Compare the opening few minutes of, "We've got the builders in" with "Brat Camp." How do they appeal to their target audience? What issues of representation arise? What elements of narrative are evident here?

Authors Avatar

James Collingwood

Compare the opening few minutes of, “We’ve got the builders in” with “Brat Camp.” How do they appeal to their target audience? What issues of representation arise? What elements of narrative are evident here?

Both programmes have different audiences and therefore the director, producer and editor of the film must work together to target their audience.

“We’ve got the builders in” is targeting at a male audience, who most likely, too are having the builders in and are interested in what will happen and how builders and the situation should be dealt with. Although many DIY programmes are directed at women, due to the fact that this has the word builder in and men usually deal with the builders and it is a male orientated employment, it is clear from the title that this is most likely for a male audience.

By using the term “we’ve got the builders in” this establishes that the audience is not necessarily builders or people who work in manual labour but more people who wish to view what it is like to have the builders in from other peoples experiences.

The show appeals to its audience through many different ways. Firstly, due to it being for a male audience, it requires humour and this is done through portraying the builders as dumb and setting up situations that the viewer can relate to. “We’ve got the builders in” represents the builder as dumb, due to his loud mouth, cockney accent and large body gestures. His colloquial and idiomatic style of speaking often connotes stupidity.

Join now!

Women are represented as dumb and naive in this programme as they are dressed in pink and laugh at inane and unfunny things. They have large breasts, which of course appeals to a male audience as eye candy and they dress in pink, very feminine.

The whole show is narrated by a man, with an Irish accent, commonly associated and thus a convention of the stereotypical builder.

Narrative wise, the programme is shown through a multi strand narrative, following different people and therefore, easier for an audience to associate or empathise with the group that ...

This is a preview of the whole essay