Analyse the ways in which media represent one group of people that you have studied

Analyse the ways in which media represent one group of people that you have studied.

British youths and youth culture in society are represented very negatively by the media. Different mediums such as films, internet and newspapers all represent British youths to be trouble, dangerous, violent and a threat to society. Recent events have proved that youths are frustrated and are challenging cultural hegemony, creating violence and trouble. But has it always been this way? It can be argued that youths have always behaved in such a way and are progressively getting worse.

“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders; they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?” – Plato (4^th Century). This raises the question, have youths changed?
Films like Quadrophenia (1979, Dir. Franc Roddam) show how even in the 1960s youths were represented negatively. The film centres on the infamous mods and rockers. Two rival groups of youths who went to Brighton to cause trouble. The media coverage of the events caused moral panics (Cohen, 1972) among the British public. With the media exaggerating, making it seem worse than it actually was, caused the British older generation t start to fear youths and what they were supposedly capable of. The setting of the film was not long after WWII, where there was social mobility and influences coming in from America. Music was a big influence on youths in those days, mainly rock ‘n’ roll. Teenagers had only been established in society, before that they went from children to adults, so it was their time to act out.

Compared to contemporary films like Harry Brown (2009, Dir. Daniel Barber), Quadrophenia has some significant similarities with contemporary media. Harry Brown is full of negative representations of British youths, being seen as ‘monsters’ and being feared by the British public. These days the public are more fearful of something they view as real or close to real life. Traditional horror films that have scary zombies or vampires in them are no longer applicable, nowadays the public are more scared of the youths represented in films, who could just be living in their town. McRobbie’s Symbolic Violence (2004) applies to these contemporary films, where it is predominantly male youths being symbolised through violence. With the exception of Fish Tank (2009, Dir. Andrea Arnold), this film represents a female youth. The youths in Harry brown are a prime example of how youths are perceived by the ruling class to be a negative and dangerous role in society and how they appear to be uncontrollable, with even the police in the film ending up being quite defeated by them. But is this just how society has created them to be? Self-Fulfilling Prophecy applies here where the ruling class has treated the working class youths that we see in the news and in films to be trouble and do badly in their lives. If the youths hear this from a young age, all their lives, they are more likely to fulfil this idea of who they are going to end up like rather than try to resist these stereotypes.  In Fish Tank, the main character Mia is trying her best to make her life better by becoming a dancer but society and the adults around her push her down and she ends up like society would expect her to.
Attack the Block (2011, Dir. Joe Cornish) attempts to challenge the conventions of how youths are represented, in this film they become the heroes as opposed to the monsters. Joe Cornish may have done this to wake up society and make them realise that the youths are not the real monsters in society. The youths in Attack the Block, even though they were the heroes in the end, were blamed and arrested; the police assumed they were I the wrong, not give them a chance. Youths are a product of their own environment, they are brought up and live in a certain way and very rarely they will get out of that way of life, they are an empty category (Giroux, 1997), which the media fill with fear so that the public are scared of them.
The media creates propaganda and moral panics through their reporting and news coverage of events like the London Riots and the mods and rockers in Brighton. This is something has been going on through our history. The youths are stereotyped, they have not applied this label to themselves, but they have no choice in the matter. The role of parents in the contemporary films is very negative. Their attitudes are incorporated into the youth’s way of life, so if the parental figure is a violent deviant, like in Harry Brown, then the children are most likely to become just like them. So the parental figures are going against the ruling class and cultural hegemony also.

The recent London riots caused major unrest in Britain. The youths that were committing what David Starkey describes as ‘violent shopping’ may have been frustrated which lead them to become violent, they were challenging cultural hegemony. They were fed up with the way the ruling class was viewing them and wanted to ‘get back’ at society. They create themselves to become something to be feared, so that they can be a main part and important in society. The extensive news coverage of the riots made them appear to possibly be worse than what they actually were. The newspaper the Sun reported about the victims of the crimes and how the youths were ‘yobs’ and ‘on the prowl’ this depicts them to be like animals, working like a pack of dogs. The Guardian reported on the 'London Riots: Deprivation, Youths and Policy’ talking about how the rioters were deprived and talking much more about the political side of the argument. The differences between these two are mainly because of the audience, while the Sun is aimed at working class the Guardian is aimed at more middle class, therefore the ruling class are more likely to read the Guardian and see the cultural hegemonic side. The media exaggerate the stories to make the public fear the youths and create hostility against them. What people really think about youth crime and the reality is drastically different. The British public (adults) think that youth’s commit more than half of crime in Britain, the reality is that is around 10% of crime is committed by youths. This shocks the public, but why do they think it is so much more? The media create such hysteria around the crime that youths commit, reporting on it constantly to make it seem that it occurs more than it actually does. While the ruling class, like Bankers and Politicians are committing worse rime, and more often than youths, but it is just not recognised.

The future for youths is really something to be debated. On one hand, we see people like Joe Cornish who directed Attack the Block, showing society that youths are not the monsters and that society should not fear them. However, cultural hegemony means that the ruling class, therefore the media, control how the public will perceive things. If the media are representing youths negatively then that is how the British public will view them. Social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube are enabling youths to create the way that can be perceived. They are creating their own identity, but is it really them? Or is it how they think society will expect them to be like? Through Facebook we can design how we want public and our ‘friends’ to view us, but some youths create fake identity’s to fit in with the rest, conforming to what they feel society think youth should be like. With films like the Inbetweeners (2011, Dir. Ben Palmer) the youths are lower middle class, and are represented quite positively, in comparison to Harry Brown or Eden Lake (2008, Dir. James Watkins) where the youths are terrorising the place they live, and the adults around them. In my opinion I feel that the representation of youths in the media will only get worse, with more ruling class ignorance towards the working class youths, and more frustration from the youths.