Teenage Riot!

Youth, Media and

Collective Identity

Starter Activity

Who is your favourite young person in the media? (real or fictional)

Why do you like them?

Macro Questions

• How are teenagers and young people in the media portrayed?

• Are these portrayals accurate?• How does the intended audience influence

the messages sent about youth in the media?

• How do young people create their own representations? How are these different to those created and aimed at adults?

Collective Identity

What is it?

How does the media influence it?

Who are you?

• What makes you different to everyone else?

• What similarities do you have with others?

• What social groups do you consider yourself part of?

• These groups have a ‘collective identity’.

Identity and the Media

• Jacques Lacan – psychoanalyst

• Mirror stage – child begins to develop their identity.

• What is our relationship with images on the screen?

• What pleasures do they offer?

• Identification

• Aspiration

Influence of the Media

• How could they affect us?

• Accurate representations

• Inaccurate or distorted portrayals

Identification/ Aspiration

Activity:

• Look at the example from earlier.

• Do you identify with this character? Why?

• Do you aspire to be like this character? Why?

• Is it a mixture of the two?

Richard Jenkins

• We need to interact in order to form our identity…

• With other people – or with the media

• Partaking in an event (in reality, or virtually) with people with whom we feel affinity helps us to form collective identity.

• Identification

• Aspiration

• Solidarity (around media texts)

Constructing the Teenager

Creating and targeting a

youth audience –

and what the youth did next….

‘Youth Culture’ emerges

• 19th century ‘Bowery Boys’ or ‘Soaplocks’

• Recognisable youth culture: own slang, dress code, musical taste etc.

• First time entertainment and fashion industries targeted a youth group

1900-1940

• 400% rise in school in high school enrolment in USA

• ‘Peer culture’

• Magazines (and fashion, beauty) industries targeting insecurities of adolescent girls

• 1940s – WWII = demand for labour = young people with disposable income

1945-60: Birth of the Teen

• Economic potential is obvious – market of the future

• But also the first negative stereotypes• Youth simultaneously represented “a prosperous

and liberated future” and “a culture of moral decline”

• First sign of adult culture’s dichotomous image of teenagers

• Film example: ‘The Wild One’

1950s – Rock’n’Roll Culture

• Not trying to ‘fit in’ to adult mainstream

• Happy to rebel against it – first indication of a ‘Generation Gap’

• In values and lifestyles

Adult Hegemony?

• Hegemony = a dominant social group keeps an oppressed group in their subservient position by making them feel this position is ‘normal’ or desirable.

• Adult mainstream exploited the image of the ‘rebel teen’

• Sold to teenagers as aspiration• Sold to adults as a fear

James Dean – an accurate portrayal of youth?

• First celebrity to capture the dissonance of youth;

• ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ – lots of delinquent behaviour. Conforms to adult fears.

• But: Dean’s character isn’t a ‘bad boy’ – confused, sensitive, frustrated… and very handsome.

James Dean

• Adults and teenagers could empathise with (and desire) him.

• ‘Live fast, die young’ = the start of adults fetishising youth?

1960s and 70s – subculture to counter-culture

• Next generation of teens very cynical about commercial exploitation of youth.

• Rebellion chimes with social upheaval• Young people support Civil Rights,

feminism, anti-Vietnam… the rebels now have a cause.

• Resistant to marketing and consumerism, wanted to make the world better

• Film example: ‘Easy Rider’

Punk and Hip-Hop

• Punk = reaction against optimism of ‘hippies’ – even more cynical of mainstream.

• Not just rebellious or anti-consumerist. Punk was anti-establishment

• Punk = aesthetic and political rebellion• Hip Hop = dealing with reality of poverty and

racist oppression• Film example: ‘Scratch’

Recent article

• Excellent comparison of current youth subcultures (or ‘tribes’) with those of the past.

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/25/emo-pop-tribes-mods-punks

Adult Fetishisation

of Youth

Who is the intended audience?

• Adult obsession with youth – why?

Recurring pattern:

Symbol of a bright future

Vs

Symbol of world going to hell

Women in Journalism Reports

• ‘“Am I bovvered?” How is the media shaping the ambitions and aspirations of young women?’

• “Hoodies or Altar Boys?” What is media stereotyping doing to our British boys?

‘Am I bovvered?’

• Researched images in media and surveyed real teenage girls.

• Concern over sexualised images in all media – encouraged a morbid preoccupation with beauty and appearance.

‘Hoodies or Altar Boys’

• 4,374 out of 8,629 stories in national and regional papers were about youth crime.

• "yobs" (591 times)

• "thugs" (254 times)

• "sick" (119 times)

• "feral" (96 times)

‘Hoodies or Altar Boys’

• Positive phrases: ‘angel’, ‘high-achiever’, ‘model student’, ‘talented sportsman’…

• … but only used to describe dead boys, and usually the victims of violent crime!

• 85% of boys surveyed said negative images in media had made them afraid of other teenage boys.

Internalised Stereotypes

• Youthful search for collective identity could result in these representations being internalised and accepted: a self-fulfilling prophecy?

• ‘Kidulthood’• ‘Harry Brown’• ‘Anti-youth’ films? Accurate to actual

experiences of teenagers?• Or conforming to stereotypes circulated by news

media?

Alternatively…

• 9-14 year olds spend $300 billion per year in US

• Companies very keen to target youth: indication of what tastes of the future will be.

• Morgan Stanley: youth are the “vanguard of the digital revolution”

• Matthew Parker, intern… opinions made cover of Financial Times!

Adult Fetishisation of Youth

• Film example: ‘American Beauty’

• What can this tell us about how adults idealise youth?

Why do adults idealise youth?

• Nostalgia – never appreciated youth when they were that age

• Empathy – adults frustrated with their lives want to be rebels again

• Envy – teenagers don’t have career, relationship and financial burdens

• Envious of adolescent sexual drive (in a sexualised culture)

Accurate or Idealised?

• ‘Juno’ – do kids really talk like this?

• ‘Misfits’ / ‘Skins’ – do kids really have these lifestyles?

• Aimed at teenagers?• Or at adults?

• Film example: ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’

Further Study

• Use similar chart to analyse range of other films/TV featuring teenagers… who are they aimed at? How do the representations appeal to this audience?

• How teenagers respond to these representations?

• How do adults respond?

Digital YouthHow new technology has affected

collective identity

How do youth trends spread?

Traditional Model• Global youth was ‘atomised’ • Trend begins, usually led by a celebrity, in one

country (usually USA or UK).• Media would then spread this trend• Other nations’ youth would spot the trend, adopt

it as an easy route to solidarity with other teens,• Popularity (and media coverage) would increase

in intensity and get a wider spread of distribution.

How has digital technology changed this?

• Young people have grown up taking internet, mobiles, mp3s for granted.

• Interactivity – opportunity to manipulate the media experience.

• Instantaneity – ability to access (and experience) media texts ‘on-demand’.

• ‘Cloud Culture’ – information (including media texts and experiences) ‘float’ above us, we can ‘reach up’ and ‘grab’ it whenever we want.

How do youth trends spread?

21st Century Model• Youths create their own style, their own media; • They tell others about it using social networking

sites, blogs etc; quality content downloaded and spread by viral.

• Global reach of the internet means newly invented trends are ‘instantaneously’ spread across the world where they develop or decline according to how many people decide to follow them.

• Then mainstream media may become involved.

Who controls the future of youth culture?