dead body emphasises his anger and upset. This could be because this dead body was a close friend to him or it could help emphasise his sudden realisation of this world he is living in.

various stereotypes shown through the 'Zombieland' cast

Whilst doing our research into our genre, we saw very little teenager zombies being used in media products. Our group thought that we could challenge this idea by creating this swarm of teenagers to help define the age bracket of society that is left within the world. Also the portrayal of innocence and purity of the youth is tarnished which creates a more disturbing impact on the audience, as their savage actions highlight their barbaric nature. By presenting our zombies in this way it, it makes the opening appear more controversial, as the audience may question the portrayal of their brutal nature comparing it to within their own society.