Explore an “unfair” representation of a contemporary social group you have studied.

19Apr10

In this essay I will be exploring the unfair representation of teens, in particular I will be looking at the TV series ‘The Inbetweeners’ and the film ‘Kidulthood’. When questioning the representation of youth culture we think of looking at their stereotypes. These stereotypes include, drugs, alcohol, violence, sex scandals and threatening anti-social behaviour, which are all negative representations in most peoples view.

“The Inbetweeners” is a television programme about a group of teenagers in sixth form that struggle to find in which social group they belong. It is a comedy programme in which its narrative follows some of teenage real life experiences. This is a popular television programme with teenagers so I thought it was appropriate to study.

The film “Kidulthood”(2006) has a bleak outlook on teenage culture.  It is a very violent negative image including narratives of suicide, bullying and crime. It is a British drama film about the life of several teenagers in Inner West London.

To begin with I will analyses how youths are represented in the television programme “The Inbetweeners”. Firstly the introduction shows many elements that represent teenage culture. The title sequence is mainly black and white, with stars and stripes as a cartoon style theme. The small flashes of colour indicate the boys trying to find their identity through the black and white, which refers to them trying to find their place in sixth form.

Following on from this, the mise en scene is informal in the way that each character is shown in a cartoon hand-drawn style and it freezes  on such an image, this motion combined with the casual mise en scene immediately lets the audience know that the boys are relaxed.Relating to camera shots, there are close-ups on the characters faces and feet, which lets us as the viewer become involved with the characters personal space. Moreover, the editing technique makes the sequence have a fast tempo which could reflect the characters youth as bubbly, fun, vibrant and carefree, the sequence doesn’t present the teenagers as a threat and there is a fair representation of teenagers in real life, looking for some peers they have something in common with and belong, as well as trying to become popular within a social group.

Lastly, the costumes of the boys in “The Inbetweeners” have no real individual style and is a casual look. This makes sure it is hitting a wide target audience without discrimination from the opening titles. This idea of being ‘neutral’ also relates to the diegetic sound, it is soft rock that isn’t heavy or have a specific image which means it doesn’t typify to a certain stereotypical group such as RnB or Indie.

Overall “The Inbetweeners” gives a fair representation of teenagers. On the other hand, this fair representation can be counteracted, for example in “Kidulthood”. This film gives a very bleak representation of the teenage culture. Most of the storylines are negative for example,  bullying, graphic fights and a girl committing suicide.

The teenagers in Kidulthood are much more aggressive than the norm, which is a very bad representation to teenage culture. For example, they carry knifes, physically abuse each other, extreme gang culture, work in mafias like the uncles slicing mens faces and trading weapons. The teenage girls also had a bad attitude, sleeping with numerous boys, pregnant, drugs, drinking a large amount of alcohol, their reputation relies on how good they are in bed.

Overall, it is a harsh, negative unfair representation of teenagers, from both youth perspective and im sure adults would agree that for the majority of teenagers this isn’t their way of life.

Following on from this we recently looked at several newspapers to find evidence to support the idea that the term ‘teenager’ or ‘teen’ in the newsprint media platform portrays negative social activities of young people. The news is most commonly blamed for what appears to be a mostly negative representation of teenagers.

We have to consider the news has to be interesting and so extreme storylines will attract more readers. This relates to the hypodermic theory, are the stories are fair representation or are actions of teenage over exaggerated so they become more interesting to read.

We looked at a number of newspapers and articles about teenagers, there was a clear difference between the negative representation for example fighting and drugs and the positive representation of teens such as helping for charity. Although, we found it difficult to pick out a positive story about teenagers and when we did it was mostly in local newspapers. It seems that to get positive representation, a teenage has to do something amazing and extreme to gain recognition.

An example of the unfair representation is that in the same paper, a 19-year-old man was referred to as a ‘teen’ and it was reported he had been involved in a gang related stabbing. However, a younger 17-year-old boy was refered to as a young man when he was given credit for walking the north pole.

We can conclude that the representation of Teenagers is widely negative when looking at many media platforms. On my perspective I think it is unfair, focusing on many of the negative social issues that only a minority of teens in a real life society follow the negative ideas given in the media.

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Filed under: G325- Critical Perspectives in Media (Miss Hendley)   |  1 Comment