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Thursday 16 March 2017

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main social group that we chose to represent in our film is black females as they are severely underrepresented, often negatively portrayed or are there for tokenism. We created our desired representation through camera work, casting, costuming and mise-en-scene.

Representation of Women

Statistics of females in films show that they are very underrepresented and that last year audiences were twice as likely to see male characters as they were female. The breakdown of percentage of female characters of colour showed an increase from 13% to 14% for black women from 2015 to 2016 and only 5% of females were portrayed as leaders.


Percentages of males, females and ensembles as protagonist - 2016

For the full report please click the link - It's a Mans World Report


Whilst women's roles have evolved from the traditional 'Princess' or 'Damsel in Distress' to include Hero and Villain for example, they often still conform to unflattering stereotypes that are so prevalent in film that we often don't even realise that they can be damaging to young girls' views of themselves.

Typical roles of women in films




A collage of conventional female characters


Representation of black women in film




Although these stereotypes are prevalent in TV and film, there are some characters that are more innovative and are a step in the right direction as they take some of these stereotypical traits and add other characteristics that make the portrayals more representative of black women in the real world. TV tends to be better at doing this than film and examples include:

Sasha and Michonne from The Walking Dead



and Jessica from Suits





Our representation
We wanted to create a strong black female lead who could act as a positive role model and who actually represented aspects of 'real' women, instead of traditional stereotypes that only focus on one or two characteristics.

The characteristics we wanted to highlight in Shania are:

  1. Independent
  2. Intelligent
  3. Hard working
  4. Strong
  5. Driven
  6. Determined
  7. Out-spoken
  8. Supportive
We created this representation through our characterisation and in particular our mise-en-scene. The costuming played a large part in this and coupled with the legal documents Shania signs, connotes her professionalism and drive, as she works in a notoriously hard field to excel in. Her smart black and white dress connotes the sophistication we wanted to portray and, coupled with the affluent neighbourhood she lives in and the set dressing to give a feminine yet minimalistic look, highlights her organisation and success. These aspects were very important for us to pick out as we wanted the audience to not only be able to relate to Shania, but also to see her as a role model with inspirational qualities, moving beyond the traditional gender and ethnicity stereotypes discussed above.

These traits are similar to those seen in Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson from Hidden Figures and Annalise Keaton from How to Get Away with Murder, who was our main inspiration for Shania as described in the research and planning posts.

Below is a clip of Keaton in court (the same professions as our own main character) highlighting some of these personality traits. 



We chose this representation because we wanted to create a role model for young girls that they could relate to and be inspired by. Even when faced with a horrific and traumatic event, Shania manages to pull through, stay true to herself and prove her worth as an individual, which is the positive representation and message we wanted to give to our audience. 

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