London riots, Tight Jeans and Ill Manors

London riots, August 2011

'Kids take on cops in £100m rampage' (The Sun)

'Rioters aged 7' (The Sun)

'Rule of the mob' (Telegraph)

'Flaming morons' (Daily Express)

'Yob rule' (Little Independent)

'Sweep scum off our streets' (Daily Express)

'You're a disgrace to your country' (Daily Mail on olympic girl)

'Our sick society' (Daily Telegraph)

Destiny Ekaragha, Tight Jeans

Representation of youth on estates

Ill Manors, Plan B

Youth represented in negative way, coincides with London Riots. Riots happened in 2011 and the music video was released in 2012 - benefit of hindsight

What to do in the exam:TEXT
REPRESENTATION OF YOUTH how are young people represented?

KEY POINTS significance of representation

THEORY theorists to discuss

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES link discussion to articles we looked at 

Collective identity: youth - demonisation

petesmediablog.blogspot.com

all throughout history, the youth have been demonised
from roman times --> the noughties

"shoot them and if that doesn't work shoot a few more" (Bernados advert)

Theorist: Thomas De Zengotita - mediated book 2005
Almost everything we know about the world comes to us through some form of media
This influences our views of the world and even our 'self' definition (Locan mirror image - identification/ aspiration)

Terminology
'Moral Panic' Stanly Cohen 1960s
Texts always show negative teenagers representation
'Hoodie' in relation to youth, often become synonyms with criminal behaviour - hoods banned in Bluewater
Newspapers 6,500 stories of young people: half crime, 1 in 10 allowed voice of young person, 600 references to 'yob', 250 to 'thug,' 'angel' and 'model student' but only used if young person died, murdered or in accident

3 different points of view - media, teens and adults
all of the people talking about young people don't know young people at all

Refer to: Harry Brown and Attack the Block [Samsung picture advert]

Decades

Micheal Maffesoli 1985
Identified the idea of the 'urban tribe' (link to subculture: mods/rockers etc)
Members of these small groups tend to have similar worldwide views, dress styles and common behaviours - leads to the decline of individualism

Terminology
Schadenfreude (charm/joy) - pleasure in other peoples misfortunes e.g. study says social media scadenfreude is real

screenonline.com - films through the decades
new wave cinema - big film movement

1950s
washing machine, TV
'change was in the air in the 1950s'
after all their progress in war, women were firmly pushed back into homes

1960s
'the summer of love'
young people had a say and it got heard
music, fashion, sex
radio 1 - The Beatles
example text for 60s: QUADROPHENIA - two subcultures: normal vs gang (party/fighting)

1970s
David Bowie
anarchy vs monarchy
Sid Vicious - Queen/ Sex Pistols

1980s
racial tensions - riots (Brixton)
miners strikes, privitisation
lots of money in city quickly
aids awareness, gay acceptance
Micheal Jackson, Madonna, Wham, U2, Band Aid (MTV launches)

1990s
Nirvana, Oassis vs Blur - mushy sounds and electronic keyboards
Tony Blair
Cool Britannia
'girl power' - Spice Girls
no longer take 5 hours to get ready, roll out of bed and play music
stereotyping teenagers on TV (Harry Enfield as Kevin)

2000s
Ali G
Lauren Cooper by Catherine Tate
Little Britiain
negative representation of teenagers on TV programmes (positive representation of Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging)
Titanic/ Harry Potter, Slumdog Millionaire
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter
Big Brother, Strictly Come Dancing
Micheal Jackson dies
Advances in technology - mobile phone, mp3, social media

Class

The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch, 1960s
"money won't bring you happiness son"
Message: being proud of working class/ social mobility

MUSIC: our house - 'mum is so proud,' 'mother has to iron his shirt then she sends the kids to school'
               kid british: our house is dadless - 'crazy but wouldn't have it any other day'
               straight outta clacton

Question 2: Audience (practice essay)

AUDIENCE

In media products like a film opening or music video, it is important to appeal to an audience in order to achieve the primary aim; sell/ become popular. The target audience for our music video production was females aged 17-25 who were middle class and enjoyed embracing their female-hood. To research what our audience wanted, we looked at artists similar to our genre (indie), such as Lana Del Rey, and found out what their audiences like. From this, we found that the vintage/ retro theme is a big hit (like in American 50s/60s culture) and also someone/ some people to identify with and idolise is very popular. The reason they want these things can be explained by Blumler and Katz who think that audiences want media products that gratify particular needs, for example to escape or for entertainment. Our audiences wanted someone to identify with, therefore they would be watching is to gratify that particular need.

Within the music video we used camera shots to attract/ engage the audience in the following ways. We used close ups of the main artist Emma to help our audience identify with the main artist. As there was a clear gap in the market for our girl band, we rolled with this. The girl band is not seen as superficial, they are seen as down to earth girls. Therefore, the use of close ups aided the identification for our audience as we focused on this down to earth girl who audience members would idolise. The motive behind these close ups support the theory proposed by Blumler and Katz. Another theory which helps understand why we did this is by Andrew Goodwin who believes the use of close ups is important to appreciate the “star persona” of the lead singer. The majority of our shots were close ups and therefore our audience was able to appreciate the “star persona” of the lead singer as well as identify with her.

The way in which we edited the music video uses the hypodermic needle theory proposed by Frankfurt School. This theory thinks that audiences might be directly influenced by media products as the producer of the product injects what the audience’s wants into them. So, with our editing, we used many effects over the top of shots like retro/ vintage filters as this is what we found out our audiences wanted with similar artists such as Lana Del Rey. We also cut the shots to be really fast and create a certain pace of the video, which in turn became more enjoyable and entertaining to watch for the audience.

For sound, we applied Carol Vernallis’ theory of cutting the music to the beat. The prime purpose of this is to reflect the experiential properties of sound. We found this to be really effective and enjoyable for the audience as it successfully reflected the experiential properties of sound, which means that the properties of our sound was based on observation. This resulted in the beat of our music cutting directly when certain observations could be made in our music video. For example, when the very first beat drops, it shows one of the members of the girl band dropping into the water at the exact same time. This was consumed by our audience and applying Carol Vernallis’ theory proved to be a successful move.

To conclude, it was really important to consider our target audience in depth as they are the primary consumers. The consideration of our audience affected our production overall as we were able to receive appropriate and helpful feedback which aided the improvement of certain aspects of our music video production and resulted in a more successful grade. 

How do teenagers consume the media?

Henry A Giroux

His theory: 
Youth reflects adult concerns (negative stories sell)
Media representation of youth does not reflect reality of youth identity
Serves the purpose of the middle class adults who produce them
Reinforces hegemony

Media representation of youth does not reflect reality of youth identity 

An example of a teen drunk driver, reflecting adult concerns and generalising to all teens

An example of good GCSE results for teens, which won't be generalised to all teens as it does not serve the purpose of the middle class adults who produce them 

Both texts have been taken from the newspaper, The Daily Mail 

Comparison of hegemony of 40s compared with more present times:
"Cavender (1999) shows how hegemonic masculine models were constructed differently in feature films in the 1940s compared with the 1980s. This is not just a matter of the characters written into the scripts. Practice at the local level—that is, the actual face-to-face interaction of shooting the film as
an actor—ultimately constructs hegemonic masculine fantasy models at the society-wide or regional level."
(^ http://xyonline.net/sites/default/files/Connell,%20Hegemonic%20masculinity_0.pdf)