To discuss and identify how age is represented in the media

To identify and apply relevant theories

Learning Objective:

• Quickly discuss and list at least 5 positive and 5 negative things to describe how the following are represented in the media:– Youths (teenagers)– Old people

Age

After gender and ethnicity, age is the most obvious category under which we stereotype people, and there are a whole range of judgements which go along with our categorisation.

YOUTH OLD AGE

POSITIVES ActiveSociableInnocentStrongLong future aheadAdventurousFun

WiseAuthoritativeWell educatedFreedomWealthStability

However, as we know stereotypes are often negative…

What are the representations?

How are they constructed? Why are they constructed?

We quickly deem other people too old, or too young.

We criticise mature women for going about dressed like young people or as ‘mutton dressed as lamb’

We criticise young girls for tarting themselves up like celebrity wannabes

Film stars who start to show signs of aging in their forties are swooped on with cries of horror by gossip columnists ("Movie star gets wrinkles... and her tits start to sag" shocker!!)

YOUTH OLD AGE

POSITIVES ActiveSociableInnocentStrongLong future aheadAdventurousFun

WiseAuthoritativeWell educatedFreedomWealthStability

NEGATIVES LazyRebelliousRudeAggressiveCriminalisedHormonalVulnerableNaiveDependent

WeakVulnerableFragileMentally incompetentNot in control of their own bodiesLonelyDependentGumpyBoringUnwilling to try new thingsDesperate

Dominant representation of young people

• Yobbish/anti-social behaviour• Chavvy• Gang culture• Disrespect• Drink and drugs• Teen pregnancies

• Which media texts perpetuate this image?

What are the wider implications?

Moral panics!

Theorist - Stanley Cohen (1972)

• Studied youth groups in 1960s.• A moral panic occurs when society sees itself

threatened by the values and activities of a group who are stigmatised as deviant and seen as threatening to mainstream society’s values, ideologies and /or way of life.

• Mods & Rockers (1960s), football hooligans, muggers, vandals, mobile-phone snatchers...

Working class males

• Represented as yobs.

• Stuart Hall (1978) argues that the negative representation of young people is deliberate as it justifies social control by authority figures such as the police and government. The media has a key role in this ‘social production’ of news.

Jamie Bulger(2000 – 2003)

No evidence was presented that either boy had watched ‘Child’s Play 3’. The judge made the connection and this was picked up by the tabloid press. It led to a change in the law so the BBFC now has to take into account ‘the influence’ of videos as well as their content.

George Gerbner: Cultivation theory 1986

• States that the more time people spend 'living' in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television.

• The repetitive pattern of television’s mass-produced message and images influences people’s understanding of the world

• Mean World syndrome – people believe the world is harsher and more violent than it actually is.

• ‘Normalised’ violence - desensitisation

Harry Brown

• Watch the first 2 minutes. How does it link to Cohen’s idea of Moral Panics?

• How is represented?– Analyse the clip for visual, technical, audio and

cinematography codes

Analysis gridMise-en-scene Camerawork

Editing Sound