Evaluation Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures. 

When talking about the characters in our film opening 'On Road' we had to make it appeal to the correct target audience by ensuring the characters acted familiar to the teenagers in today's society. Teenagers in today's society are stereotyped for being on the streets, causing trouble and getting up to no good. We took this into consideration and tried to make our characters to act similar to how teenagers are so they can understand and connect more with the protagonist. Our main characters are portrayed differently:

1. Darnell Williams - Darnell is the main character as the story is told from his point of view. He is a ambitious boy who's chasing his dream and does this even with all the things holding him back. Because he lives on a gritty estate that automatically stereotypes him to one of those gang affiliated boys, also because of this appearance and how he dresses. 

2. Skirmz - Skirmz now is stereotyped because of the way he is dressed and his appearance. He is mainly seen on the estate with give him the look that he is gang affiliated. This is also due to the different sort of acts he gets up to on the estate. 

When looking at whether we represented the characters in a negative or positive way, we had to think about how we wanted the characters to be seen. For example, Skirmz was seen in a negative way because of what he is known for and for his acts in trying to stop Darnell to accomplish his dream. Whereas, Darnell is seen in a positive way, because of his drive for success. 


Stereotyping