Post 15: Representation of Men

How are men represented in my genre? 

The genre of my Short film is Drama. Stereotypically in Drama films and also across most media, male representations tend to be based and focused on physical and intellectual strength, power, independence and attractiveness. Male characters are often presented as being self reliant and isolated, which I have created the male character ‘Josh’ of our short film to be like.  The main protagonist of the short film is ‘Josh’ and he has been developed as a rebellious but vulnerable character, which is portrayed as being very isolated from his family issues. Where in contrast to this we have created a male police officer character that is represented as a powerful leader, who is introduced to try fixing and controlling the situation, as Josh is seen as being aggressive and angry.


Representations of Masculinity in Film

Representations in all aspects are subject to change, historically, politically and socially. Representation defines the way social groups such as masculinity is constructed for audiences , where as collective media identities, implies that general groups all behave the same way and have common representations that are recognised by audiences .  Key theorists such as David Gaunlett and David Buckingham explore the theories and notion of masculinity in films, this is supported by hyper realism and the ideas of hegemonic (dominate) and more plurastic (basic) representations.