Question 2 Evaluation; Felicity Bearfoot-Fallon

2. How does your media product represent a particular social group?

Protagonist and Antagonist

An antagonist is a character, group of characters, institution, or concept that stands in, or represents, opposition against which the protagonist(s) must contend. In other words, an antagonist is a person or a group of people who oppose the main character(s).

The protagonist or main character is a narrative's central or primary personal figure, who comes into conflict with an opposing major character or force (called the antagonist). The audience is intended to mostly identify with the protagonist. 

Protagonist

In our opening, our main character is played by a white, young teenager, as we thought this would best show the vulnerability of the character. She is taken away by the antagonist and doesn't know where she is or why he has taken her there.

We chose to have this girl as our protagonist as we felt our target audience would be able to relate to her more as she is of their age group. She is a stereotypical young, blonde, white female and is seen as the vulnerable victim.
In many films, there is this type of character, for example in the film 'Let Me In', one of the main charcters is a young, blonde female, who we see is played by Chloe Grace Moretz.
                                       

                                     
                                      

Antagonist

The antagonist in our thriller opening is a random man who is not identified, and we only see his feet and shadows of him. All the audience find out about him is that he had kidnapped the main character and locked her away, and no one knows why. We decided to have a man as the antagonist as in many thrillers we researched we found that a man playing the antagonist was more common than a woman playing the role, and this may add to the stereotype of men being stronger than woman and able to over-rule them.
The antagonist in Thrillers is stereo typically someone who is a mystery, or not often seen but definitely known about. Or they are just the 'villain' of the film. However, some thrillers play against that stereotype, such as 'Divergent', where the antagonist is played by a woman. 

--> Jeanine Mathhews played by Kate Winslet in                                'Divergent'

Victims

In our thriller opening, the main character of the teenage girl is the victim. She is shown to be frightened and confused to why she has been kidnapped and doesn't know how to get help. The only thing she can do is record herself on a camera she found in the basement.


We felt that our opening represents the typical young teenage social group and attracts them too, as our thriller is based around young teenage girl who seems vulnerable. This makes the audience able to relate to her and put themselves in her position, adding to the effect and tension.