Research into Stereotypes

Our film challenges stereotypes of people's perception of others, many films either use these or challenge them in famous and successful films in order to connect the audience to characters as they may already have an idea of their personality strates. I have chose to research stereotypes to give us an idea how to dress certain characters and how certain characters are thought to be. I have chosen to research some of these stereotypes before i create my character profile to see how we can challenge different stereotypes.

This is the website i found the stereotypes- 

http://examples.yourdictionary.com/stereotype-examples.html 

Stereotypes are commonly used in films so that the audience will know about the characters personality before it is said in the film, although some films challange them. Most stereotyping is commonly known to take place from schools which many film directors have adapted too.

Here are some popular stereotypes used in films and TV:

Stereotype: "Goths wear black clothes, black makeup, are depressed and hated by society."

This is a character from 'Hollyoaks' who fits this stereotype, straight away the audience can see this through mise-en-scene.

Stereotype: "Girls are only concerned about physical appearance." 

The Mean Girls film is based in a high school- the perfect place for the director to play with stereotypes. "The Plastics" fit this example of a stereotype through how they are dressed and handle themselves in photo's before you even meet the characters in the film.

 

This clip from the film shows how the stereotypes are seen throughout the school and how student's see others. All characters are dressed to fit each stereotype, eg. 'Jocks' in sports-wear, 'plastics' in skirts and lots of make up.

"All blondes are unintelligent."

Brittany is a character that a stereotypical blonde, wears make-up, unintelligent, a cheerleader, easily led etc. This is a snapshot of her character and how she fits into this stereotype.

HOWEVER,

'Legally blonde' challenges stereotypes. The main character looks and acts like the stereotypical blonde, with the outfits, make-up, the little dog in her bag etc, but the film challenges stereotypes as she applies for law school and becomes a successful lawyer and wins a court case. Infact it was her "blondeness stereotype" that allows her to win the court case!

This is the Court scene which breaks the stereotypical "dumb blonde" as she uses's her knowledge of what is typical knowledge of a "blonde girl" to use against the defendant to prove she is guilty.

In our short film, we are using a blonde girl to do the robbing which is challenging the blonde stereotypes as appearance-wise, she does not look capable of stealing.