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

Scene from Waterloo Road (left)

The social groups represented in our film are:

• Teenage 'outsiders', Teenage bullies, and featuring prominatntley by their absence, teachers.

Whilst carrying out our audience research we discovered the majority of our potential thriller audience were of the younger generation, teenagers aged 13-19 years. Therefore we decided to base our thriller in a school setting, our cast being predominantly 16 year old girls. Within our narrative we decided to focus on the social group stereotypically know as the "School Outcasts" or "Nerds" as our characters carry out their crime due to years of bullying by school cliques. We also wanted to represent teenagers of a higher "social status" to themselves, forcing them to conform to the stereotypical "Geeky School victims".

In order to do this well, I carried our research into bullying in the Uk, looking at statistics and visiting the Childline website to gain a deeper understanding of bullying and its increase in schools.

• 69% of children in the UK report being bullied
• 87% of parents report that their child had been bullied in the past 12 months
• 20% report bullying others
• 85% had witnessed bullying
• (admirably, 82% of them tried to intervene).

Childline Website

Representation: In many ways we wanted our media product to represent teenage 'victims' social group in a stereotypical way, portraying them as weak and helpless. We mimicked typical bullying scenes, recognisable to the younger generation, like being thrown against a locker and having notes thrown across the classroom. The subject of bullying being very recognisable to our target audience, due its portrayal in the media in general and on popular TV Dramas such as "Waterloo Road", designed to portray typical school life, in particular. The fact that the girls did not retaliate to the bullying represented them as intimidated, as violence is a form of outward behaviour that teenagers would associate with those more confidant and overpowering. This was the way in which we wanted to represent the Bullies' social group, obvious violence being the key to portraying their nasty personalities, Keziah grabbing Pia around the neck.


Here is a print screen of the shot in which Pia becomes victim to violence through bullying, against the locker.














At the same time, despite wanting to represented the bullies as over confidant and aggressive, we wanted to highlight a contrasting side to the stereotypical characterisation. Therefore, when filming the bullies kicking Charlotte's books, we decided to have their faces not visible in the shot, suggesting a "faceless", heartless quality and the idea that they do not want to be "caught out", highlighting a timid side to the bullies against authority figures such as teachers.

We wanted to use our narrative to send a message to our generation about the seriousness of bullying due to our target audience being an older teenage audience who may have experienced our witnessed bullying of some kind, aware of the social challenges within the school environment. Our hard-hitting storyline may appear to be a classic tale of the school "outcast" being made victims by those more confidant, however I feel the dramatic twist in which the victims suddenly become the dominant more powerful characters, breaks the stereotype of the typical "Geek", representing that particular social group as "secretly strong" individuals to which Peer Pressure "Flips over the Edge" and enforcing just how devastating bullying can be.