How Is Gender Represented In This Scene?

Throughout this clip of doctor who, gender is represented in different ways and through different characters. The establishing shot of the clip shows the master as a close up shot showing his importance claiming is power from the very beginning and in the back ground you can see the character of Martha Jones being dragged in by men in military uniforms holding guns. Generically to have a gun and be wearing a military uniform you must be of some importance and have some power. We are introduced to this character, the master, and as soon as the audience do meet him, they are aware of his power and control. As Martha walks into the scene the camera tracks her, but it also shows all of the people around her. it shows what we know as the doctor, yet small and wrinkled locked up in cage as if he means nothing. We also see the character of captain jack in messy overalls with dirt on his face being guarded by yet another man in a military uniform, as we have become aware that the male gender has more power and dominance over the female gender, this is slightly contradicted here as we see a male being guarded not allowed his power. Although this could emphasize how much power and control that the master has, the fact that he can belittle other males when he wants to connotes that he has complete power and control over the entire situation. She also walks past a few maid, these women are dressed in generic maid uniforms, a black dress with a white collar, these women also look scared to speak and scared to show their opinion. This completely shows the power that the master has over them, they are scared to except their own human rights to speak and have an opinion. The sound used as the walks in is a slow beat piece of music with drums in, this build up tension that she is walking to someone of importance as she is. As Martha comes closer to the master, she is instructed to kneel down by him, here both high and low angle shots are used, low angle shots are used from Martha's point of view to look up to the master and the high angle shots are used from the masters point of view to look down at Martha. This is to signify the power he has over here and it emphasizes his superiority and her being an inferior character. 

Further on into the clip, the master begins to recount his plan, he speaks about what he is going to do to ensure that he has full power and control over the entire human race. The camera zooms into a countdown clock on the wall as he explains that there is only a certain amount of time until his plan is complete. At this point there is a look of satisfaction on the characters face as if he has maintained his power throughout. However the character of Martha begins to laugh at his plan as she knows that she has gone behind his back and devised her own plan. This completely switches the idea of the male gender having power as she takes his power away from him, when she explains and he slowly works out what she has done, he begins to look more and more disappointed with himself. Yet on the other hand a shot reverse shot is used to ensure that the audience realise the men still have ultimate power, the shot reverse shot suggests that as soon as she has finished speaking it is important that we hear the master speak again. As she tells him what she has been doing, this is shown through flashbacks, between each flashback there are quick cuts and the people in the flashback clips seem to all be wearing what seems to be rags and cheap clothing, this shows they have no wealth and no power.

Racism within disney

The dangers of this is that as the media is owned overall by 6 different people/companies, this means that the ideas presented through the media are limited as they do not take other peoples opinions into account. By not doing this, this therefore means that the ideas that they are portraying to the audience can be effective to members of the audience with impressionable views such as young children. Adults are also impressionable but not to the extent of children as adults tend to have grown up with the same views and feel strongly about them so their mind cannot be changed in such a way that children's minds can. We looked at the idea of Disney and we resulted in noticing that they didn't have a black princess until they released the film "the princess and the frog" in 2009. Disney went through a stage where they were criticised and accused of being racist as they have never had a black character of high class. Disney have used different races and nationalities in their films but they have never given them superiority of class during these films, for example in Dumbo (1940); during this film there is a group of men working hard whilst singing a son including the following words "We work all day, we work all night, we never learnt to read or write" they are portrayed as slaves during this film; this completely goes against the idea of equality throughout the world. Also in 1953, "The Jungle Book" was released to the public eye. This film is now analysed and seen to portray a lot of racism through its characters and locations. It included primitive and poor looking houses through the jungle; this presents the idea of no class and poor people living in the area. The character of Baloo is now seen as a character with primitive culture and also is seen to be a scatty and poor, neglected character. Some of the characters including King Louie seem to speak their own language which is hard for the audience to take seriously. Also in 1992, the film of Aladdin, was the main focus of the way people look to therefore depend on whether they should be a hero or a villain.

Brainstorm

This was the first idea to come from other members of the group, personally I didn't think that this idea was 'thinking outside of the box', after speaking to my teacher independently I was certain that this idea was far too cliche, so I began to think of some sub-genres and hybrids that my group could explore, my two favorites that I had came across were romance thrillers and western-crime thrillers. 

initial idea:

As we have decided too discard this idea as we have fallen into all of the classic filming traps, we have finalised a few different ideas and each member of the group is going to individually research again and in more depth, their genre, each member will create a brief storyboard and possibly a short script to present to the rest of the group. I will be researching western crime thriller genre and the others will be taking on romance thrillers, horrors, romance thrillers and sci-fi thrillers.