Representation Task: Identification Of Stereotypes In Teen Films

A stereotype is a thought that may be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things.These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality. Stereotypes are use in a vary of different sub-genre films, in majority stereotypes are used substationally in teen films. In teen films the main stereotypes are;

• Dumb Blondes
• The Jocks, who are good looking
• Geeks, wearing glasses, with a messy bun and braces
• Black kids, either making trouble or in a dancing group

There are many other stereotypes that are represented in teen films. Stereotypes are socially created, producers use stereotypes as it is easy to build a storyline and creating a character. Here are a list of films with their trailers that use stereotypes very well;

Boyz 'n' the hood (Black People);

 

White Chicks (White/Blonde girls);

 



 

 

 

 

 

An Analysis Of A Teen Film I Have Watched Over Christmas

Over the Christmas break, I watched a variation of different films, the majority of them were either Christmas films such as Bad Santa and New Years Eve or Teen Films such as American Pie, High School Musical and I could classify New Years Eve as a teen film.

The most recent films I have watched was American Pie and New years eve which I watched last night (Saturday 28th December 2013). These 2 films have different conventions in contrast to the film we all watched in class; Bling Ring.
The film American Pie is an American movie set in an educational setting where a group of teenagers are in senior year graduating from high school and these individuals have goals they want to achieve before they leave high school at their prom. The main goal in this film was becoming a non-virgin which was the main storyline. This occurs in reality especially in the male gender from the age of 16 when they start learning more about theirs and the opposing gender (female) bodies. Boys are statically more sexually frustrated than girls through the adolescent stage of life. The music in this is more set to the teenage age as its fast paced ad more up beat which has more of a connection to teenagers than adults.

This is due to the different openings and storyline but there are some similarities such as the music and binary oppositions.
Throughout the film there was some binary oppositions such as;
Girls vs. boys
Geeks/nerds vs. cool
Popular vs. unpopular
Virgin vs. non-virgin... and many more different binary oppositions.
These binary oppositions are similar to the binary oppositions in the film Bling Ring from the coolness, the popularity and the groups. There are some different oppositions between these 2 films like, the rich vs. poor and celebrity vs. normal. Another thing that makes these 2 films different is the opening. The opening is different in the Bling Ring and this is because it starts of with groups of pictures put together like an collage these pictures are pictures of shoes, designer clothes, celebrities and accessories and the music is a youthful, fast pace track sounding as if it was a hip hop genre.

CHRISTMAS PANTO!

Last night, on Thursday 19th December 2013, I went to watch my little sister's Christmas pantomime she played as a fairy named 'fairy nuff'. The play was called Cinderella & Rockerfella, this is a panto-style musical recreating the Disney story 'Cinderella'. This is not something a teenager would watch as it does not include any conventions that would make it aimed for teens, BUT whilst watching this play I noticed there were a range of different binary oppositions, for instance;

Good vs. bad
Fairies vs. witches
Songs vs. dialogue
Animals vs. humans
Fairy dust vs. poison

This pantomime also used mise en scene to express some stereotypical elements. For example the witch was wearing a black wig, dressed in black with black and green make-up. The fairies were dressed in pink with pink tutu's and ballerina shoes. Due to all Disney and family movies society has created this image on how these characters are presented. This can be through speech, dialogue, sound, lighting, mise en scene etc.

Here is a clip from last nights show;

 

 

 

The Bling Ring

Today we watched a film called 'The Bling Ring' it is a teen film and includes conventions which you will find in a teen movie. This film is about a group of teenagers who look up to well known celebrities such as lindsey lohan, paris hilton etc. and they basically want there lifestyle, with all the designer clothing, jewels/accessories, media attention the a lot. This group ends up robbing these celebrities homes and takes approximately $300,0000 worth.

The opening of this film had many teen conventions which made it very conventional. It had a montage title sequence which included; Facebook, shots of shoes, jewels, key characters and the news. The beginning also included a flash forward which my many films do therefore for this being at the beginning we can say it's foreshadowing the events that may occur later in the film. This opening plotted the storyline for the film as due to the montage title sequence we could suggest that it was going to be about girls, celebrities, designer clothing 'The Fab Life'

The music selected for the opening was aimed for the adolescent age group as it was face pace, I could suggest it was a pop genre.

The film did follow conventions in terms of location, characters, sound, storyline and binary oppositions. For the location it was mostly set in a club, school, kitchen and bedroom. In the teenage life these are the main areas you'll find them at a young age, in the home teenagers tend to spend most of there time in their bedrooms doing what they have to do like on social networking sites, homework, listening to music etc. and would come down to get something to eat in the kitchen and back into their bedroom you'll hardly find them downstairs in the living room. Teens also consists of school and education as they can't drop out until the age of 16 so they can relate to issues in school issues in films.

In terms of the characters there were a range of rich and the beautiful stereotype which does occur in reality for a teenager.  Teenagers have the highest percentage of being relative deprived when they want certain things like designer clothes to fit in. The music was mostly hip hop and RnB these 2 genres are mainly aimed for adolescents.

The storyline was about drugs, parties, clubs and being in a gang. These event mainly happen from the ages of 16-20+ this age group are mostly going to be involved with these things as they are still learning about themselves and what they enjoy in contrast to what they don't this then leads into the binary oppositions which are;

• Teens vs. authority (parents/law)

• Good vs. bad

• Right vs. wrong 

Reflection Blog

At the moment i am not up to date with my blogging and i haven't completed the blogging post on Audience task 2: analysis of 3 teen movies with different audiences and also storylines and plot blog. In order to gain the marks needed i will need to keep up to date with blogging and do this by completing all blog posts on time. i think that my voice hasn't been really heard in the blogs as most of my posts are group posts. i need to do extra blogs and also complete my own blogs also.

Reflection Blog

So far i have completed 6 tasks from my blogging checklist. Although, i have to catch up with 1 more task which is: "Audience task 2: analysis of 3 teen movies with different audiences." 

This post reflects what tasks i have completed and what i need to catch up with to make sure i am up to date with all the work i have to do. I think to improve our blog we should use a wider range of mix-media which could include: more videos, gifs and a vlog.

My Reflection Blog

Up until now, wednesday 18th December 2013. I believe that I am up to date with my blogging and have blogged all necessary things that I have been learning in class up until now and using the blogging checklist as a guide. I have also included an extra post defining 'teen films'. I believe that my voice is being projected across through my blogging and post. For a target that I am going to set myself is to use various different technologies to present my posts such as voice recorder, slideshare or prezi etc.

So i am going to carry on informing you what I have learnt in each lesson. Byeee