5 Characters that Redfern Now used to demonstrate power in the episode "Stand Up"

Chloe was one of the students who revolted against Mrs Macann with other numerous students with her by not singing the national anthem at school. She demonstrated power through the power of people and therefore made Mrs Macann powers weaken. This is called people power is used to pressure someone or something through public demonstration. In this scene, you'll see many students sitting down making Mrs Macann very unimpressed of the students and soon starts to make threats. Chloe and other students do not fret from their intentions and demonstrated people power.

Nic or Joel’s mum has shown in many instances her power as well as her being powerless. An example is, Nic being angry towards her husband Eddie and her son Joel. She was clearly upset that Joel was suspended and confronted Eddie about it. She argued with Eddie, telling him how much of an aboriginal himself was compared to the aboriginal Eddie thought himself to be. In this scene, Eddie was sitting down while Nic was standing, showing Eddie being weaker than Nic. The high camera angle supports this with the tone of Nic being disappointed in Eddie. In this instance of power Nic is now powerless instead of powerful when she talks to Mrs Macann about Joel’s behaviour. Nic sounds extremely distressed and unable to do anything when Mrs Macann only option was to expelled Joel.

Mrs Macann cares a lot about the face of the school and is certainly obliged to enforce the school guidelines especially to students who don't follow them as seen at the beginning with Joel. She becomes very strict and uses her power to try to convince Joel to sing the national anthem but ends up using threats to scare Joel into submission. This however doesn't work in her favour and again, Mrs Macann abuses her power and expel Joel from the school. Later on, Joel not singing the anthem sparks the students to not sing the anthem whether it’s for the school or because they're force to. Then Mrs Macann uses her power against the students but unfortunately already lost the battle and her power to influence others. Using the same scene, the camera moves away in a nervous way from Mrs Macann, as she gets closer to the camera. The director knows that Mrs Macann and her presence are very fearful and so the director wanted to let the viewers to know that by using this scene.

Throughout the episode, Joel goes through quite a dilemma whether he should sing the national anthem or not. Joel's school is very prestigious and shows a very unified tradition where everyone does what everyone is meant to do in a way that represents the school. As for Joel, he is considered to be an outsider where he only knows the national anthem not as a chant rather as a song that's played at the grand finals of a footy game. Joel ends up being confused to whether to sing the anthem or not and soon gets himself expelled from the school from Mrs Macann. At this stage of the episode, Joel is seen to be powerless whereas Mrs Macann is very powerful due to her authoritative title. In this scene, the camera moves forward to Joel in a confronting way. This scene perfectly portrayed Joel in the beginning as it showed Joel being weak. This power balance is swapped at the end when Joel himself becomes an influence to other students from the school and begins to riot Mrs Macann state of power. At the end, Joel won his spot to his school and scholarship due to him demonstrating the difference of people power to Mrs Macann.

It is clear that the media in real life have influenced our lives and you can especially see this in the Redfern Now episode called "Stand Up". In this episode, Joel, who was an aboriginal was expelled from his school for not singing the national anthem as he felt like it wasn't right to sing the national anthem. With Joel being expelled, his parents supported him (not initially at first) and used the media to convince the principal and the school so Joel can get back into school. By using the media, which is the local newspaper, it even influenced other people to not sing the national anthem. The media played a very huge role despite not being in the show for a long time and was able to belittle Mrs Macann’s (the Principal) power in this scene. This scene showed Joel being moved out from the security and Mrs Macann but it was at this turning point is when the story starts to pick up the pace. Mrs Macann expression or feelings before the photo taking was confident but it suddenly changed in an instance to a face of concerned and agitated.