From Left to Right,
Cinderella Story Shelby Cummings, Wild Child Harriet Bentley, Glee Quinn Fabray, High School Musical Sharpay Evans and Mean Girls Regina George
By focussing on a few films, each of them have similarities such as the stereotype of a mean blonde girl who tries to ruin the protagonists life. It is hard to think how this stereotype came about as blondes are already stereotyped as dumb, so it is difficult to think how they have also been categorised as mean.
Without a doubt Mean Girls is a favourite film of mine, which sadly I quote most of the script. However, the amount of stereotypes within the film is somewhat not shocking as school life films need to have characters identified quickly as otherwise the audience wouldn’t be able to understand the story line quickly. In the first five minutes of the film there was a very stereotypical image of what someone from Africa may look like as the teacher Ms. Norbury assumed that the darker coloured girl was from Africa.
Waterloo Road is intended to capture school life yet whenever I have been to school, I have never experienced a full blown fire, a troubled teenager with a gun and a girl going into labour during my six hours at school. Obviously if Waterloo Road reflected school life realistically then no one would watch it, I mean watching a maths lesson would be as painful as actually working in one, don’t you think? Understandably a drama about school needs to be more interesting than reality as then no one would want to watch it. However, Waterloo Road tends to go to the extreme of situations which comes across false.
You don’t typically have the ‘geek’ and ‘jock’ in every school, so why do Glee represent stereotypes when they believe everyone is unique! Who said singing’s geeky anyway?
My media essay aims to answer the question above as I want to know why the media find it necessary to create a false representation of school life in television programmes and films. I am also interested in discovering the effect this has on teenage viewers as being one myself, makes me wonder whether I am too being influenced by what I am watching and what hidden messages are changing my personal views. I will be using many resources to help me back up my opinions as otherwise I wouldn’t be uncovering any truths and my essay wouldn’t have any substance to it. Without having started any research, I want to write why I think the media creates false representations of school life as I want to see whether or not my opinions will change, after I have carried out research, which will include discovering theories, understanding and considering both views on the possibility of the media creating a false representation of school life.
At the moment I believe the media changes the perception of school life to make it seem more interesting for teenage viewers to watch, I mean most teenagers aren’t going to want to watch a maths lesson on television when they have been in one earlier for an hour, right? What most teenagers would prefer to watch would be a fight that gets out of hand or a fire that destroys the school. Therefore, basically something that would never happen at school as otherwise it would be quite dull. Another opinion I have of the false representation of school life in the media would be that constant stereotypes are used so that viewers won’t have to try hard to understand the characters, it’s easier for the audience to just assume that they are the same as they have seen in a previous chick-flick with a similar story line.
I have only written two opinions of mine about the false representation of school life in the media which summed up are basically, interesting story lines and constant stereotypes. I think that the media can use these two ideas to their advantage to make a successful television series/film that they know most teenagers would enjoy as similar films such as Mean Girls and Clueless have shown in the past to do so.
Keep following my blog as it will become more interesting and will hopefully uncover the truths behind the media’s reasoning for creating a false perception of school life!
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