R+P Post 4: Representation of Social Groups in Our Opening Sequence

The social groups key to our genre consist of gender, age and class.  Our protagonist is a female in her early twenties and she is of an upper middle class background.

Black Widow, 1987

Our female protagonist represents women in their early twenties (up to 25) through various actions. Both her femininity and youth can be seen through her applying make up and putting on her extravagant clothing. Wanting to look pretty is a common inclination for women of this age, and can be seen real life as well as in films. For example the main character is putting on make up in the opening of the neo-noir 'Black Widow.' By doing all these typically associated female routines, she is embracing her femininity. However, with this portrayal of women dolling themselves up often comes with the 'damsel in distress/ drama queen' type character. For instance, the character Rebecca Bloomfield from 'Confessions of a Shopaholic.' At the start of the film especially, she is the typical self obsessed, snobby, popular girl who only interacts with certain people. The most important thing to her is her appearance, thus creating the image that women in their early twenties are constantly thinking about how they look.


Our film challenges this stereotype of the very dramatic, weak female character who cannot deal with a spot on her face, let alone murder, which many films of our genre contain. This stereotype challenge can be seen through her class and her possessions. She is upper middle class and this is connoted primarily through her posh accent, smartphone, iPad and also her house, which is quite big, considering she lives by herself. The accent suggests that she has been brought up in a lavish area, thus that she was born to a wealthy, high status family. Above everything else, she is powerful in the sense she has wealth. These groups are typically portrayed in films as beautiful, intelligent, arrogant, having a mind of their own and a highly ranked job,  and being powerful and in control. We have decided to make our protagonist look beautiful, through the make up and also the alluring clothing, creating sex appeal. An example of a film which depicts a powerful upper class woman is  'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.' Angelina Jolie plays a beautiful, strong and relentless female on a mission and her posh accent indicates that she had a wealthy upbringing. In fact, Lara's father was a Lord, and she went to a school for the elite. In the film, she is on a hunt for an ancient relic and there is a lot of conflict along the way; she could easily die, which demonstrates her strength and reflects how dangerously she lives. Finally, similar to Jodie Foster in 'Silence of the Lambs,' our protagonist owns a gun which is revealed to the audience when she opens a draw, which instantly makes her seem potent. She is a detective like Jodie Foster's Clarice (but she's not as good as she seems) and the gun gives her the image of fearlessness, perhaps ruthlessness, in turn making the audience fearful.