Representation of Gender in Our Piece

Representation of Gender

Our cast consists of male and female roles, however the majority of them are male although there are two significant female characters. This imbalance is what you normally find in a heist film. Because our film has both male and female roles we can use this to look at the representation of gender and age, of how both young men and women are represented in our piece.


Like our film, 'The Town' has a male and female cast.

In our film the age of the main characters is around 17 and 18 years old, however they are able to look older as their characters are quite mature, as they play poker and are able to hack into computers. In this extract they are represented to be intelligent, cunning and serious as they all seem to each have an important role to play and they act professional and calm. However, we have had to downplay any violence and limit the suggestion of scams to quite small-scale operations to make our piece believable.

We have created a representation of teenagers which is both positive and negative. On the one hand, they are clever and resourceful. On the other, they are taking part in what is basically criminal activity - although in a heist film, it is always in a good cause so we forgive them.

Teenagers work well in this context because they are often seen as secretive and working behind adults' backs.

Eastenders representation of secretive teenager

 

There are several more men in our piece than there are women and they also seem to have the bigger roles –like for example, like in our film the boss and the anonymous man, were both men, plus two out of the tree con-artists were men too. This could be a representation of their dominance, or a higher status over women and how the men are more able to pull off a heist better than if a woman was to do it. However, our female characters are at least part of the 'gang' and not just the romantic interest for the male lead.

This links in with what Ros Coward said about male stereotypes, she said that men and masculinity are stereotyped a lot more than what has been said as everyone believes women to be the most stereotyped, she on the other hand believes them to be evenly matched. Coward thinks that the male representation includes:

• To triumph and avoid from defeat. Men are normally the protagonist and are the strong heroic figure that succeeds in their challenge.

• Seeking approval from father figures. They have someone they look up to.

• To connect and interact with other men, forming a group to help overcome the issue, however it could also be to have independence.

• To be/ have a love interest and that they must pursue and achieve ‘victory’ over.

For women the representation in the media is normally;

• Damsel in distress/princess. They tend to be the ones that are in need of saving by the men as females are normally weaker.

• Seducer. In heist films the ones that tend to distract the opposing people are females on the majority.

• Attractive. Nowadays women who are casted to be on TV are young and attractive females as they seem to get more attention than if they were to have casted an unattractive person.

When looking at her list of male representations I am able to see that we have represented most of our men in this way; there is the boss who is the protagonist, who’s objective is to triumph with his plan that is yet to be revealed. He also brings an alliance (interaction with other men) of people to help out with his ‘challenge’, and also we possibly have a ‘Father figure’ as there is the man that storms into the bosses office as it seems to be that he has more power than the boss, and so it may be that he is afraid of him or look up to him, however there is not enough information to be able to tell if that is true.

Father Figure

Threat / Competition

Some of our characters deviate from these roles. It is seen as ‘feminine’ to be the ‘damsel in distress’, however we have a man to play the person as  having a mostly male cast can lead to having the men play the ‘feminine’ roles too like, the damsel in distress and the seducer. We have female characters to take these traditional roles but we chose to break the stereotype here.

Playing the role of  'damsel in distress'

Overall according to Coward’s view of male and female representation, we have stuck to quite a lot of onventional representations- especially the masculine representations (e.g. the protagonist and the group of people). However, our female characters are more equal than is often the case in heist films and the male characters can be vulnerable. Therefore we are not fully conforming to the gender stereotypes you might expect.