Question 2

Question 2

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

In the opening sequence of our film we challenge a couple of conventions which surround teenagers in the media, The first being the challenging of the stereotype that young people are surrounded by crime and criminal activity, we challenge this through the actions of our characters in the film in which not only are none of the boys ever related to crime of any sort they are also shown to be participating in healthy activities, which are often considered to be a direct contrast to a life of crime. This is shown explicitly through the fact that 'Alex' is shown walking his dog, while 'Seb' and 'Theo' are shown riding their bikes to the quarry. These physical activities are used in order to defy the criminal stereotype as the characters implied to be concerned about their bodily health. This also helps challenge the convention of teenagers being unhealthily obsessed with technology as, even though 'Seb' and 'Theo' are initially shown to be watching television and using their phones, they are very willing to leave technology behind in order to go outside and further challenge conventions through the use of bikes rather than a car or bus, further showing challenging their reliance on technology.

However, the young adults in our film do not challenge all of the conventions of a stereotypical teenager. For example, even when outside of school, school is shown to be a significant part of the teens lives as the only reason the two boys know 'Alex' is because of "our chemistry class". This, therefore, is used to imply that the 'social circles' of the teens formed by school life as the only characters in the film are all in the same chemistry class and therefore conforms to the idea that much of teenage lives revolve around school.