Thursday 26 January 2012

How does contempory representation compare to previous time periods

What is youth sub culture
A group of individuals who are  united through a common value systems and clothes  a groups who is positioned outside the mainstream
What are the values of subculture
Emo- they tend to be really into there music, hair, clothing style and tend to hate society. They tend to be together with the goths, but hate being called an emo faggot or mistaken for goths. They listen to a mixture of music from black veil brides, bring me the horizon, my chemical romance to bullet for my valentine. they tend to wear clothing such as drop dead, grind store. some tend to take the meaning of being emo to the extreme with self harming. there clothing style is hoddies, skinny jeans, converses or vans, baggy or tops with designs on. they also have really straight hair which tends to fall into the scene category here, as they tend to put highlights or other various colours in there hair. Tere art work is very depressing usually consisting of break ups, death, broken hearts, being alone.
Scene
Goths
Indie
Townie
Chavs
Geeks
Hipsteers
Hippys
Geeks
Jocks
Skaters
Punks
Mods and rockers
New romantics
Ravers
link to how the subculture view: conformity and rebellion attitude to capitalism and consumerism

tribal rivalry

traditional  or neophile- a person who loves novelty, one who likes trends; person  who accept the future enthusiastically  and changes and evolution

ideology in the 1950's and the 1960's  peace rebellion  against parents radicalism- reactions against the post war period


many groups where involved in protest resistance against the mainstream....

teens will often move between subcultures and older youths mix and match there styles and values from a mix of subcultures

or that adults can appear to conform for most of the working we eek but re-enter  the subculture at specific  time ( weekend , festivals etc)

subculture

in the 21st century the dominant  meaning systems  ( that define the mainstream)  are crumbling

"there is no mainstream. there are many streams"
main stream is in  perpetual flux,

so if there is no main stream there is nothing for the teens to react against instead they are driven  by other  motives and these must be understood  on their  own terms


1950's teddy boys

1960's mods

1960's skin heads

early 1970's punks


the cultural revolution
happened just after the war

rationing was coming to the end
the American way of life  was a huge influence after the post war period
cheap colour magazines
beginning to buy things like cookers, TVs etc
labour was defeated by the Conservative government

Americas influence
cultural imperialism is the practise of promoting , distinguishing, separating or artidically injecting the culture of one of society into another ( America influencing on Britain's post war)

massiv increases in  the production  and the avalibilty of consumer goods
 car ownership rose by 250% between 1951 and 1961
1955 and 1960 the average weekly earning rose by 34%




Tuesday 24 January 2012

Section B Question 6 Media and Collective Identity

Section B Question 6 Media and Collective Identity
For A2 I have studies the representation of women in both contemporary and historical media. As David Buckingham noted in 2008, “identity is fluid and changeable” – and arguably the identity of women in recent times has changed, some may argue it has become more mediated.

Identity itself refers to who we actually are, the construction of ourselves – perhaps even the representation of ourselves and our social groups that we as media consumers wish to have. While many such as Buckingham and Gauntlett champion the fact the create and construct our own identities; others such aa Theordore Adorno see identity as something pushed upon us by the mass media, that we have no alternative but to take the dominant identities we are exposed to “something is offered for all so that none may escape,” he writes in explanation of this fact. Adorno therefore argues that our identities are becoming increasingly mediatedthat is, that they influenced by the mass media, inherent identifies are weak and influenced by the media around us.

Nuts’ magazine is a stereotypical ‘lad’s mag’, aimed at 18-24 year old males. In ana analysis of the 19-25th March 2010 issue I performed the content proves interesting with regards to representation of women. Images of semi-naked females in suggestive poses represent women as victims of symbiotic annihilation. They are portrayed as merely objects of sexual pleasure for men – the images have been constructed, Laure Mulvey would argue with her theory of the Male Gaze, solely with the male consumers in mind, who using the Uses and Gratifications Model are consuming the text for sexual pleasure. Most significant here, however, is the so-called Mirror Effect of Mulvey’s Male Gaze.

This states that women themselves consuming the images will apply the
Male Gaze, and see the female in the image in a sense of what Baudrillard would call hyperreality, assuming the idea that this representation is ‘how women should be’ and in turn they should construct their identities similarly in order to appeal to males – aftr all women are the subdominant group in an apparent patriarchal society. Identity therefore has become mediated in this situation as Adorno says. The “culture industry” that is the mass media has imposed a dominant representation onto a collective group; who have felt pressured to adapt it as part of their collective identity.

In the 2001 film “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”, Lara Croft, the main female character is represented as fairly masculine (stereotypically masculine) in terms of her choice of clothing, body language and manner. All of these micro-elements construct her identity. However, throughout the film, we also see Croft use what can be considered the concept of femininity to her advantage, flirting with male characters and wearing stereotypically feminine clothes towards the final scenes.

In terms of her character’s identity this supports Buckingham’s aforementioned assumption that “identity is fluid and changeable” but also conforms to Queer Theory. Queer Theory is widely recognized
in Judith Butler’s 1990 book ‘Gender Trouble’ and states that the genders male and female are just as much the product of representation as the concepts of masculinity and femininity. She calls for a blurring of boundaries between genders and their stereotypical identities and calls for the media to celebrate such diversity. As a character, Croft arguably has blurred the boundaries displaying traits of both male and female behaviour.

If Adorno’s assertions are applied here it can be argued that again the dominant identity of women as sly, untrustworthy and in need of patriarchal dominance is being applied through Croft’s deviant use of fronting identity to her advantage.
However some could argue that the
prominence of Queer Theory does not encourage the mediation of female identity instead it encourages dominant representations to be characterized and boundaries to be blurred – implying greater personal control over identity as advocated by John Fiske and David Buckingham rather than mediated identities.

Cosmopolitan is a magazine aimed at females around 30+. In all ways it can be said that pragmatically the magazine pushes femininity as an identity for itself, with stereotypically female colours and text styles. In turn, the feminine identity of the magazine is applied as a representation of the readers, further suggesting a mediation of women’s identity. The magazine focuses heavily on beauty and fitness, reinforcing the dominant ideology of the “ideal” women that women should aspire to a fixed concept of beauty.

As an example in the April 2010 issue a large image of Holly Willoughby (celebrity) features on the cover. Although unlike Nuts magazine, she is wearing fairly covering clothing and lacks cosmetic make-up, it is interesting to note that her clothing is white in colour – Ferdinand de Saussure would note that this has semiotic significance using his semiotic theory and Roland Barthe’s levels of signification, we can identify that white has connotations of innocence and weakness. Therefore this represents her as innocent and weak – reinforcing dominant patriarchal representations of women. Due to her status as a celebrity, her level of influence is great. In herself she is a semiotic symbol of success and affluence, so those who take inspiration from her will take this constructed innocence and weakness and apply it to their own identities. This is a clear example of the mediation of identity. It suggests a passive audience, influenced by the mass media as Adorno and other quasi-Marxists would suggest.

It can be seen therefore, that as post modernists say, we live in a media saturated society. We are surrounded by signs which cannot be ignored. Women in the media are often represented as varying, whether it be as sexual objects for the pleasure of males; or as innocent, as ‘stay at home’ housewives as suggested in 2008’s film Hancock. Here, despite possessing stereotypically male strength and ‘superpowers’, the lead female aspires to be a housewife – reinforcing the sub-dominant representation of women. Either way however women are often the victims of mediation. The theories of consumption and construction of identity from theorists such as Adorno and Mulvey clearly show that despite the specific representations, one common identity is ‘forced’ upon women in the media – a subdominant social group living in a patriarchal society. Identity is constructed using this as a basis; and even media texts which challenge this representation and encourage Queer Theory diversity are still arguably mediating identity with their influence. Identity is fluid and changeable and can be individually constructed as Gauntlett and Buckingham state. But arguable, the mass media are, and have, mediated the identity of women in contemporary society.

EAA 20/20
EG 18/20
T 10/10
(48)

Friday 20 January 2012

Research- theory!!


Theorist
Year
Concepts
Your explanation
Giroux
1997
Youth as empty category
in the 1960's the adults had a fear of the teenagers going out getting drunk and falling pregnant. But over the years the fear has changed, now the adults have a sense of fear that the youths of today go out get drunk, have sex, beat up people, steal things, murder people. i feel that the riots in the summer havent helped here.  te way the media portrays the youths and creates a fear for the adults
Acland
1995
Ideology of protection; deviant youth and reproduction of social order
media creates a sense of fear for the adults. They see the teenagers as being good. But the media show the bad side to the teenage youth. ie showing teens with no jobs, housing estates, shop lifting and having asbos to the riots in the summer. they want the youths to go by rules but at this time in there lives they are still learning about social values and rules
adults want to protect youths
Gramsci
1971 (1929-1935)
Cultural hegemony
they feel that the middle class is able to dominate society by making there norms and ways seem normal. but as a result of this other classes accept this as a normal way of life. programs such as misfits show that todays lower class youths are thugs
Cohen
1972
Moral panic
seeing the youths as "folk devils" tainting the everyone with the same panic through the media. is through asbos because there is so much panic through the media society felt it would be needed to bring calm to everyone?
McRobbie
2004
Symbolic Violence
work with gender representation on teen magazines. the media represents violence as a link to lower social classes. helping people re difine there identity
Gerbner
1986
Cultivation Theory
influencing the media through representation. the more you see youths stealing you then think its more and more real. the more viloence you see on the tv the more you think its real.
ie tv is influencing how we see the world.



harry brown  attack the block and eden lake
Choose one of the three films to research.  Try to find reviews which reflect different perspectives, e.g. from conservative newspapers like the Daily Mail, or the Telegraph, and liberal newspapers like The Guardian, and The Independent.

Thursday 19 January 2012

What is identity?

Identity is how we perceive an individual, or how we come across to society. Ie by what we wear how we act or the life style that we chose.
i·den·ti·ty  ( -d n t -t )
n. pl. i·den·ti·ties
1. The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known


How is identity formed?
Enviroment
Friends #
Events
Social critism
Education
Where you live
Beleifs
Relgion
 Morals of parents
Gender
Charactersitcs
Media/ consumption
Music
Diet
Height
Age
Lifestyle
Socail class
Geography
What school you went too
Stero types

Nature vs nutre
Nature your enviorment
Nuture is how you’ve been brough up ie things influenced you

How do contemporary media represent British youth and youth culture in different ways?

Harry brown
Council esate
Old man is alone and issloated maybe recently lost his wife? (Kath)
Boys running around on moped shoot women several times she dfies they go off and hot by truck
 Old man stood waiting  goes to hospital to visit his wife
Almost looks dead….
Old man goes to pub- local  meets with his friend “ father” old man – harry
Begin to talk about kath ( harrys husband)
Drung dealing going on in the dingy pub
Old people are feeling scared and worried with fear due to the use of drugs
Harry doesn’t care
Sat on his own watching telly
Making him look issloated and on his own
Cars ebing attacked  youths represented as being bad rebellious
Smash in car big group of them 
Boy is attack  lokos like hes dead
 Old man feels safe behind the curtains
Old man gets a call in the middle of the night
Doesn’t want to go down the short cut
Running to the kates bed side
Breaks down in the hospital
At kaths grave giving her daffoldils
The two old men stood together
Sat in the pub again on there own in darkness
Talking about how beautiful and how him and kath met
Talking about Harry’s time in the marines- war ( old man)
Dingy barthroom showing that life isn’t great
“father” says  “ dog shit through through my bos spat in his face, he ccant take it anymore “
Pulls out a knife  he wants something done about the youths
Bag on fire in someones home
Smoke filling the room
Police knock at harrys door
Len “father” has died found dead in a pedestrian walk way
Police see themselves out 
Old man cries, left with no one
Police banging at door , jean doesn’t open the door
Mother crying
Loads of commotion outside the boys house who got arrested

Sat in the giving evidence two lights and the rest of the rooms is dark
He has foul langaue ( carl)
Killed a pensioner
He replies no comment

Mark looks scared he says he don’t know nothing
Dean falls asleep and says no comment
One boy has loads of offenses and will be used against him

Old man went to his friends funeral
Sat in the pub drinking
Pissed
Old man walking alone by the river/canal
Vunerable
Sleepy boy from station
Attacks the old maa with a knife
And the old man plunges the knife into the boys chest
Puts all of his clothes into a bag
Goes to the bins and cleans the carpets
Has a shower
And goes to bed
Alone in bed
Tap dripping on a dirty plate
Sat on his bed looking sorry and depressed
Door bell is rung
Answeres door 
The lady pociliofficer from before turns up
Asks him about marines
Studying chess
And then explains about chess too the lady
Knife of his friend was in his coat
Looking at a box
Full of past time memories
Walking into a burnt out house

Group of teenagers stood in the pedestrian walk through
Drug dealing dealing going on
Man gets gets beat up
Old man stood in a dark street follows a young person 
Says hes trying to do some business,
Boy who was followed home holds up a gun to the old mans head
Drug den
Girl is fucked
And high on some needle drug
He then injects the needle into him self
Old man shoots the two guys torches the place and leaves with the girl in an army van
He thinks he is in the war?!?!?
Old man walks into a church
Gives the money he found in the army truck to the church
Detective realises that shes from a drug den
Old man visits his wifes grave and someone elses
Stares out of his window and sees the kids at the pedestrian walk through takes a drink

One guy on his own walks to a dealer
Guy gets the boy to give him head?
Old man shoots the dealer
Mark the terrified boy from the station is saved
And kept as a hostige
Old man sees fotatge of his friend being killed
Four people making out
Boy led too the pedestrian walk way on a leash
Boys who in the police station become scared
Everyone starts to shoot at each other
Man guy runs off




·         Harry Brown (2009) Dir. Daniel Barber
Hoodies strike fear in British cinema
Jane Graham , guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 November 2009
Who's afraid of the big bad hoodie? Enough of us, certainly, that the smart money in British cinema is going on those films that prey on our fear of urban youths and show that fear back to us. These days, the scariest Britflick villain isn't a flesh-eating zombie, or an East End Mr Big with a sawn-off shooter and a tattooed sidekick. It is a teenage boy with a penchant for flammable casualwear.
What separates hoodies from the youth cults of previous moral panics – the teddy boys, the mods and rockers, the punks, the ravers have all had their day at the cinema – is that they don't have the pop-cultural weight of the other subcultures, whose members bonded through music, art and customised fashion. Instead, they're defined by their class (perceived as being bottom of the heap) and their social standing (their relationship to society is always seen as being oppositional). Hoodies aren't "kids" or "youngsters" or even "rebels" – in fact, recent research by Women in Journalism on regional and national newspaper reporting of hoodies shows that the word is most commonly interchanged with (in order of popularity) "yob", "thug", "lout" and "scum".
Greg Philo, research director of Glasgow University Media Group and professor of sociology at the university, traces our attitudes to hoodies back to the middle classes' long-held fear of those who might undermine their security. That is what they see in what Philo describes as "a longterm excluded class, simply not needed, who often take control of their communities through aggression or running their alternative economy, based on things like drug-dealing or protection rackets".
"If you go to these places, it's very grim," says Philo. "The culture of violence is real. But for the British media, it's simple – bad upbringing or just evil children. Their accounts of what happens are very partial and distorted, which pushes people towards much more rightwing positions. There's no proper social debate about what we can do about it. Obviously, not all young people in hoods are dangerous – most aren't – but the ones who are can be very dangerous, and writing about them sells papers because people are innately attracted to what's scary. That's how we survive as a species – our body and brain is attuned to focus on what is likely to kill us, because we're traditionally hunters and hunted."
Once the images of the feral hoodie was implanted in the public imagination, it was a short journey to script and then to screen – it's no surprise that hoodies are increasingly populating British horrors and thrillers, generating a presence so malevolent and chilling that there are often hints of the supernatural or the subhuman about their form.
Daniel Barber's debut feature film, the much touted Harry Brown, is the latest and possibly the grisliest movie to exploit our fear of the young, but it follows a steady stream of British terror-thrillers including Eden Lake, The Disappeared and Summer Scars, as well as a seedier breed of ultraviolent modern nasties such as Outlaw and The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael. Soon we'll get Philip Ridley's Heartless, a visceral supernatural horror in which the howling, snarling hoodies who terrorise the estate turn out to be genuine demons dealing not in crack cocaine but in diabolical Faustian bargains. Harry Brown's hoodies, however, are still very much human, and like most cinema hoodies, the ones who circle the eponymous vigilante hero (played by Michael Caine) hunt in packs and move in unison, commandeering the gloomy underpasses and stairwells of the concrete and steel London estate they inhabit. To Barber, the threat they present is very real and was, he believes, the motivating factor for Caine to make the film.
"I'm scared of these kids in gangs," says Barber. "They have no respect for any other part of society. It's all about me, me, me. Life is becoming cheaper and cheaper in this country." And from a director's point of view, hoodies are gold dust. "We're afraid of what we don't understand or know, and there's so much about these kids we just don't understand," he says. "That's a good starting point for any  film baddie."
When we first see the bad guys in Harry Brown, they are an amorphous mob of hooded creatures cast in shadow, smoking crack in an under-lit tunnel. They shoot at a young mother pushing a buggy in a park, then batter an old man to death. They show all the hallmarks of the stereotypical youth of "Broken Britain" – the tracksuits, guns and dead eyes – and Barber's overhead framing and murky lighting of them as they swarm over a vandalised car or close in on a passing couple invite comparison with those other cinema villains who gather strength in the dark – vampires and zombies.
The hoodies of the celebrated British horror Eden Lake have a similarly vampiric quality, though we quickly understand – through the deployment of the Rottweiler, the white van dad, the tracksuits and the Adidas gear – that these are the great British underclass. We know the territory we're in when a mass of disembodied bodies and grabbing hands surround a holidaying young couple's car. "The film isn't an attack on a particular social group," says Eden Lake's director, James Watkins. "But if you had a bunch of public school kids in blazers, it just wouldn't be that scary. There's an element of, 'these are feral kids let off the leash.' The films that stay with you exploit the fears closest to you – like Jaws, the sense that there might be something underneath the water. It's a very primal fear, the fear of the dark or a fear of violence, fear of children – these are very real fears which go very deep in today's society."
Johnny Kevorkian, the 33-year-old director of last year's The Disappeared, an atmospheric supernatural thriller about a young boy who vanishes on an estate populated by prowling hoodies, agrees. "Although it's a ghost story, much of the fear in The Disappeared is real," says Kevorkian. "These threatening nasty gangs run these estates. The film is exploiting the fact that things like gangs killing little kids really happens. So of course, in the film, you wonder if these guys are the cause of the boy going missing, and that is really scary."
The Disappeared, like Harry Brown, is set on an estate in south London. In both films hoodies set up camp on a favoured spot and punish trespassers – in Harry Brown they seize the underpass, in The Disappeared it's the children's playground. The noises that echo around the estates – car alarms, barking dogs, gunshots and loud, taunting shouts – are crucial elements in the films' relentlessly forbidding atmosphere.
"That's the reality of living on these estates," Daniel Barber says. "There are hundreds of homes all on top of each other, all with paper-thin walls. There is no way of escaping the noises other people make around you. You get this terrible claustrophobia. The architecture itself has gone some way to creating the attitudes among the kids who live there. It helps create their personalities – it's not just lack of family involvement or lack of education. They're like prison cells. But whole families live in them in squalor."
Barber is also aware of the visual power of the hood itself, an icon that has long had sinister connotations, most with the Ku Klux Klan and the Grim Reaper. "You have gangs of hooded kids roaming around and it is precisely the way they dress – disguising themselves, they cover their faces, mask who they are – which scares us," he says. "But of course behind this mass of awfulness there are real people, real individuals." To be honest, there's not a great deal of interest in these real people in most of the hoodie-horror genre. As Watkins says, baddies are more effective if they're "withheld" – getting to know them means empathising with them and losing our fear, and that's not how scary films work.
It's interesting that when British cinema has made a genuine attempt to engage with hoodies on a one-to-one basis, the result is rarely a thriller. Within the last year we have had Penny Woolcock's sensitive and funny 1 Day; Andrea Arnold's Loach-inspired and deeply moving Fish Tank; Duane Hopkins's debut, Better Things; or Wasted, which was nominated for a Scottish Bafta.
In those films, the audience's empathy depends on the authenticity and vulnerability of the young actors' performances and the camera closes in on their faces with a curiosity and open-mindedness that the hoodie-horror doesn't share. Each makes a convincing argument that behind the hoodie is a person with the capacity for love, whether it's Fish Tank's hard-drinking Mia or Wasted's surprisingly tender-eyed rent boy, Connor.
"The more I know, the less fearful I am," says Caroline Paterson, director of Wasted, a love story centred around two homeless drug addict teenagers in Scotland. "When we were filming in Glasgow, the actors actually got regularly picked up by the police and told to move on. These kids looked like the people we cross the street to avoid and I know that most people make snap decisions – you're a thug, you're a junkie, you're a lager lout. I wanted to make a film that said these people are human beings, they count, there is love and human connections in these people's desperate lives. I wanted to make people take a second look."
For Woolcock, whose 1 Day focuses on gun-toting, rap-slamming gangster boys in Birmingham, the urge to "dig behind the headlines" was pressing. "These stories about gang crime and these faceless thugs, scum who are ripping us all off – I thought, that can't be true. I knew if you look a bit harder, you'll find the funny one, the baby, the bully, the sensible one, the one who loves someone who doesn't love them. These are the things that humanise these excluded kids. It's very rare to find genuinely evil or psychotic people – most people are doing the best they can under the circumstances.
"People have families and relationships and deal in silly mundane things all the time – they're real people. I wanted to show the fun of these people, too. These are the things that humanise these excluded kids."

How does the article suggest howyoung people are represented
Un emotional
Thugs
 non human
if you look benieth the surface there is something there they are human
reference to the klu klux klaan to jaws to opposiotuin
hoddie creasting a fear
the more you know the less scared you aree
monsters used to be used as the evil people ie vampires aliens supernatural axe killing murders aka jack the ripper  they didn exsist therefore we didn’t understand them.
The more we understand the british youths the less likely we will  be scared of them.

Social class
If you have loads of kids in blazers from publicschools the film just wouldn’t work. But having the kids in hoddies will work
Living in prison like houses aka the council flats hundreds on top of each other
Binery oppositions
Middle class vs working vs lower class vd upper

Continuing to develop knowledge of  how contemporary media represents British youth
Eden lake- 2008. Director James Watkins

How are jenny and steve represented
As there going away on holiday, they go off the map to a remote place in the woods steve asks the young teenagers to turn the music down he gets lots of abuse. The children then steal the beach bag which is full of there posessions ( has the car keys, phone wallet etc in it) steve and jenny try to get it back and the children turn on the adults. They start too attack steve and jenny and slice them with knives and wire etc tuie them up follow them as if it was a piece of fun,
Steve and jenny are just normal people who take a break from normal life- which is off the supposed map. They seem like people which wont give up with out a fight. They seem scared and fight for there life towards the end of the trailer. They seem scared and unable to defend themselves. Steve and jenny go through a lot from being chased, stabbed, tied up with barbed wire to being set alight?
How is this contrasted with the representation of the other characters ?
This is then contrasted with the fact that the younger teens are being portrayed as a rife evil scum who will do anything for a bit of fun. Theuy are 1st shown in the trailer as being loud with there music and become aggressive and violent towards the adults who ask them to turn the music down. You can see that they then steal steve’s car and possesions and follow them through the woods as a bit of fun. The young teens then start to chase and try to kill steve and jenny. They tie them up etc and think it’s a bit of fun almost getting some sort of thrill through stabbing and attacking another human being.
How important is the issue of social class?
I feel that the social class is and isn’t important here as you have the friend whos gone to paris for the weekend who is from the upper middle class, you have steve and jenny who are middle class then you have the youths who are working class
How are young people represented?
The young people here are represented as being horrible and awful to each other. They attack and try to kill steve and jenny who suffer many injuries which shows that they will go to any lengths to gain pleasure or seen as a bit of fun. The youg girl who says at the beginning you starting at my tits then films steve and she has a terrified look on her face.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Horror

Film theorist robin wood argues that the basic  formula of the horror film is ‘ normality’ here … to mean simply ‘conforming to social norms’

Attack the block  2011 director joe cornish

Working in packs nigh time theme horror fits into it. Lighting is low dark and the bandana to hide their identity with the hoddies and baseball caps iconic clothes of the British youths. American youths used to be represented like this when they has gone bad and now its come over here
They seem to be acting how they should be