Billy Elliot
Directed by Stephen Daldry in 2000 Billy Elliot, set in the north east in 1984-5 in the time of the coal miner's strike. Working with fairly unknown cast he sure drew the best out of them, this isn't your stereotypical social realism film, it is about an eleven year old boy that is pushed into boxing due to his dad being a boxing coach, although being a good boxer Billy wants to become a ballet dancer. The budget for Billy Elliot was £3million which is a fairly large amount of a social realism film that was released in September 29th 2000, but with the £3million budget the film managed to bring in a staggering £72,853,509 from the box office. Gary Lewis that starred as Billy's dad in the film also won Best Actor at Flaiano Film Festival.
Target Audience
The target audience for this film would be mainly a female audience of the age of 25-40 age group, from a working class, living in average homes. The audience would more than likely be employed and enjoy watching films at the cinema with female friends or having a 'girls night in' watching films with friends. The reason for it being based at a female audience because the female audience will have empathy for Billy.
Representation
In Billy Elliot he has a nuclear family, due to being classed as a normal family his father wants to retain their current reputation, this is why the father tries to steer his children into boxing which is a male dominated sport. Once Billy is in boxing and decides he would like to go into ballet his father doesn't like that because it is seen as a feminine hobby, also being set in the 1980's being a male but doing female hobbies such as ballet wasn't accepted at that time especially being set in the North East where as it would be in modern day society particularly in London. Billy's father also. wants to raise the both him and his brother up to become strong so they will go out to work and earn money for themselves and the family.
Analysis
From 10 seconds you hear the song Rocky theme song, this gives you the impression the boy is going to be very manly, it makes you think that the boy is going to be an amazing boxer, but the boy then gets knocked down straight away. So just through the use of music it has allowed you to create what you think the boy is going to be like.
At 44 seconds you see Billy Elliot standing next to the girls doing ballet wearing his boxing gear, the use of the boxing gears allows Ken Loach to show the clear distinct stereotype sports, that boys compete in brave sports and girls compete in sports that are ore fragile and require finesse. The stereotype is reinforced when shown at 1 minute, Billy's dad says 'lads do football, boxing or wrestling' .
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