Social Context Study

Current Social Issues

Suggestions of current influences/fears within our society include:

• Gang culture - London riots
• Terrorism - Britain's being radicalised and going to Syria
• Increase in body image awareness
• Awareness of LGBT becoming more talked about and viewed as less of a taboo subject - legalisation of gay marriage
• Risk of medications running out or not being effective against diseases - antibiotics crisis
• Authority figures, such as police are being criticised and negatively viewed with things such as race - shootings of many black people in America

Film Ideas

• One film idea is based on the idea of body shaming and how it can lead to eating disorders and low self esteem. The film could focus on how an individual is made to feel by society when the pressures conveyed by the media to look or be a certain way can become overbearing and negatively impact a persons outlook on life. The pressures could be acted on as voices within the characters mind reminding them of how they should look. A different perspective to take with this could be that it is mainly viewed as women who have body image issues, however we could portray it from a males point of view, not seeing his reflection till the end and using gender neutral actions for them to act upon so the audience may be led to believe they are seeing a woman's struggles, and showing how society judges so quickly through this tactic. 

• Another idea is that with the increasing immunity to medications, we are taken back to a past time where even minor illnesses can become deadly. We could focus on the viewpoint of someone who has taken to living away from society so they are less at risk, but when someone they are very close to in the 'main world' gets sick they are forced to help save them with what they can find away from society, without catching anything themself. It could become a story with the outline of are those you love sometimes more important to you than yourself?

Film Idea One Inspirations

• The tube advert 'Are You Beach Body Ready' for Protein World sparked widespread outrage as the poster displayed a woman who's figure was supposedly seen as the 'ideal' body as far as the company were concerned. This led to many people viewing this as irresponsible at therefore a possible contributor to the number of eating disorders that can be viewed as occurring from perceived social pressures to look a certain way (for example as the woman did in the poster). An online petition to get the poster removed was uploaded to 'change.org' and within a matter of days the petition reached 40,000 signatures. An extract from the petition reads 'Protein World is directly targeting individuals, aiming to make them feel physically inferior to the unrealistic body image of the bronzed model, in order to see their product'. As well as this, the hashtag 'everybodysready' circulated around social media alerting those in further away regions to the need for awareness of body shaming in the media to be seen.
• A meta analysis carried out on participating teenagers by 'Just Say Yes' showed that 69% of teenagers viewed models that they saw in magazines as having their ideal body and basing their diets around these, and that just by viewing these models 7/10 people felt more depressed after seeing one of these photos than they had prior to viewing it. The most important fact could be seen as that only 5% of the american population naturally possess the ability to have a figure such as those usually shown in magazines, and therefore it is likely that in attempting to create this 'perfect figure' as viewed by society, people are doing more harm than good.