Representation of Gender in - Our Girl

We watched half of the second episode on season 2 of 'Our Girl'. In this post I will talk about the representation of gender in the 30 minutes we watched.

When you hear the word soldier, people think in their head of a male. The fact that this TV drama counters that and breaks the stereotype is a big step in TV dramas as showing a woman as a soldier, it shows that women can be as powerful and strong as men can be. Even though she is shown to be a strong soldier, throughout the start of this episode she is captured and kept as a hostage which shows the weak side, but that'll show the weak side of any soldier and nearing the end of the first half you can see how brave she becomes. When Georgie (Who I'm pretty sure is the main protagonist) is in a cell with another hostage by the name of Kicki, she encourages Kicki to never give up and fight for what she needs. This is a counter stereotype and is played out well in the TV drama to show that women can easily do what men can too.

Camera work:

There is a lot of camera work involved in the opening scenes. When the Taliban cuts off the ambulance it gives us a POV shot of Georgie or an Over-the-shoulder shot of the driver. This is used to show what she would be seeing. When the Taliban are gunning the drivers down, it shows a low angle of it to show that the man shooting looks much more powerful and shows more dominance. This can be seen as making him look more powerful than Georgie and that she has become the victim. When the antagonist comes out of the truck, it uses a shallow focus on him to show that he is indeed the antagonist. Once they find Gerogie, they start dragging her back into there truck and a tracking shot takes place when she is to keep the scene flowing instead of just a bunch of cuts.

Editing:

At this scene there is a huge amount of 'Fast-pace' editing as it cuts from scene to scene almost immediately to create a dramatic effect with a lot of tension. If it wasn't fast paced, the action scene wouldn't of been as tense as they would've liked it to be. The transitions on this scene were pretty much always cuts but the soundtrack layered over from clip to clip to make the scenes linked in some way.

Sound:

Right at the start of the scene the ambulance already creates a huge amount of tension as it cuts the sound. But they are immediately taken out of action when the Taliban starts to fire at the ambulance giving diegetic sounds of gun shots, this along with screams from both Georgie and the driver. When the antagonist comes out of the truck, music plays to create more tension and also shows the importance of this character in the series. At the end the music then overrides all the other sound and takes control.

Mise-en-scene:

The costumes that they are all wearing is military, which goes against the stereotype of a womans clothing. This gives us a thought that this whole TV drama is counter stereotyping. The scenery is in a remote place filled by desert and shanties, which tells us that it isn't in England at all. The lighting seems to be all natural lighting except when in  the ambulance where the lighting is a lot dimmer but still with some lighting.