Issues of Representation in Attack the Block
In Attack the Block, a sci-fi, London based, British film by Joe Cornish, there are a lot of issues of representation featured. Some of these include; gender; ethnicity; class and age. I am going to be exploring these representations in three scenes from the film.
The first scene that I am going to be studying the issues of representation in is the middle chapter (Chapter 6) from the film entitled: “Too Much Madness.” In this scene, Moses and the rest of his and Sam are in Tina’s flat. In this scene when the “monsters” attack, the males take charge, however when one of the gang dies, and Moses is stuck, the females take charge and kill both of the aliens. This shows that while the males think they are dominant and can protect everyone else, they are in fact equal to the females. I think this is Joe Cornish trying to address a traditional view of males being the dominant gender, and this scene clearly shows that woman are just as strong, maybe even stronger than the males. Ethnicity is a not a key feature of this scene, however class is. Sam is the only middle class person in the room, and she is the only one that isn’t sat on the sofas with everyone else. This portrays her as an outcast because of her social class. Similarly age alienates Sam, she is in her early twenties, and however everyone else in the room is in their mid-teens. This age gap means that the rest of the people in the room don’t respect her, because she is a non- authoritative figure. Her age is made fun of by one of the girls, who says: “Moses, when did you start dating your maths teacher?” This portrays yet another stereotypical view: younger generations do not respect their elders. This is further supported when Sam tries to take charge and speaks up, but she is put down again when the girls just laugh at her. The camera angle is very low when Sam stands up and speaks, so this gives Sam a feeling of insecurity and nervousness, like she is not looked highly upon. However when the leader of the
The first scene that I am going to be studying the issues of representation in is the middle chapter (Chapter 6) from the film entitled: “Too Much Madness.” In this scene, Moses and the rest of his and Sam are in Tina’s flat. In this scene when the “monsters” attack, the males take charge, however when one of the gang dies, and Moses is stuck, the females take charge and kill both of the aliens. This shows that while the males think they are dominant and can protect everyone else, they are in fact equal to the females. I think this is Joe Cornish trying to address a traditional view of males being the dominant gender, and this scene clearly shows that woman are just as strong, maybe even stronger than the males. Ethnicity is a not a key feature of this scene, however class is. Sam is the only middle class person in the room, and she is the only one that isn’t sat on the sofas with everyone else. This portrays her as an outcast because of her social class. Similarly age alienates Sam, she is in her early twenties, and however everyone else in the room is in their mid-teens. This age gap means that the rest of the people in the room don’t respect her, because she is a non- authoritative figure. Her age is made fun of by one of the girls, who says: “Moses, when did you start dating your maths teacher?” This portrays yet another stereotypical view: younger generations do not respect their elders. This is further supported when Sam tries to take charge and speaks up, but she is put down again when the girls just laugh at her. The camera angle is very low when Sam stands up and speaks, so this gives Sam a feeling of insecurity and nervousness, like she is not looked highly upon. However when the leader of the