Analysis Of Gender In Skins

The clip I watched was (First 5 minutes) Skins Series 3 Episode 1

Having watched the clip I could see a clear difference in the way genders are portrayed. Gender is portrayed through the different characters shown, the young teenage boys, middle aged men, teenage girls, and the elderly are all depicted differently. The teenage boys are shown to be the typical teenage boy, and rebels. The middle aged man is shown to be a typical working man. The teenage girl is shown to be a normal teenage girl, although she doesn't seem bothered of what is going on around her. The elderly woman is shown to be a typical aged woman, and fragile.

From the beginning of the clip an assumption is made that the character shown in the close-up is a boy. This is because the trainers are shown and you can see the male skateboarding. In this scene there is a low angle and a long take to create anticipation within the audience because they want to see who the boy is. It then changes into a higher angle where the skills of the skater become apparent to the audience. Most of the shots are short and fast to give excitement to the clip. These cuts also help the story to move on, as we can see the skater moving towards a destination, this is known as an action code, as the audience are aware that the story is moving on. These few scenes are all matched cut, as the images match and have an invisible edit. When the character stops, he takes out his phone and reads a text message. A close-up of the text message is shown, so the audience know who said it, and what it says. The text message says "Sparking ur last spliff". This shows that the person who sent the text message is a teenager. The language used in the text which suggests it's from a teenager is "ur" and "spliff". "Ur" is shorthand, which mainly teenagers use, and "spliff" is also a word that teenagers use. We then see the characters face through a mid close-up.

In the next scene, as three teenagers are sitting down and talking they witness a car accident. The driver, a middle-aged man comes out of his car angry; we see his emotion through the close up of his face. Having a close up of the characters face, after the incident, is called a reaction shot. Also having a scene with the friends having a conversation and a scene with a car accident is called a cross-cut, as we see two narratives here. Having more than one narrative in a TV drama is usual as it creates entertainment, and makes it more interesting for the audience. The scene then goes to a long-shot which shows the middle aged man wearing a suit, which represents his age and also suggests that he works.

After the middle aged man gets out of his car he approaches an elderly woman. We see that she is frightened by that man that is approaching her, by the expression on her face. The middle aged man assumes she saw what happened which suggests that elderly people are nosey and always know what is happening. Also to represent that she is an elderly women, he asks for her mobile number, but she says that she has not got one. This portrays her age, as it is stereotyped that old people are not good with new technology.

To conclude, the clip of skins shows gender through editing. Many different types of editing were used, mainly matched cut, emotion, and story. The matched cut was used for invisible edit, which showed verisimilitude. Emotion was shown through different shot types, but mainly through close-ups. There were quite a few scenes where a mixture of long and short takes were used. Having long takes is good to create tension within the story, and having short takes creates excitement as the pace is fast. The editing used in the clip at the beginning when the character is skating and only the feet are shown, shows the age as well as the gender being a teenage boy, this scene has a polysemic effect as the audience may feel that not only teenage boys skate and wear trainers that are shown in the clip, it may have been a female character. There are two possible interpretations of this particular scene.