I have been looking at gender representation in the spooks clip. It is raining in the clip, which represents the desperation and sadness of the situation the characters find themselves in. In addition, the barren trees connote the season and the despair of the situation.
In addition to this, all of the men are wearing standard business looking dress while the woman is wearing jeans and a regular top. This objectifies women because they are ‘supposed’ to be looking attractive when they are around men.
Another point is that there is only one woman in the entire scene, out of about ten characters. She only gets a total screen time of 15 seconds which signifies how women are oppressed and not valued in the media.
The fact that men occupy almost all of the screen time represents the hegemonic norm of men being the most important part of the police force. It is important to note that all of the men are looking very serious and seem to be armed, while the woman is not.
This clip also gives us some insight in to the hierarchy of the police force, and how superiority works within what the director of Spooks thinks the police force is like. It is quite obvious that the man in the middle of the police trio is the man in charge, and lets his two inferiors do the talking for him until it comes time to decommission the rogue operative. Lower still than the two officers helping the boss, are the guards. This is immediately obvious when the boss shouts a command at one of the guards, ‘take him back’ and the guard immediately responds to this.
This clip also has some ideas of relationships between men. It signifies the heated moments that can happen when two men have a disagreement, and ultimately ends with one police officer losing his job. The connotation of relationships between men is most apparent when the rogue operative yells “I’ve woken up to this job!” directly at his boss.
The director has used digetic noises of sirens at the begining of the clip, in order to signify that this is a situation of panic and ergancy. This instantly makes the audience feel more on edge, as they hear the loud sirens, recognise it is a warning of danger, and they are curious as to what is happening in the scene.
The use of the diegetic sound of the helecoptor flying, makes the audience feel worried. It signifies the seriousness of the scene as the police have had to bring in people in aircrafts, it indicates the criminals being chased are dangerous. This adds to the excitement of the scene, as it makes the audience feel they are involved in a thrilling scene.
The use of such vehicals make the programme look more successful and planned, making it instantly more appealing. This is because the audicence recognise that using a helecopter is an expensive prop and stunt for a programme to include, therefore they feel the programme is worth watching.
