EVALUATION QUESTION #2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main social groups I will be discussing are age and class.

CLASS AND STATUS

Sophia My main character is an upper-middle class teenager. The reason being so is

because she has what every average Western high school teenager has. She lives in the suburbs and since she has her own room, it showed that her family owned a house. Sophia has her own cell phone and laptop. Other props include a music player , wrist watch. Her room does not look too extravagant. She is dressed in a very simple way, not wearing any makeup, jewelry but she is properly groomed. She even walked to the park by herself instead of coming in a car. She seems to be an independent girl, unlike upper class people who are pampered and overly dependent. She gets proper education and care, all of which reflects her fairly high status.

      The stranger is a man of means too. He communicates with Sophia through text messages and online messages which shows that he most certainly possessed a phone and internet access. He is shown wearing a colored shirt and a ring in his finger. The ring could connote that he was a gangster or a bad guy dressed to look normal. He seems to be a clever man who knows what hes doing, judging from the way he lured Sophia into the park, tricked her and also acquired her phone number somehow. This all may show that he was a well-off man financially, but his actions are not of a well educated human being. He might even be jobless for all we know, he might be a criminal but since he is not shown much in the film, we can never be too sure so  I'd say he is a lower-middle class man.

Stranger

AGE

Sophia is a school going teenager. She wore casual clothes, not very childish looking but were colorful, her watch, hair and height show that she's young. She is a mature grown girl. The fact that she has her own cell phone and laptop shows that her parents think she is old enough to possess them. Kids don't normally get such things until they turn into teens. She used these very frequently and we were shown the way she eagerly surfed the internet and had many accounts on various websites on her laptop. Sophia also had a book and music player on her bed and in her room we did not see any toys. There was a dressing table and a study table visible which shows she took care of herself and did her work on her own, not too dependent on her parents. Sophia also walked to the park by herself. She was naïve in easily believing that it was Ben talking to her on online chat. All this shows that she is in her early teens, fourteen years old at least.

The stranger was not shown much in the film so we cant really describe exactly how old he is but from what we see in the last few shots, he's wearing a collared shirt and has a slight goatee and his height is way more than Sophia so he is obviously much older than her. In the movie he is supposed to be a middle aged man in his late 30s.