Task 2 - How does your product represent particlular social groups?

The product we created; Five, is about a young 12 year-old girl who appears to be possessed by the devil, or a kind of demon. Two different social groups are represented in our product; mental health issues and children. Film examples of these two themes are ‘Girl, Interrupted’ and ‘Sixth Sense’.

‘Girl, Interrupted’ is an America drama feature film with Angelina Jolie and Whoopie Goldberg; about a teen’s 18-month stay at a mental institution. It explores the themes of drugs, suicide and teenage life. This relates to five because of the fact that they don’t actually know if she is mentally ill or not, which could be the case of our child character. This could represent our young girl’s mental issues in a positive or negative way. It would be positive because she is helping the agency/government but it could also be negative because it makes other people with mental health issues look as if they are also possessed by the ‘devil’.
‘Sixth Sense’ is an American thriller film, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It tells the story of Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a troubled, isolated boy who is able to see and talk to the dead, and an equally troubled child psychologist (Bruce Willis) who tries to help him. This relates to ‘Five’ because of the age of the boy, and the fact that it doesn’t just occur in adults. It is also as if he cannot be in control of what he sees it is as if he is seeing them through someone else’s eyes.









In the media there are various programmes such as ‘Supernanny’ which have a definite representation of children. ‘Supernanny’ is a British reality television programme about helping parents with misbehaving children. The show features professional Nanny Jo Frost, who devotes each episode to helping a family whose children are out of control. Using a variety of methods, she shows parents different ways of disciplining their children and maintaining order in their households. She is noted for her kind but firm no-nonsense approach. This could initially be a negative representation of children because they all ‘misbehave’, and are in need of a professionals help. Towards the end of each episode the representation of children changes to be positive, because with a little discipline children can behave. This programme is similar to ‘Five’ because it has a negative representation of children just like the young girl in our product.

Another example of this in the media is a story I have found in BBC news ‘Mental problems 'hit one in four'’. It says “One in four people around the world will suffer from mental health problems at some point in their lives, according to a report from the World Health Organisation (WHO)”. In general this article can be a positive representation of people with mental health issues, because it doesn’t make them any different to any of the general public, it becomes a more general issue. This has a similar representation to the girl in our product ‘Five’, because it could show the young girl, as not being totally crazy because it’s not only her who has seen these “apparitions” and rather being treated differently these issues are representative of affecting 1 in 4 people. Where this differs is that it is rarely apparitions and more often other forms of mental health issues like depression or schizophrenia.