Evaluation Question 2

In Full House we subvert many stereotypes pertaining to gender. The main way in which we do this is making the majority of the cast female apart from a single male character. Usually in mainstream media the cast is usually predominantly male with a single female character. This can be seen in The Avengers where all of the avengers are male apart from The Black Widow,

or in Star Trek where all of the crew are male apart from Uhura,

or in Star Wars and Princess Leia in the original trilogy and Padme Amidala in the prequels. These female characters are often placed there to be “eye candy” for male viewers and to help attract a female audience.

This trope has been characterised as The Smurfette Principle. If The Smurfette Principle is in action it means that the cast is made up of men and there is exactly one woman. The name of this trope was first coined by Katha Pollitt in an article for the New York Times in 1991 called “The Smurfette Principle”.

Our film also passes the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test is in place to test the representation of woman in film and TV. To pass the Bechdel test two named female characters must have a conversation with each other and talk about something other than men, despite this being a low bar many films in mainstream media do not pass this test. We pass the test in our film as the main conversation topic is how they got into their current situation and as they believe that they are the only people left boy trouble isn’t very high on their list of priorities.

We also represented young people in our film as all of the characters featured are all either 17 or 18 years old. We showed the main character before the incident in college as it is a natural setting for teenagers of this age. We did this to show the normality of the character. We show the characters through a low angle shot to show they are powerful which juxtaposes the stereotype that teenagers are weak and inferior to adults.