Evaluation: Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As our primary character in this film is a young girl who has been mistreated, we went out to research different characters who have also been mistreated. We found a few cases of child abuse, however because Elisabeth is a very vulnrable and withdrawn, it was hard to find a character like this. After much researching into existing characters like Elisabeth, we came up with two good examples.

Whitney and her step father Tony.

Our first good character similarity is Whitney Dean from Eastenders. Her story line is that her step father lead her to believe they had a relationship, and he sexually abused her. This fitted very well with our character as we needed a vulnerable character who has a history of being abused, and we felt that Witney was perfect.

On the left is a still of Whitney Dean, and on the right is a screenshot of Elisabeth.

 When we started investigating further about this character, we found that in more ways than we hoped, she was like Elisabeth. In the screenshots above, it captures a very similar scene where both characters are very much in the shadows and very similar expressions on their faces. Emotionally, both characters have both been through abuse from their fathers which makes our link even stronger. Although Elisabeth is in old clothing due to the nature of our film opening, we still felt that Witney was a good link even though she is in modern clothes. Witney also has a feisty attitude unlike our character, but with similar experiences, they seem to fit well.

On the left, there is a screenshot from a Barnardo's advert, and on the right, there is young Elisabeth.

 For this character, we came across an advert for Barnardo's charity which aims to prevent child prostitution. Although our character is not a child prostitute, we still felt that the principle of being forced to have sex by old men shows the link. In this particular shot, we see an old man reaching out to touch the young girl. This shot is very similar to our Elisabeth shot in the way that we only see the old mans hand so it emplies abuse. The other stong link is that we dressed Elisabeth in young girls clothes to represent innocence, and because the other little girl has pink tights on, it also represents vulnerability. Both young girls are about to be abused, and this makes our link very strong.