Timed Essay Question 6

 

Stranger Things and The Walking Dead both represent gender, age and class in a way that would appeal to their target audience to encourage them to continue watching.

Stranger Things represents gender in a very different way to traditional views. This is achieved through the way that Eleven’s character is presented. In the first episode, Eleven is shown to have powers and is able to take down men that were trying to capture her. This shows that she is a strong female lead who contradicts the idea of gender theory where females are presented to be either domestic, marital, sexual or consumers. However, in the Walking Dead, Carol’s character first begins off very weak with an abusive husband (shows her to be marital and domestic), and then as her character develops throughout various seasons, she becomes very independent and is involved in resolving a lot of the disruptions (narrative structure).  This is very similar to Eleven as they both go against the stereotypical viewpoint of women being weak. In both TV dramas, they both increase the roles of female characters as the seasons progress. In Stranger Things this is Nancy, Eleven and Max and in Walking Dead this is Carol, Maggie and Michonne. By doing this they are likely to appeal to a wider target audience as it allows less controversial ideology in today’s society.

Another example of gender in these shows is when in Stranger Things, Ted tells Mike to ‘listen to his mother’ instead of Ted saying what he can and can’t do. This goes against the stereotypical gender roles where the father usually makes the decisions in the house. Whereas, in the Walking Dead Rick is shown to have control over his family’s decision as it involves him trying to protect his family from the walkers and other people.

In terms of age, both audiences of each show would be able to identify with the characters that play the maternal role. This being Carol and Joyce. They both lose their children; Carol loses Sophia and Joyce loses Will. This means that the target audiences would appeal to watching these shows as they are able to identify with the characters (uses and gratifications) by being parents and are more likely to continue watching as they could sympathise being in that situation. However

Stranger Things also shows a variety of different classes within the different families in the show. For example, Mike’s family shows a middle-class lifestyle since they live in a big house in comparison to Will’s family where their house is dingy which suggests they are lower class. Even the fact that Johnathon wasn’t home when Will got in because he took an extra shift to get more money for them shows their class is lower than Mike’s family. This means that it is more likely to appeal to a wider target audience because it represents a variety of classes which each audience member is likely to identify with. However, it doesn’t really show any upper-class people which may be because they are very unlikely to watch TV because stereotypically this is not what they do.

Whereas in The Walking Dead, it doesn’t really show class because it is in a zombie apocalypse where no one has anything, and they are all just trying to survive so there is an absence of materialism, which is mostly associated with middle to upper class. This means that the show is likely to appeal to anyone, however it has a lot of gore which may only really appeal to a lower-class audience. However, both Rick and Hopper are Sheriffs in both shows and it is considered a professional job of a stereotypical middle-class family. Both of these characters have influences over the other characters in order to keep them safe and the others show trust and respect towards them (Not for Hopper originally).

This shows that gender, class and age represented in a TV drama will likely determine its audience as it will appeal to them. For Stranger Things this will likely be a younger (13-16), lower/middle class audience that are likely female. Whereas for the Walking Dead it will likely be a predominately male audience that are lower class and are young adults due to the violent themes.