Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.

For this question, I am going to analyse my film opening which I completed in my first year as a media student. My film opening consisted of a old woman who had lost her husband and was a widow. The genre I decided to use for my film opening was the romance genre. The film opening featured the old woman reminiscing about her memories with her husband as well as a flashback which showed the couple when they were younger. I decided to do this theme because I thought it would be interesting and slightly different to most existing romance film openings. 

When researching for my film opening, I had to ensure that my main character was stereotypical of existing old women that were found in romance films. In order to do so, I had to look into what features/characteristics/behaviour was present with old women. I went onto the web 2.0 and looked into existing films that featured old women as characters - in this case I focused on the film 'The Notebook'. When watching the film opening, it was evident that she was reminiscing about a memory - although it is not clear what exact memory it was. I thought that it would be key to be include use of reminiscing because a lot of old women like to remember the past and look back on their lives. I also used the web 2.0 to look up characteristics that are commonly associated with older women. These stereotypes have been created by males who control the media. Hegemony states that the power group - in this case middle-aged males, have the control over the representations within the media. Due to the fact that they're not associated with older people in general, the stereotypes feature both negative and positive characteristics - but mostly negative. After going onto the web 2.0, I had found a variety of different words that related to the stereotypical behaviour of an old woman. These consisted of words like lonely, annoying, always complaining, overprotective, pitiful, sorrowful, sad etc. I thought that it would be a good idea to incorporate some of the representations. I did not want to make her appear annoying or boring towards the audience who were watching it and therefore I wanted to ensure I used the correct characteristics/behaviours that were relatable towards the storyline. Due to the fact that my main character had lost her husband, I thought it would be important to incorporate the stereotypes 'sorrowful' and 'sad'. This representation was key when researching older people because it is what the media feature the most.. I thought it would be a good idea to use these two stereotypes because they also fit in well with the emotions that are felt when losing a loved one. I think that the characteristics that the old woman used worked really well and developed the existing stereotypes found within the media.

In terms of representation, I thought that it would important to incorporate historical factors. When completing the flashback, I had to ensure that it was as realistic as possible. I therefore had to ensure that I represented the young male and female in a way that was justifiable and historical. I therefore ensured that both of the male and female were white. This is due to the fact that in that time zone (captured 1930s/40s), it was unacceptable for two different skin colours to be together because of the racism. I therefore had to represent them in a way that was featured in the media in that time zone. I think that this worked really well and demonstrated that I knew the timezone and had an understanding of the historic racism that was present. I think that representing the couple as both one skin colour was important to do and showed what it was like to be a part of that era.