Section B Guided Questions

Representation of the Youth

Stereotypes:

Stereotypes are social constructs

• they originate in and reflect the power relations in society because they are part of cultures ideology.
• they foster values that reinforce group and individual subordination.
• they marginalize people, treating them as "the other".

Propaganda is a form of communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position.

Youth and Youth Culture:

• gangs
• rebels
• yobs
• asbos
• failures
• un-disciplined
• lazy
• junkies
• reckless
• disgraceful
• binge drinkers
• animals

Elderly:

• soapy
• old
• wrinkled
• cute
• slow
• cant drive
• narrow minded
• smelly
• rude
• BINGO
• racist

'How have British youth been represented through different media in the London Riots' - Case Studies

Youth Representation.

bbc news - 'teenagers lack hope and feel let down by society'
mail online - 'British youths most unpleasant and violent in the world'
response to london riots - "Young, lacking opportunity, angry at the system and organising phenomenally fast over social media, London's rioters show some of the same characteristics as the pro-democracy demonstrators of the "Arab Spring."
the telegraph - positive response - "London riots shouldn't be an excuse to tarnish city's youths"

Youth Representation

Channel 4: teen trouble: 26th november 2007

• Youths portrayed through media negatively
• unfairly demonised?
• real stats of teenage crime is 12%
• news of the world not provoking the situation just showing an interest
• paranoid adults - adult fears
• discriminatory and degrading
• generation asbo
• press stirring the image of teenagers - paying mods to throw rocks
• jamie bulger case - fear of children - crime age change from 14 to 10 - cctv survelience
• "the press calls them reckless, irresponsible members of society, but statistics tell quite a different story about britains teens"

Hypodermic Syringe Theory
because of the proliferation of negative press its cultivating the adults minds and demonating british youth, the more you see it the more you believe it. desensitisation theory, the more we see the less likely we are to be upset by it such as violence on tv. because youth are demonised, they are then becoming self fufilling prophesies.


IPSOS MORI Survey 2005:
40% of articles focus on violence, crime, anti-social behaviour; 71% are negative.

Brunel University 2007:
TV news: violent crime or celebrities; young people are only 1% of sources

Women in Journalism 2008:
72% of articles were negative; 3.4% positive
75% about crime, drugs, police
Boys: yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts, scum
Only positive stories are about boys who died young


Case Study

• What role did new media technologies particularly social networking sites play in the London Riots?
• Do media cause riots or revolutions?
• Technology and surveillance: mobile phones, CCTV, 24 hour news

The London Riots

 

• How can you link cultural hegemony to this article?
• How does the article suggest moral panic is being caused?
• Can you link in McRobbies Symbolic violence theory? How? 
• How far do you agree with this article that governments decisions and policies are continuing to create a divide between the middle and working class? Discuss
• Between 6 and 10 August 2011, several London boroughs and districts of cities and towns across England suffered widespread rioting, looting and arson. 

Online Media

Connotations of this image:

• internet
• laptop
• friends
• chat
• events
• social network
• pictures

What is the impact of this media on British youth and youth culture?

Positives:

• stay in contact with friends
• share your photos
• create events

Negatives:

• cyber bullying
• lack of social skills in real situations

What have new forms of social interaction have media technologies enabled?

• Globalisation
• Sharing of information
• Development of self identity
• Self realisation
• Collective intelligence
• Awareness
• Communication has become interactive dialogue

Online Media are especially suitable to construct and develop several identities of the self (Turkle, 1998)

The Modern Identity Concept

• Personal Identity

           - Sense of being a unique individual

• Social Identity

           - Results from being a member of a group
          - In former times: nationality, race, gender, occupation, sport club

• Mediatization of the self

           - Diversity of interest groups in online social networks
           - Easy transition between those communities


Digital Identity

• a person has not just one stable and homogeneous identity
• identity consists of several fragments that permanently change

Critical Identity Theory

Media Use in Identity Construction

Katherine Hamley

 Young people are surrounded by influential imagery – popular media (Examples?)

     Young people are surrounded by a variety of influential imagery from media products such as television, magazines, newspapers, advertising, music and the internet. these uses of popular media are constantly influencing and shaping the personal idenities of young people today.

It is no longer possible for an identity to just be constructed in a small community and influenced by a family (Discuss)

     Young people are now influenced by so much more than their small community and family. With the forever modernising world young people are now creating their own identities at a younger age and are finding their own influences from the different popular media that they are consuming everyday. 

 Everything concerning our lives is ‘media saturated’ (What does this mean?)

      Everything that helps us to construct and live our lives in based around different medias and what we are fed to be normal. we also aspire to live the lives that we are shown in popular media types as we are likely to favour what we see and then aspire to live that life.

Buckingham

He classifies identity as an 'ambiguous and slippery' term:

• identity is something unique to each of us, but also implies a relationship with a broader group.
• identity can change according to our circumstances.
• identity is fluid and is affected by broader changes.
• identity becomes more important to us if we feel it is threatened.Cultural Imperialism
        after world war 2 massive influence coming over from america which was imprinitng onto our culture. one culture imprinting onto another.
  
  David Gauntlett
  Identity is complicated, however, everybody feels that they have one
  Religious and national identites are at the heart of major international conflicts
  The average teenager can create numerous identities in a short space of time especially using the internet
  We like to think we are unique, but Gauntlett questions whether this is an illusion, and we are all much more similar than we think.
  
  
  1. Creativity as a process - about emotions and experiences
  2. Making and sharing - to feel alive, to participate, in community
  3. Happiness - through creativity and community
  4. Creativity as social glue - a middle layer between individuals and society
  5. Making your mark - and making the world your own

The Internet

Make a list of all the 'stars' created by internet videos:

• Gingers do have souls
• Leave britney alone
• Charlie bit me
• Star wars kid
• Justin Bieber
• Rebecca black
• Jessie J

Memes
Definition: a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the internet.

An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube

Michael Wesch

1.       When was Youtube first released?  April 21st 2005

2.       According to Michael Wesch what does Web 2.0 allow people to do? Link together

3.       When media changes what else changes? Human relationships

4.       What influenced the loss of community? And what has now filled this void?

5.       How are communities connected?

6.       Explain what he means by voyeuristic capabilities?

7.       Write 3 points about what he refers when he discusses playing with identity

8.       What does the ‘Free hugs phenomenon’ suggest about people?

 

Media Effects

Media Effects

• Do media representations of young people effect how they are perceived?
• If so how does this effect occur?
• Hypodermic model
• Cultivation theory - more criminal and violent behaviour, seen on tv, the more likely you are to believe that its real.
• Copy Cat theory - copy what we see on tv, if we see violence were likely to copy it. 
• Moral Panic -

Analysis

• Whose perspective is dominant in each of the texts?
• What do the representations have in common?
• How are the representations different?
• How are parental figures represented?
• How important is social class?

Contemporary British Social Realism

• What do you understand by Contemporary British social realism?
• Social realist films attempt to portray issues facing ordinary people in their social situations
• Social realist films try to show that society and the capitalist system leads to the exploitation of the poor or dispossessed
• These groups are shown as victims of the system rather than being totally responsible for their own bad behaviour

Audience

• Social realist films which address social problems in this country offer a very different version of 'collective identity' than British films which are also aimed at an American audience.
• Social realist films are aimed at a predominantly British audience.
• If many more people see the more commercial films, collective identity is more powerful or the most impact.

Analysing Representation of Collective identity

• When comparing how Britishness and our collective identity is represented in films consider the following questions:
• Who is being represented?
• Who is representing them?
• How are they represented?
• What seems to be the intentions of the representations?
• What is the dominant discourse?
• What range of readings are there?
• Look for alternative discourse

Collective Identity

• the media contributes to our sense of collective identity, many different versions change over time
• representations can cause problems for the groups being represented
• the social context

British Social Realism


Theorist Stuart Hall and Reading the media

• Encoding and Decoding - the relationship between a text and its audience
• Encoding - process which a text is constructed by its producers
• Decoding - process which the audience reads, understands and interprets a text
• Texts are polysemic - may be read differently by different people depending on their identity, cultural knowledge and opinions

Preffered Reading
We interpret the message as the instituation wanted us to and we agree with it.

Negotiated Reading
Audience understand it, but dont nessacarily agree with it.

Oppositional Reading 'counter hegemonic'
Audience argue against the media text and refuse them, they understand it, but wont agree with it at all.


Any Representation is a mixture of:

1. The thing itself
2. The opinions of the people doing the representation
3. The reaction of the individual to the representation
4. The context of the society in which the representation is taking place

Implicit personality theory

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold 2009)

What ideas are used to introduce the main character?
Audience are shown the main characters whole life, deep and emotional clips which show different aspects of her life.

What are the similarities and differences between the opening sequence of Fish Tank and Harry Brown?

Social Class: Reinforcing Cultural Hegemony/Dominant Ideologies

• Working class British youths are generally represented as being violent, brutal, unapologetic, criminals, addictive personalities - Harry Brown, Kidulthood, Quadrophenia, Eden Lake.

Vs

• Middle class British youths are generally represented as being more law abiding, conscience citizens - The Inbetweeners
• On- top of this the antagonists are always the working class youths and middle class adults are positioned to be the protagonists.

Representation in The Inbetweeners

The Inbetweeners (Ben Palmer, 2011)
Representation of:

• Age
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Social class and status

Age
- 17 to 18 years old, gaining independence
- In-Experienced
- Disrespectful towards parents and other adults
- Adults are shown through extremes
- Trying to be the stereotypical teens

Ethnicity
- White British, this gives the stereotype that the inbetweeners are representing this whole class of people.

Gender
- Young males are shown to be at different stages of maturity.
- Young females seemed to have matured quicker.

Social class and status
- Middle class

‘How are British youths represented in Quadrophenia and Harry Brown’

‘How are British youths represented in Quadrophenia and Harry Brown’

In Quadrophenia british youths are represented using Cohens 1972's theory of moral panic. Cohens theory of moral panic consists of an episode in a period of time when a group or a person alone emerges to become defined as a threat to society. In Quadrophenia this is shown by the two conflicting groups in the 1960s, these groups were the mods and the rockers. The disputes between these two groups usually took place over the overlapping of territories.

In Harry Brown Cohens theory of moral panic is also present as the youths represented in the movie are also seen as a threat to soceity with their violent and inappropriate behaviour.

Both movies show a theme of Cultural hegemony, this is Gramsic 1971s theory that a culturally-diverse society can be dominated by one of it social classes. In Harry Brown the group of youths are shown trying to dominate and control the older generation of society by using violence and threating them to make them fear them which therefore makes them feel as though they can rule them. In Quadrophenia cultural hegemony is present between the mods and the rockers, they are both competing to dominate and rule a certain territory.

Another theme shown in Harry Brown is Mcrobbie 2004s theory of Symbolic Violence. In Harry Brown the gangs are mainly targetting the lower class and this then goes unoticed by the police as it is seen as a form of social reproduction. But when the youths attack a more middle class citezen this is when it is not seen to be acceptable and the police decide to step in and do something about it.

The gang ideologies presented in the movies vary from conformity to rebellion. In Quadrophenia you see the

main character Jimmy played by Phil Daniels, finding his way to conform in a society where he wants to fit in. Certain aspects of his life that we as the audience are aware of such as him hating his parents and his job means that he is wanting to fit in and conform to another type of family. For Jimmy, being a mod is a way for him to conform and fit in.

In Harry Brown, the youths are shown conforming to the gang leader, the gang leader is Noel Winters played by Ben Drew or better know for his stage name Plan B. The youths in this movie are shown doing acts of violence etc just so they feel as though they can fit in. The youths do as they are told as to conform to the gang culture.

The gang ideology of rebellion is a consistant theme throughout both movies. In Harry Brown the youths are seen to be rebelling against the cultural norm of elders being more dominant than youths. But in Harry Brown the youths show such a violent, careless attitude towards everyone that they are just rebelling against anything and everything they can, particually the law.

In Quadrophenia, the youths are shown in two seperate groups, the mods and the rockers, and they are shown rebelling against eachother. This is for them to rebel against their parents, against the law and against themselves in some ways. In Quadrophenia, radicalism is shown in the way that the youths are reacting against the post war conditions, now the war is over they are more free to conform to social groups and more able to be more self expressionate.

explanation/analysis/argument: 12

use of examples: 11

terminology: 7

Theories

Giroux 1997 - Youth as empty category
Giroux said that youth was an empty category in which people could create them to be whatever they desired them to be. Youth representations are like empty boxes that are filled by the fears of adults.

Acland 1995 - Ideology of protection; deviant youth and reproduction of social order
Representing youths negatively should make youths react differently, it shows the reprecussions of a devious lifestyle which therefore should make youths not want to live like that.
Youths in Harry Brown are shown to have lack of morals in order to boost real youths morals.

Gramsci 1971 (1929-1935) - Cultural hegemony
Where it is normal for one social class to outpower the others.

Cohen 1972 - Moral panic


McRobbie 2004 - Symbolic Violence


Gerbner 1986 - Cultivation Theory
Impact of television, more violence you see on tv the more likely you are to believe that it exists.

How Do Contemporary Media Represent British Youth And Youth Culture In Different Ways?

Horror and the Representation of Youth
Film theorist Robin Wood argues that the basic formula of the horror film is 'normality is threatened by the monster. i use "normality" here... to mean simply "conformity to the dominant social forms"'


Harry Brown


What is the significance of the emergence of a cycle of British films in which the 'monster' is young people?
- People can relate it to the real world and it is realistic to viewers. It is an escalating fear within society, people are intimidated by the youths known for their drug abuse and violence.
How do they threaten normality?
- They threaten normality because people can relate directly to the characters shown stereotypically in the movie.
What term could we use instead of normality?




Attack The Block


How are the main characters introduced? How does this representation change?
the main characters are introduced in a negative way, they are intimidating, violent and dismissive of consequences. the lighting is dark making them even more intimidating and creates the horror genre conventions of night time sinisterness. they are represented as the bad guys of the movie.
Opening sequence stereotypical hoodie representation.
As the film progresses the representation becomes more positive. Develops a more sympathetic representation.
The film initially represents the young people as 'monsters', then replaces them with actual monsters.
Contrast to other 'hoodie horror films'.