Gender Representation in the Urban Drama Genre

Representation in media is defined as the ways in which groups, ideas or topics are portrayed from a particular ideological or value perspective. One of the main aspects of our teaser trailer is the idea of gender and how it can be used to portrayed or heighten certain aspects of our narrative, for example gang violence and drug use. Gender representation is a key idea explored within film as gender in itself is a clear and commonly-used device to carry a film's narrative and various themes.

Laura Mulvey's ideas on the 'male gaze' looked into gender power asymmetry and female objectification in film due to how heterosexual men were in control of the camera. Mulvey stated that the 'male gaze' occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man, for example if the camera was to clearly put emphasis on the body of a female character or perhaps show the body of a female character more than that of a male character in a sex scene. This idea of focusing or emphasising a female character in an overtly sexual manner is one which greatly ties into the urban drama genre, although examples of the theory can be found in almost every genre in television and film. This is due to one of the main conventions of the urban drama genre being sex and relationships among other themes including drug use and violence.

While researching various trailers, I found many examples of the male gaze used within camera shots described by Laura Mulvey. In the trailer for 'Kidulthood' (2006), there are several examples of camera shots which clearly portray female characters in a sexualised way, especially while accompanied with an absence of any sexualised portrayal of male characters. Although a sex scene, or a scene with clear sexual connotations, will most likely involve members of both sexes, it is common to see the female character being the focus of the scene in order to fully emphasise the sexual connotations of the scene. This can be done through the positioning of a camera, mainly focusing on certain parts of the female character's body which which connote sexuality such as her legs. This is the case in the image I took a screenshot from the trailer of 'Kidulthood' (above). Although the scene, which holds obvious sexual connotations, involves both a male and female character, the few seconds shown of the scene is almost entirely orientated around the female character to convey a sense of sexuality.