Contemporary British Cinema and the Representation of Youth

Watch the opening sequence of ‘Harry Brown’. How does it represent young people?

Link to article

Read the article about the representation of hoodies in contemporary British films and make notes on the key points.

You should consider:

• How it suggests young people are represented

• The links to the horror genre

• The significance of social class

• The implications of the representations

Watch the trailer of ‘Eden Lake’. How are Jenny and Steve (the main couple) represented? How is this contrasted with the representation of the other characters? How important is the issue of social class? How are young people represented?

Horror and the Representation of Youth

• Film theorist Robin Wood argues that the basic formula of the horror film is ‘normality is threatened by the monster. I use “normality” here…to mean simply “conformity to the dominant social norms”’.

What is the significance of the emergence of a cycle of British films in which the ‘monster’ is young people?

How do they threaten normality?

What term could we use instead of normality?

‘Attack the Block’ – Youth, Stereotypes, Social Class

Watch the opening sequence of ‘Attack the Block’ – how are the main characters introduced? How does this representation change?...

‘Attack the Block’ – Youth, Stereotypes, Social Class

• Opening sequence stereotypical hoodie representation.

• As the film progresses the representation becomes more positive. Develops a more sympathetic representation.

• The film initially represents the young people as ‘monsters’, then replaces them with actual monsters.

• Contrast to other ‘hoodie horror films’.

‘Attack the Block’ – Youth, Stereotypes, Social Class

‘While Attack the Block has moments of hilarity, and evokes the loneliness of ET – the fantasy, the bizarre things happening in residential streets – this is definitely a horror film. A political horror film, far less silly than fans may expect. There are monsters, aliens of the sort we haven't seen in the cinema for a long time."They're all the things that the press and people call those kids, made into a monster. People call these kids monsters, they call them feral, they call them animalistic, they say they've got no morals or values and all they care about is territory and competitiveness. So what if there was a creature that really was like that, and then you pitted the kids against it?“’

The Observer, interview with director Joe Cornish

‘Eden Lake’ – middle class adult main characters, antagonists are teenage hoodies (monsters) who torture and kill the main characters. Reflects middle class fear of working youth and their perceived threat to hegemony.

‘Harry Brown’ – middle class, adult hero. Teenager hoodies are antagonists. Hero hunts/kills antagonists. Middle class revenge fantasy in which threatening working class youth are punished.

‘Attack the Block’ – film initially opens with middle class protagonist, teenage hoodie ‘monsters’. These characters then become heroes. Film is an attempt to resolve tensions between middle class and working class youth.

Entertainment and Utopia, Richard Dyer

• Film theorist Richard Dyer argues that one of the functions of entertainment is utopianism. ‘Entertainment offers the image of “something better”…the sense that things could be better…Entertainment does not present models of utopian worlds…Rather the utopianism is contained in the feelings it embodies.’

Utopian Categories of Entertainment

• Energy• Abundance• Intensity• Transparency• Community• Dyer argues these categories reflect

‘temporary answers to the inadequacies of the society’.

Watch the ending of ‘Attack the Block’. How can you relate Dyer’s theory of entertainment and utopia? (1:00:00)

Applying TheoryHomework

Research into the following theories (record on blogs) and consider how you can apply them to the three media texts we have just covered (write notes for each*):• Giroux (1997), empty category• Acland (1995), reinforcing hegemony/ideology of protection• Gramsci (1971), hegemony• Cohen (1972), moral panic• McRobbie (2004), representations against the working class• Gerbner (1986), Cultivation theory, Mean World syndrome

• * These must be re-written in your own words

Theorist Year Concepts Your explanation

Giroux 1997 Youth as empty category

Acland 1995 Ideology of protection; deviant youth and reproduction of social order

Gramsci 1971 (1929-1935)

Cultural hegemony

Cohen 1972 Moral panic

McRobbie 2004 Symbolic Violence

Gerbner 1986 Cultivation Theory

Support for Homework

Giroux (1997)

• Representations of youth in popular culture have a long and complex history and habitually serve as signposts through which American society registers its own crises of meaning, vision, and community…youth becomes an empty category inhabited by the desires, fantasies, and interests of the adult world.

Acland (1995)

• Order has a key function: to reproduce itself. Youth in crisis, youth gone wild, is a central site in which this activity of reproducing order takes place. It involves the constitution of the normal, adult, the normal youth, and the relation between the two. The deviant youth is thus a crucial trope of this relationship; it helps patrol the boundaries

Gramsic (1971)

• Cultural hegemony - a culturally-diverse society can be ruled or dominated by one of its social classes. It is the dominance of one social group over another, e.g. the ruling class over all other classes. The theory claims that the ideas of the ruling class come to be seen as the norm; they are seen as universal ideologies, perceived to benefit everyone whilst only really benefiting the ruling class.

Cohen (1972)

• Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media

McRobbie (2004)

• Symbolic violence against the working class is a form of social reproduction

Gerbner (1986)

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

• Cultivation theory• Mean World syndrome

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.

Essay Question

• How are young people represented in contemporary media?

• Introduction:– State argument (link to theory)– Identify texts