Questions on the Clip.

Today in Media Studies we were put into groups of four people and given these four questions to work through, the questions were based on the five minute clip of a drama programme that we watched last week.  The questions and our answers to them are listed below.

Why represent the police in this way?
They represent the police in this way because the creators want to make you side with the immigrants and make you see the police as antagonists (villains). This subverts the role of the police who are usually good. They also represent them in this way to show a sense of realism, this means that they do it to show that not everything has a happy ending and also destroys the belief that everything will be fine in the end. They may have also represented the police in this way to show them as faceless, unthinking robots as they don't seem to react to anything they're doing when they are ruining lives.

Why represent the immigrant workers in this way?
The creators of the programme represent the immigrant workers in this way in order to make you sympathise with the workers and again see the police as the villains. They may also have done this to send a message out that immigrant workers are treated unfairly in the UK like in the programme, in which they have to have low-end jobs even when they are qualified for better roles (e.g. Adam is a qualified doctor but is made to be a cleaner). The way that they represent the immigrant workers in some seems almost puts us in the room with them so you feel emotions for the workers such as fear when the workers are all hiding in the closet and fretting, Sympathy for the workers when Ibrahim gets caught and is taken away and grief when the character Sue is cleaning out Ibrahim's locker and sniffles as though she is crying.

What stereotypes are being adhered to or subverted from in this clip?
The Police - The police stereotype is usually one that is good, they are normally protectors of the society, but here on the other hand, they are subverting the stereotype by presenting them as nonchalant, uncaring, just "doing their jobs" when actually they are destroying peoples lives.
The Immigrants - The stereotypes of immigrants are usually a bad one such as unclean, de-humanised, stealing jobs, large families, unskilled and violent, but this clip attempts to de-construct this stereotype.
They do this with each character; Adam - Religious, caring and a trained doctor, Ibrahim - Treated incredibly roughly without provocation.

Can you hypothesise the purpose behind the mediation of this clip?
One reason this clip is mediated is to inform people more about immigrants and immigration and destroy the stereotype and made to challenge peoples pre-conceptions of not only the immigrants, but the police too. The main root cause however is simply to entertain an audience and make money from that.