Hollyoaks is a long running British soap opera, first broadcast in October 1995, it is based in the fictional suburb of Hollyoaks in Chester, and contains around 50 characters centred around Hollyoaks Community College, by the turn of the millennium it had a substantial fan base and was seen as a vibrant, modern and young person's soap.
Hollyoaks airs at 6.30 – 7.00 on channel 4 Monday to Friday every week and is aimed at a younger audience who are possibly within demographic group E, it caters extremely well for this audience through it’s representations of gender, age and sexuality among other things, they are predominantly stereotypical and commit verisimilitude towards the audiences targeted, causing them to engage with the soap by empathising with the characters and drawing similarities to their life, making it seem more real than staged.
Representation is used strongly within this show in order to attract an audience, I noticed through watching episodes how representation is used.
Age – Age is represented towards our target audience with a large portion of the characters portrayed being extremely youthful, usually either students or newly employed young adults, within demographic groups of E and D
Sexuality – There is strong connotations of sexuality, with transgender, homosexuality and heterosexuality represented regularly and has a help and support hotline and website for people within these categories suffering from discrimination or social problems, sexuality is represented through mostly stereotypes (colours, props, speech) and sexual relationships.
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| Theresa McQueen (Jorgie Porter) |
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| Mercedes Fisher (Jennifer Metcalfe) |
