Paper Representations

Channel 4: Teen Trouble: 26th November 2007

• 'The press calls them reckless, irresponsible members of society, but statistics tell quite a different story about British teens'


• "Crimes committed" - 12% Of Youths when adults thought it was 80%+


• "Kids out of control" news stories raise more interest


• News of the World provoking the situation


• Paranoid Adults


• Using a high pitch frequency to keep teenagers away from shops


• Generation Asbo


• Discriminating and Degrading


• Press used to pay 'Mods' to throw stones at people to start a news story


• Jamie Bulger case - Caused a change in the views of children from adults - Crime age changed From 14 to 10 - More CCTV - ASBO's


• Crimes of a minority are being used to demonise a whole class of people

The Hypodermic Syringe Theory - The media injects the information because of the proliferation of negative press
Can also link in the cultivation theory as it cultivates the adults mind and the more likely you are to see it on the media, the more likely you are to believe that it is happening in everyday life.
De-sensitisation theory - the more violence we we see in the media, the less likely we are to be upset by what we see. Because youth are demonised, they are then becoming self fulfilling prophesies.

Representing Youth

IPSOS MORI Survery 2005:

• 40% of articles focus on violence, crime anti-social behviour; 71% are negative

Brunel University:

• TV New: Violent crime or celebrities; young people are only 1% of sources

Women in Journalism:

• 72% of articles were negative; 3.4% positive



• 75% about crime, drugs, police



• Boys: yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts, scum



• Only positives stories are about boys who died young

Case Study

What role did new media technologies, particulary social networking sites play in the London riots?

Do media cause riots or revolutions?

Technology and Surveillance: mobile phones, CCTV, 24 hour news

Guardian Article http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/08/broken-britain-rhetoric-fuels-fear

How can you link cultural hegemony to this article?

The upper class seem to be looking down upon everyone else, as if everyone is the same 'trouble making people' the upper class now also think that they out-power everyone, and have the right to group people all into the same category. It will take both middle and lower class to work together to increase the representation to the upper class, it is then just their opinion to change what they think, which will be the hardest thing to do.

How does the article suggest moral panic is being caused?

"David Cameron comment in July that he was 'terrified' by the prospect of sending his children to a local state secondary school is proof of this, said Horton"

Can you link in McRobbies Symbolic violence theory? How?

"While thousands of pupils come from low-income families and attend schools in deprived neighbourhoods, just a small number behave anti-socially or commit crimes, the report argues"

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

Online Media

Connotations:
Facebook:

• Social network


• Freinds


• Photos


• Events


• Chat


• Frape


• Advertising


• Sharing Information


• Facebook Stalking


• 'Likes'

Impact of this kind of media on British youth and youth culture?

Positives:

• Staying in contact with people


• Sharing photos


• Create events


• Different cultures coming together


• Good place to market yourself


• Allows people to express them self

Negatives:

• Cyber Bullying


• Lose social skills in real situations

What new forms of social interactions have media technologies enabled?

• Globalisation


• Sharing of information


• Development of self-identity


• Self-realisation


• Collective Intelligence


• Reshaping media messages and their flow; reshape and recirculate messages


• Increased voice


• Consumer communication with business (greater influence)


• Awareness - Band/ Skills


• Communication has become interactive dialogue


• User Generated Content (UGC)


• Self-Presentation and Self-Disclosure


• Increasing diversity within cultures


• Online media focuses on some or all of the 7 functional building blocks - identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups

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

Two levels of representation:

1. Personal events through 'own' specific language


2. Constructing own images

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 is not just one stable and homogeneous identity


• Identity consists of several fragments that permanently change


• Multiple, but coherent (Turkle, 1998)


• A live-long developing and new conceptualized path work (Doring, 1999)

Media Use in Identity Construction
Katherine Hamley

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

• Models


• Celebrities - Lady Gaga, Marilyn Manson


• Movies


• News


• Peers on Social Networking


• Youtube


• Music


• Skins

Young people always have influential imagery around them and its just how they interpret the images as to how it affects their personality/ identity. It can either create ideas of what the young people want to aspire to such as celebrities or models which will change there identity to be more like these people, or they can see something which they want to avoid, which may show something on the news of the amount of un-employed/ people in gangs and then when they see the reasons why these people turned out the reason they did, they may try and stay clear of this area of life.

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

Everything in our life is now saturated by the media, so there is no chance that it is our family controls who we are as they only contribute a small part to it as we will use media more than we normally see family. Media has opened you to everything in the world, you can see what is happening anywhere rather than just in your community.

Everything concerning our life is 'media saturated' (explain what this means)

Media Saturated is the media saturating into our lives and changing how we behave and our own identity.

"Identity is complicated, everybody thinks they've got one" David Gauntlet

Religious and national identites are at the heart of major international conflicts

The average teenager can create numerous identites in a short space of time (using internet, social network sites)

We like to think we are unique and gauntlett questions whether this is an illusion, and we are all much more similar than we think

David Gauntletts 5 key Themes:

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& society


5. Making your mark - making the world your own

Buckingham: "Identity is ambiguous and slippery"

• Shows relationship with a broader group


• Can change according to circumstances


• Identity is fluid and can be affected by broader changes


• Identity is more important to us if we feel it is threatened

Cultural Imperialism - the influence on one culture on another. e.g. the British have always been influenced by America

The Internet

'Gingers do have souls'

'Chalie bit me'

'Justin Bieber'

'Rebecca Black'

'Leave Britney alone'

'Star Wars Kid'

'Jessie J'

'RayWilliamJohnson'

Meme:"a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from perosn to person via the internet"

When was Youtube first released? April 21st 2005

According to Michael Wesch what does Web 2.0 allow people to do? It links people together.

When media changes what else changes? human relationships.

How are communities connected?

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

Explain what he means by voyeuristic capabilities?

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

What does the ‘Free hugs phenomenon’ suggest about people? People are trying to reconnect with humanity.

Representation in The Inbetweeners

The Inbetweeners (Ben Palmer, 2011)
Representation of:

• Age


• Ethnicity


• Gender

Age

• Youth Disrespectful towards parents, other adults


• Youth In-Experienced in what the modern world is like, un-prepared for what they are going to face after school


• Adults are shown through the extremes of caring a lot (Will's Mum) and not caring at all (Head of Sixth Form) & (Will's Dad)


• Centres around 17-18 old

Ethnicity

• Dominantly White British, this gives the stereotype that the inbetweeners are representing this whole class of people


• Relates to the audience as the boys (17-18, White, Middle Class) are the same type of people as the audience

Gender

• Young Women seemed to have matured quicker


• Young Men are at different stages of maturity, some have advanced ahead, while some are still lacking


• Young Men seem to be the dominant gender, even though they mature slower


• Women are just objects

Social Class& Status

• Middle class students who are shown as what most adults expect of the middle class youth


• Parents are shown as extremes as well

Reinforcing Cultural Hegemony/ Dominant Ideologies

- Working class British youths are generally represented as being violent, brutal, un apologetic, criminals, addictive personalities - Harry Brown, Kidulthood, Quadrophenia

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

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)

Tries to break through the stereotype of youth

Ideas to introduce the main character:

• Deep and Emotional


• Hand held camera technique, give it a more 'Gritty' view


• Seems much more realistic


• Abusive Parents

Similarities and Differences: Opening Sequence:

Similar: Represents young people in Broken Britain

Difference: Behaviour of characters is less extreme

Difference: More of a social drama

Similar: She is the result of the environment around her

Almost all teenage characters are working class

Main adult characters are middle class

Representations may be said to reflect middle class anxiety at threat of working class to their hegemonic dominance

One of the functions may be to maintain hegemony

Media Effect - What are the social implications of different media representations of British youth and youth culture

What Effects to these Media Representations have?

41% of teenage boys sometimes feel wary when seeing other teenage boys

51% of these feel it is because of media stories they have heard about teenagers

If these questions were asked 10 years ago, results would be very different.

Hyperdermic Model - The media inject us with their ideas about British Youth, we have no power over the media. Whatever the media say, we agree with.

Cultivation Theory - The more violent behaviour you see on TV, the more likely you are to notice it in real life, the audiences ideas are 'Cultivated'

Copy Cat Theory - You copy what you see on TV

Moral Panic - Creating panic in Society. Therefore the more the media show the negative violence, it creates more and more panic.

Contemporary British Social Realism

- Social realist films attempt to portray issues facing ordinary people in their social situations

- Try to show that society and the capitalist system leads to the exploitation of the poor

- These groups are shown as victims of the system rather than being responsible for their own bad behaviour

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 the represented?


• What seems to be the intentions of the representations?


• What is the dominant discourse? (world view)


• What range of readings are there?

Collective Identity

1. The media contributes to our collective identity, but there any many different versions that change over time

• Representations can cause problems for the groups being represented as marginalized groups have little control over their representation/ stereotype


• The social context in which film/ TV programme is made influences the messages/ values/ dominant discourse

Theorist: Stuart Hall and Reading the Media

Encoding - Decoding: Active Audience Theory

Encoding: Where producers enter text to create certain codes

Decoding: Where the audience de-contrust the codes to understand the representations

Polysemic: The codes may be read differently by different people, depending on their identity, cultural knowledge and opinions

Preferred Reading

This is when the audience agrees with the owner/ institution of the representation (working together)

Negotiated Reading

When an audience comes to a conclusion which is simular to the one portrayed from the institution, they agree with some sections and disagree with some, so they only keep the sections which they agree with

Oppositional Reading

Understand the context of which the film is put in, although they will by no means agree with it

Any Representation is:

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

Stereotyping

Implicit Personality Theory

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

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

Answer:

The main themes in Harry Brown is that of Cohens theory of moral panic, in Harry Brown it is the youth who are disrupting the 'normal balanced world' and the youths are therefore all represented in this way. When the youth start to expand they also become a threat to the rest of society which bring in Gramscis theory of Cultural hegemony as the youths start to out power the middle class citizens as they fear the youth.

When Harry Brown takes action this is when the order starts to be restored as thew youth keep gaining power until someone fights against them, in this case it was the police and Harry Brown who over-powered the main trouble makers and when the youths see that the 3 most powerful people are dead, they retreat back into being a normal lower class.

The main theme in Quadrophenia is a lot more centred around the theme of Gramscis Cultural hegemony, as they become more of a threat to the people around them as they slowly gain more and more power so they think that they start to do things more freely, this slowly comes back down as the British youth realise that they cannot take on the whole police force and eventually retreat, but its certain that this will keep happening, and they will keep building the power up until they have enough people to over-power the police.

The gang ideologies are similar in the theme that they both just want to rebel, which is also shown by Gerbner's Cultivation Theory where the media are always just showing the youth as being rebellious and not showing any promise/ praise at all, so the youths start to give up on doing well and fall into this rebellious lifestyle.

The gang ideologies shown in Harry Brown are mainly to do with rebelling against the government and middle class citizens, this links in with McRobbies theory of Symbolic Violence as once they attack the middle class they respond negatively, even though before attacking the middle class they have probably attack lots of youth before this but just because they are not the most dominant class, no-one has noticed. It shows how the middle class mainly think of themselves rather than other classes around them.

The gang ideologies shown in Quadrophenia are mainly linked to rebelling against each other, as different categories of youth and also to rebelling against the government but not knowing that they are doing it so dramatically. It links in with Gramscis Cultural Hegemony as there keeps being social groups which out power each other as new people join the groups and they become bigger and attack each other for the gain of power. After a while it takes the police to control all of the gangs because it gets out of hand when people start getting killed, although they can only take down a small group because of the pure amount of them.

The identity in both films is different because in Harry Brown the youth are coming together to rebel against everyone else, as they fear that if they do not go into this lifestyle then they will be attacked and will constantly be in danger. This can be shown by the fact that you do not see any of the youth who are no in this gang because they have all been forced into this lifestyle or have moved away because they decided to stand against this, and breakaway from it so that they do not fall into the same lifestyle as so many others have.

The identity in Quadrophenia is different as they have the option to go into these groups as these groups do not threaten the normal society, they just rebel against each other and this shows how the youth have an option in this, but the main character Jimmy decides that he wants to go into this lifestyle because he wants to fit in with everyone else. This shows how he wants to be included of having the identity of a 'Mod', rather than breaking away and having his own identity which seems to be a more popular trend in the modern world because everyone wants to be different.

The parents in Harry Brown seem to be the worst influence on the children as you see the mother of 'Noel' as being always completely destroyed by drugs, so she has no control at all on what Noel is doing, and he has obviously grown up with his mum always taking drugs and probably always bringing men back to the flat as her husband died which is shown through the fact that it is Noels uncle who looks after him, and he is also a major drug dealer and gang member, sop he has taken Noel into this life of crime& drugs.

The parents in Quadrophenia seemed to have lost control over what there kids are doing and this is shown through the fact that they don't know where he is going anymore, what he is doing, and what drugs he is taking. It seems as though it represents many of the parents just through what Jimmys do, as it seems that they just give up on him when they find out what he has been doing, they just kick him out of the house and lose all care of what he does. This is totally different in the modern world as parents have arguments with children but they will forgive them after a while, in the 1960's they would just kick them out. It shows how youth have the chance to out power their parents which relates to Cohens Moral panic as the youth just become a group which are a threat to the normal society so the parents just decide that it is not worth trying to change them.

The representation of the youth have changed in some aspects but not in others during the time period between these two films. the ones which have changed are the fact that parents are really trying to get their kids out of the lifestyle of gangs and drugs rather than just accepting it and then kicking them out. It shows Social development as parents realise that there kids can be very successful if they get out of this lifestyle. Another thing which has also changed is that of the fact that gangs seem to have a very structured code of entry as in Quadrophenia they just have to dress a bit like the other do, whereas in Harry Brown they have to go through a whole procedure to get into the gang, in the modern times it is like you are joining a religion and a way of like, rather than just a social group.

Some aspects which haven't changed are the fact that the youth still are represented as the people who are always to blame, even though in most cases they turn out this way because of the parents way of upbringing

Mark:
Explanation- 13
Use of Examples- 14
Use of terminology- 6
Mark: 33/50

Well done Will! :) Good range of theories used, however they don't go into much depth. limited but appropriate use of examples, which show good understand of the films mentioned. limited use of terminology, however some key theories and its terminology where mentioned and explained well. More of a debate and arguemnet is needed.