Film Directors

In both of my texts, the directors of them are male

This could be relevant in looking at a patriarchal filmmaking perspective and how they represent women

Scenes for Research Investigation

The scenes below may be referenced in some form in my Research Investigation to show the stereotypes of teenage girls.

This is the Mean Girls cafeteria scene, mainly looking at high school stereotypes as opposed to specific teenage girls.

This clip looks at when Cady meets The Plastics, perhaps more relevant to teenage girl stereotypes.

Looking at the teenage girl stereotypes in Mean Girls at Halloween

This is when Olive first lives up to her new identity in Easy A

Olive and Brandon pretend to have sex, and when they're done Brandon is congratulated and Olive is ignored, thus showing that when boys have sex, they're seen as a 'stud' and girls are just seen as easy.

Representations

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2095385_2095462_2095500,00.html

http://representingteenagegirls.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/ever-changing-representation-of-teenage.html

Stereotypes

"It seems that the typical teen movie’s female characters are, more often than not, projections of the archetypal male’s virgin/whore complex. Characters can only be one or the other, and there is no inbetween" (link)

Mean Girls - A Culture of Cliques

Research from book

I looked at a book called 'Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen' by Timothy Shary and it has information in it that I could find useful when writing up my Research Investigation.

I particularly focused on Chapter 5 - 'The teen film takes on a new century. 1994-2004' This chapter has information that is more relevant to what I am researching because it is more recent.

Below are extracts I found especially interesting:

"Most of the recent representations of girls' roles in general reveal a cautious effort by the film industry to provide increasingly active images of young women, even if many tend to remain conflicted about their new senses of power" (pg94)

This quote implies that in cinema before the 1990's, females were generally portrayed as passive and not hugely important in the narratives.  However, recently they have been represented as more active, and where it says 'conflicted about their new senses of power', this is especially relevant for my two texts Easy A and Mean Girls. Olive (Easy A) and Cady (Mean Girls) both rise in popularity for different reasons and both characters also don't know how to handle their new senses of power, but clearly enjoy the attention for a while.

"Sexual pleasure for girls in teen films remains far more problematic than it is for boys, most likely because the majority of teen films are made under the patriarchal standards of Hollywood" (pg107)

This is relevant because in Easy A, after the rumour of Olive goes round about her losing her virginity and then incidentally another rumour about her sleeping around, she is considered to be 'easy', hence the title, and even adorns the letter 'A' on her chest, mimicking The Scarlet Letter. However, when she pretends to have sex with a boy at a party, he is considered a 'stud' of sorts and is congratulated for it. This perhaps shows that while female roles are getting stronger, there is also a small part of femininity that remains and they are expected to remain pure. On the other hand, by Olive playing up to this role could refer back to the previous quote of having a sense of power.

"After these portraits of girl groups in the mid-1990's, the film industry returned to more solo depictions of tough girls... which is perhaps most indicative of late 1990's tough girl roles, makes its heroine confident to the point of being self-centred" (pg93)

In Mean Girls and Easy A, many different tough girl stereotypes are portrayed, and the part of the heroine being confident to the point of being self-centred is certainly true of the main characters in both of the films, including roles of the antagonists such as The Plastics (Mean Girls) and Marianne (Easy A)

New investigation idea

I have chosen two new texts so that I can look at high school teenagers in American films

To what extent are the representation of teenage girls stereotypical in modern teen high school movies, focusing particularly on Mean Girls and Easy A


1. Easy A

After a little white lie about losing her virginity gets out, a clean cut high school girl sees her life paralleling Hester Prynne's in "The Scarlet Letter," which she is currently studying in school - until she decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing.

(Taken from IMDB)












2. Mean Girls

Raised in African bush country by her zoologist parents, Cady Heron thinks she knows about survival of the fittest. But the law of the jungle takes on a whole new meaning when the home-schooled 16-year-old enters public high school for the first time and encounters psychological warfare and unwritten social rules that teenage girls face today.

(Taken from IMDB)

Example exam question

Explore the marketing strategies used by your selected industry. Use the examples you have studied to illustrate your answer. (30)

Research

Mad Men

- DVDs (All the seasons, also on Blu-Ray)
- Books (Fashion File, Sterling's Gold, The Illustrated World)
- Barbie Dolls (Of the main characters like Joan, Don, etc)
- Calendar
- CDS


Lost

- DVDs
- T-Shirts
- Books
- Mugs
- Ornaments


These marketing strategies will be used to help promote the programmes and will appeal to a wide range of audiences because of the variety of merchandise offered.

B3: How do your chosen texts attract their audiences?

B3: How do your chosen texts attract their audiences?

In the episode of Lost, there are various technical conventions that are used to attract a mass audience. For example, enigma codes are widely used across the episode to make the audience interested and to appeal to a wide range of people. When the little boy finds the handcuffs, the audience question about whose they are, which is further questioned when his father comes and he looks around the area as if someone will come and retrieve them. Non-diegetic music is also used at this point to enhance the enigma as it is a low tone and a slow speed as the information settles in the father's mind that there could be someone dangerous on the island with them. Referring to the Uses and Gratifications theory, it provides the audience entertainment because it's something that wouldn't happen so could be an escapism, but the enigmas also provide entertainment.

- Refer to Uses and Grats theory
- Look at how the audience responds to the various sequences
- Look at equilibrium and disequilibrium


UNFINISHED