Contemporary Media Representation of Youth

Scenes From a Teenage Killing - BBC4

• Most common words used to describe young people in British newspapers in 2008 were yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodie, louts, evil, frightening, scum.

• Over half the newspaper stories about teenage boys relate to crime.

• Representations of young people in ‘Harry Brown’, ‘Eden Lake’, ‘Fish Tank’, and ‘Misfits’ need to be understood in this context.

Background Reading

• Read through one of the articles on the films or TV programmes.

• What points are made about the representation of young people?

• Why might the writer have this perspective?• Identify useful quotes from the article.

‘Harry Brown’

• Watch the opening sequence of ‘Harry Brown’.• What signifiers are used to construct

representations of young people?• How realistic do you think this representation is?

• What key ideas are associated with young people in the film?

• How is authority represented?

‘Fish Tank’

• Watch the opening sequence of ‘Fish Tank’.• What ideas are used to introduce the

characters.• What are the similarities and differences

between the opening sequences?

‘Misfits’

• What ideas are associated with teenagers in ‘Misfits’?

• How are adults represented?

• ‘Harry Brown’ and ‘Eden Lake’ both draw on middle class anxieties about out of control ‘feral’ youth, reflected in newspaper coverage of young people.

• ‘Eden Lake’ uses this anxiety to create a horror film in which the monster is a gang of teenagers. It reflects the fear of young people prevalent in our society.

• In contrast ‘Harry Brown’ employs the same anxiety to construct a fantasy in which an adult avenger punishes young people.

• Whereas in ‘Eden Lake’ middles class adults are tortured by teenagers, in ‘Harry Brown’ working class teenagers are tortured and killed by a ‘respectable’ adult.

• Contrast the different roles played by Jack O’Connell in the two films.

• ‘Fish Tank’ represents young people in a similar ‘broken Britain’ context, but is more sympathetic to them.

• The behaviour of the characters is less extreme/exaggerated – no torturing and general mayhem.

• Issue of genre/audience.• Mia is seen more as a victim.

• ‘Misfits’ again uses the same imagery to construct its representations but does so in a more sympathetic way.

• Teenagers – superheroes.• Teenage perspective.• Adult characters comical/monstrous.

• Almost all teenage characters in representations are clearly working class.

• Main adult characters tend to be middle class.• Representations may be said to reflect middle

class anxiety at threat of working class to their hegemonic dominance.

• Is one of the functions of these representations to maintain hegemony?

• Who produces this representations? Why?

• In all the representations parents/families are represented negatively.

• ‘Eden Lake’ – violent, compared to teen gang.• ‘Harry Brown’ – families complicit in teen

violence.• ‘Fish Tank’ – representation of the mother.• ‘Misfits’ – family largely absent (apart from

Nathan’s mum who kicks him out).

Media Effects

• What effect do these media representations have?

• Do media representations of young people effect how they are perceived?

• If so how does this effect occur?– Hypodermic model– Cultivation theory

– Cultivation Theory (15)

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?