Representation Analysis of our media products

Product- Our production was a sterotypical 'urbanm drama' much like others such as Shank, Kidulthood we did this because these films and the media have already constructed a dominant hegamonic image. The film industry especially London based films have in my opinion become a marxist producer of centralized ideals often portraying the hegamonic view of young people who are involved in violent behavior and crime and whether this is is a posative or negative thing these images have become naturalised in the minds of adullts who have a constructed view of youths or young people who have become to accept internalised sterotypes and because it is so prolific is easy for us and the audience to consume for their own gratification of needs. And as such we chose to represent youth in this way; and although we challenged the usual racial sterotype of black youths being involved in gang violence as our protagonist was of  south american origin, although we show through setting and costume that he is a part of this social group s he is shown to be living in a gritty urban environment whilst wearing sterotypical bandanas, hoodies, an d nike brand trainers reflecting young people from this social group. 

Although using this dominant representation may have been a negative for our production because this representation is so prolific and young people are continously shown to be a part of this violent culture the image has become redundant and lost its power it could even be said to be annoying because it has become such a mainstream representation.

Analyse my product against narrative theory

My AS production was short intro to an an urban drama inspired by recent films such as Kidulthood, Adulthood and Shank. The opening follows the codes and conventions of urban london based films because we wanted to portray a narrative that our audiences could easily identify and respond to and as such we named the production 'Conflict' to highlight this; the protagonist is seen leaving his house when he is followed by a group of thugs from the local area who are from a rival gang he is chased and then beaten by them. 


The opening was supposed to create enigma and generate audience interest in the narrative by establishing a character and presenting a confilct with other newly introduced characters using Propp's theories to clearly establish the protagonist as the 'hero' and the other youths as the 'villain' by conforming to the codes of Strauss' theory and using binary oppositions; using conceptual oppositions by showing the protagonist as passive and the other youths as aggressive and violent coupled with visual oppositions shooting the protagonist mostly in the light and the others in darkness. This makes the audience take the side of the protagonist which leads to greater level of involvement between film and audience. As well as hooking the audicene into wanting to know who these people are and how the situation is resolved; this structure pulls on Todorov's narrative theory that suggests that every narrative follows a three part structure the equilibrium, disruption and then a resolution however  our product which is a film opening intentionally subverts this theory by leaving out the resolution and finishing with the disruption; Claude Levi-Strauss says that "narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict" and because it leaves the narrative without a resolution it is open ended and enigmatic; which is important because a film opening needs to hook an audience into the narrative and make them want to see the end. This is similar to Barthes enigma code which says that "narrative will establish enigmas or mysteries as it goes along. 'Essentially the narrative functions to establish and then solve these mysteries' our product establishes enigma by using time skips to leave out key pieces of narrative which leave it to the audience to unravel the text themselves. 


My product follows the codes and conventions because it is based on well known stereotypes and allows the product to be easy recognised and identified with.