Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Will Burden

The two protagonists in our media production are all white, middle class male teenagers.

They on the whole present quite residual ideologies. This is because white, middle class kids wouldn’t usually be expected to be partaking in criminal activity such as breaking and entering.

Nevertheless, on the contrary, white middle class teenagers are the predominant victims within the horror genre.

Through the use of handi-cam, we present much of the opening sequence through the POV of the protagonists. Through dialogue we distinguished that one of the characters was more afraid of the surroundings than the other.

Insidious uses some shots like the tracking shot in the opening to create a feeling of isolation and desertion in the opening sequence. We emulated something like this so that then the characters would hopefully be presented to feel the same fear towards the house as the audience.

The other characters within the opening sequence are the two antagonists. They consist of a young mother along with her baby ‘Betsy’.

We are unaware of the mother’s class but we do know she is a white female, who has some psychological issues due to being beaten in her previous relationship.

This becomes apparent from the flashbacks that are shown. They fit a dominant ideology for ghosts. Haunting somewhere and feeling hatred towards the living world.

Nevertheless, having a baby as a ghost is quite unconventional and is presents quite an emergent ideology for the horror genre.