Representation exam question

 The film that I studied was "Attack the Block" (Joe Cornish 2011) and it involved a lot of different examples of representation.

In the film Attack the block the director has clearly challenged the stereotypes that he was representing in the film.  This is shown in the progression of the film as all the characters have their own character arcs, for example the main character Moses is presented at first as a dangerous young black man that mugs innocent middle class white nurses.  But the film progresses and we see a completely different light to Moses.  It turns out that he is only 15 and his morals are quite fair.  There is also a major scene where the nurse that Moses mugged goes into his flat and it is revealed that Moses has a very child like room with Spiderman bedding.  This gives him a completely different light on the fact that his character and ideology is represented so differently by the end of the film.  

In the film the director also challenged the stereotype of middle aged white women as another main character, Sam.  She is represented at first as quite venerable and innocent as she is mugged and is completely mortified at the start.  She then proves to be very brave at the end by managing to kill an alien to save Moses and she goes through a massive herd of them to eventually lure them to their deaths.  This shows that the director completly challenged the stereotypes when he was trying to represent women.