EVALUATION 2 - how does my media product represent particular social groups?

To avoid confusion, I'll refer to Louis' character as Jay (the name he is called in the opening).


REPRESENTATIONS:

The age represented is that of fairly young so 19/early 20's, though the police interrogator would be older which adds to his sense of superiority. The race is all white and the gender presented is mostly men as the only female is in it for about 5 seconds. You could say the male gender is represented as violent (Jay) and in slight contrast, anti-violent (the police interrogator, though his personality his not revealed much, it could be of course that he is quite violent himself, but I just gave him a chilled vibe for the short while he's in it). The representation for the female gender is as an object of desire and posession as that's how the gally in this opening is presented as.

While never discussed, I'd say Jay and his gally are a working-class couple based on his appearance (worn-out-looking clothing, could be blue-collar worker) and attitude (in films containing different social classes, it's common for a working-class character to be the violent one), and Benjamin's character is middle-class (while this is not obvious, we imply it by having him wear a suit). There's a contrast between the two men regarding their class and probably thus in what they can provide for the girl.

CHARACTER ANALYSIS:

The character of the police interrogator can be compared with a character called Agent David Kujan from the film The Usual Suspects, who is also an interrogator and spends the film interrogating the main character.



Both characters have the same gender (obvs), same role (interrogating the lead) and have a high place in their job department. They have quite similar clothing, trousers and a shirt though Kujan is also sporting a tie and the good old dungarees! They both want to know exactly what happened and for what reasons (though Kujan's interrogation is over a much bigger deal), and Kujan is seen to eventually have a somewhat thin patience yet keen to help his interrogatee though you cannot compare this as nothing is revealed about our interrogator's personality but it could be similar (slight aggressivity/over-eager determination form in the personality of interrogators in most police procedural films).

They are both a power of authority attempting to bring justice to the wrong-doer so they symbolise justice.

Why did we choose to use this character? Well because the whole thing started from the idea of an interrogation after we moved that idea from our continuity exercise so I imagine the first character to come into our heads was the interrogator. The relationship between the interrogator and interrogatee is genre-conventional as any trust, bond, hate, or anything felt between the two can be a leading factor of the film's plot.