Representation of gender in Hustle

We expect males and females to act in a certain way, in this clip we see that they are represented in different ways. Some of the characters are represented in ways in which we thought, for example the con woman in the shop is well presented. But some characters do not match the stereotypes, for example the shop assistant, he doesn’t match the representation of a male but he does match the representation of that kind of shop assistant.

In the clip one of the first characters that we see is the con women, she is well presented, in fact she is immaculate. You can see that the shop which she is in is a high class shop, it looks very neat and tidy and all of the items look quite expensive. You can also see this as the older women asks the shop assistant how much a dress is and he answers with ‘700, and it is at the lower end of our stock’. This shows that it is a very expensive shop, and the con woman fits in well as she is dressed smartly. You can see that she has a lot of money from just looking at her. You can tell this from her appearance. She is also softly spoken, which again shows representation of a women in a shop like that, and she is the opposite of the older women we see in the shop at the beginning of the clip.

The older con artist is another character in the clip that is a representation of a male. The older con artist is again well dressed wears a suit and he is trying to con the less well dressed guy, in the gentleman’s club. The other guy isn’t as smartly dressed and he is just wearing normal clothes, that you would expect a guy to wear. Everyone else in the clip are also wearing smart clothes, showing that the guy getting conned doesn’t look to fit in there. The club is full of masculine colours; it is all greens and browns and reds, and the furniture again seems masculine as it is mostly made out of wood, showing the brown colours. An important thing in the scenes that we se the con man in is that there are no women around; this shows that it is only males allowed in the club.

Another character in the clip is the shop assistant, he is the character in the clip that doesn’t fit the stereotype of a man, but he does fit the representation of that kind of shop assistant. He is again well presented and very neatly dressed. But he skips instead of walks and this gives the impression that he is a quite feminine character, but as he is a shop assistant in an expensive clothes shop, he matches the representation of a shop assistant in that kind of shop.