Contemporary Representations of British Youth - Task

Thinking of contemporary media, that is to say the media from 2009 onwards, is there evidence to support Hebdige's assertion that British Youth are portrayed as either:

"Troublesome youth"

The political representation of youth as posing a threat to society and the status quo. Youth are seen as dangerous and subversive of society's moral values.

"Fun-loving youth"

The commercial representation of youth as going through a rites-of passage style period in their life during which they may behave differently but don't threaten society. They have a need to belong which can be exploited by society for commercial reasons.

TASK

Create a post in which you use images of media representations of British youth from 2009 onwards to show these two categories. These representations could come from any form of the media.

Fun- loving youth

    Some Girls

                  The Inbetweeners

 Coming of Age

    Freshers

                       The University Challenge

Troublesome Youth

Adulthood

Harry Brown

London Riots

Lola from Eastender- has a daughter

1960s Youth Identity - A Different Representation

Let's go back in time to 1961, just 3 years before the media in Britain represented its youth as being violence driven hooligans who were a threat to the very fabric of society.

1961 saw the release of the film 'The Young Ones' starring, amongst others, Cliff Richard.

The story is about the youth club member and aspiring singer Nicky (Cliff Richard)  and his friends, who try to save their club in western London from the unscrupulous millionaire property developer Hamilton Black, who plans to tear it down to make room for a large office block. 

The members decide to put on a show to raise the money needed to buy a lease renewal. The twist in the story is that Nicky in reality is Hamilton Black's son, something he keeps keeps secret from his friends until some of them try to kidnap Black senior to prevent him from stopping the show. 

Although he is fighting his father over the future of the youth club, Nicky can't allow them to harm him, so he attacks the attackers and frees his father. In the meantime, Black senior has realised that his son is the mystery singer that all of London is talking about, after the youth club members have done some pirate broadcasts to promote their show. 

So, although he's just bought the theatre where the show is to take place, in order to be able to stop it, the proud father decides that the show must go one. At the end, he joins the youth club members on stage, dancing and singing, after having promised to build them a new youth club.

TASK

Here is the trailer for the film - how is the representation of British Youth different here to what you have previously seen? 

• smart clothes
• bright clothing
• happy
• enthusiastic 
• polite
• cheeky
• respectful
• girls wear a smart dresses
• boys wear a suit and tie
• flirty
• not causing trouble

Youth Subcultures

Hegemony-

leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.

Dick Hebdige: The Meaning of Style (1979)

Richard 'Dick' Hebdige (born 1951) is a british media theorist and sociologist most commonly associated with the study of subcultures, and its resistance against the mainstream of society.

"member of a subculture often signal their membership through distinctive and symbolic use of style, which includes fashions, mannerisms and music."

Mods vs Rockers in the 1960s : Creation of a Moral Panic

Read through and watch the text(s) below and then answer the question that follows in bold print at the end of the post...

One weekend in 1964 residents and holiday-makers in the seaside towns of Brighton, Bournemouth and Margate, were rocked by a sudden influx of young, cool gangs. They were Mods and Rockers, and the culture clash that occurred that weekend, described in the articles below in The Daily Sketch, Daily Mirror and others, has become iconic in the history of youth culture. 

Mods and Rockers were easily identifiable by their distinctive clothing styles: the Mods wore Fred Perry and Ben Sherman designer suits, covered by a Parka jacket; while the Rockers wore leather biker jackets and jeans. Mods also rode European scooters like Lambrettas and Vespas and listened to a mix of Motown, ska and bands such as The Who. 

The Rockers favoured motorbikes and listened to American rock and roll such as Eddie Cochrane and Elvis. Although the movements were short-lived, violent clashes between the two gangs were seized on by the media and used by moralists to exemplify the outrageous liberties enjoyed by Britain’s youths. 

The seafront vandalism and violence described in the newspaper article was later made into the 1979 film Quadrophenia.

The video below shows how the media in the 1960s reported the clashes between mods and rockers and considers whether or not the media coverage exaggerated the scale of events leading to a 'moral panic' in relation to the behaviour of these youth subcultures.

This is evidence of historical creation of collective identity for British youth cultures. 

 

The following is taken from bbc.co.uk:

The seaside battles between the sartorially elegant Mods and their leather-clad rivals the Rockers fuelled much sensationalist media coverage in 1964.

As news of the fighting and arrests filtered out, these youngsters found themselves at the forefront of public outrage.

In fact, the Easter weekend shenanigans were pretty much the first mass-media scare over a drug-taking, mindless, violent youth.

The trouble caused enough outrage for Panorama to investigate the groups and work out whether this phenomenon would be become a regular feature of future bank holidays.

The results were strikingly candid; providing a snapshot of working-class youth at the point where deference to the establishment was beginning to wane.

The Mods preached a hedonistic take on life; enjoying drugs, music, clothes and violence to a lesser or greater degree and set a blueprint for many a youth tribe to follow.

You can watch part of the Panorama programme by clicking on the link below..

I Predict A Riot

Question

In what ways do the media texts referenced above create a representation of young people as being a danger to society?

• huge riot
• what they looked like- clothes, hair ect
• use of scooters/ motorbikes
• society weren't used to it- shocked
• use of words such as 'wild ones' and 'battler of Brighton'
• 'out came the knives'- representing them as murderers maybe?
• 'rioting teenagers'

Goths

The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene. The goth subculture's imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from nineteenth century Gothic literature along with horror movies and to a lesser extent the bondage and sado-masochism culture.
The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion. Goths have a tendency towards a lugubrious, mystical sound and outlook. Styles of dress within the subculture range from deathrock, punk, androgynous, medieval, some Renaissance and Victorian style clothes, or combinations of the above, most often with black attire, makeup and hair.
Some goth slang terms are used by some goths and others to sort and label members of loosely related or at times unrelated subcultures. These include but are not limited to mallgoths (a poser goth) in the US, dark in Latin America and Italy, hackians in New Zealand and spooky kids, moshers or mini moshers in the UK. More positive terms, such as mini-goths or baby bats, are also used by some older goths to refer to youths whom they see as exhibiting potential for growth into mature goths later on.

           

 

Task 2 : Youth Culture

Youth Culture

Noun 1. youth subculture - a minority youth culture whose distinctiveness depended largely on the social class and ethnic background of its members; often characterized by its adoption of a particular music genre

The meaning, formation and behaviour of youth cultures have been the subject of research since the 1930s. In August 2011, England witnessed a number of ‘youth’ riots in several London Boroughs, Birmingham and Bristol. 

The following article was published in The Guardian newspaper in December 1999. You can find the original article online by clicking here.

'They blast the flesh off humans! Teenage hoodlums from another world on a horrendous ray-gun rampage!" So ran the promotion for the 1959 film Teenagers From Outer Space, in the days when teenagers were viewed by grown-ups as deviant, difficult and scary. 

The emergence of this thing called "youth culture" is a distinctly 20th-century phenomenon; the collision of increased standards of living, more leisure time, the explosion of post-war consumer culture and wider psychological research into adolescents all contributed to the formation of this new social category defined by age. Previously, the rite of passage between childhood and adult life had not been so clearly demarcated -this is not to say that young adults didn't have their own activities before the invention of Brylcreem and crepe soles (youth gangs were common in Victorian Britain, for example) but it hadn't before been defined or packaged as a culture. 

Once "invented", the "youth culture" provoked a variety of often contradictory responses: youth was dangerous, misunderstood, the future, a new consumer group. British post-war youth culture emerged primarily in response to the American popular culture centred on rock 'n' roll. The 1955 film Blackboard Jungle, with its soundtrack featuring Bill Haley And The Comets' Rock Around The Clock, was a defining moment, inspiring people to dance in the aisles (and some to slash seats). 

The fear was not only of hoodlums but also of the creeping Americanisation of British culture.  But the impact of imported US films and music did not lead to cultural homogenisation; instead, it inspired a series of spectacular - and distinctly British - youth subcultures from the mid-50s to the late-70s: teds (quiffs, Elvis, flick-knives, crepe soles, working-class London origins circa 1953, drug of choice: alcohol); mods (Jamaican-rudeboy/Italian-cool style, US soul, purple hearts, The Small Faces, scooters, working-class London origins circa 1963, drug of choice: amphetamines); skinheads (Jamaican ska, exaggerated white, British, working-class masculinity, contrasting starkly with middle-class hippiedom of the same period, boots, braces, shaved heads and violence, sometimes racist, late 60s origins, drug of choice: amphetamines); punk (Sex Pistols, spit, bondage, swastikas, circa 1976, drug of choice: glue and amphetamines).   

 Drug use became a feature of youth subcultures from the Mods onwards - not just any old drugs, but ones that characterised and defined the subculture in question. Mods chose speed because it made them feel smart and invincible; it also gave them the energy to keep on the move, awake at all-nighters (and through work the next day). 



Later, within rave culture, drug use - this time, ecstasy - was central to the point of being almost obligatory.   Dick Hebdige, acommentator on youth culture, argues that the multicultural nature of post-war Britain was crucial to the formation of many subcultures; each one, he says, should be seen as a response to the presence of black culture in Britain, the ska/rudeboy-inspired two tone movement being a particularly vivid example. The tribes were created through the amalgamation of particular types of cultural goods; music, fashion, hairstyles, politics, drugs, dances - with their boundaries defined through crucial choices: Vespas or Harley-Davidsons, speed or acid, Dr Martens or desert boots. But then, youth culture is full of contradiction: the desire to express individuality by wearing the same clothes as your mates, and rebelling against capitalism at the same time as being a perfect capitalist slave.   

Britain also led the way in the study of youth, and its celebration of creativity and resistance, though these studies, naturally, have their favourite subcultures, often overlooking others. (Still, the kiss of death for any subculture is to be "understood" by a sociologist.) By the late 70s and early 80s, youth subculture began to change, and became less gang-oriented. 

The regular emergence of new subcultures slowed down, and the first major period of revivals began. It became difficult to identify distinct subcultures, rather than just musical styles. In fact, something weird happened: everyone started behaving like a teenager. 

By the 90s, "proper" grown-ups had started to complain that contemporary youth were dull and conformist, and the music of small children became the preferred choice of most teenagers - Pinky & Perky dressed up as Steps.   

 Today, there are still plenty of new genres of music, but they don't have such visible subcultures affiliated to them. Even something as recent as 80s dance music and rave culture - after its initial, Smiley-faced, ecstasy-fuelled unity - fragmented into a multitude of sub-genres with no definable set of cultural attributes. 

 Despite society's consistent attempts to regulate youth culture, perhaps the main cause of its demise in recent years is the extension of adolescent behaviour until death by the Edinas and Patsys of this world. Youth culture is now just another lifestyle choice, in which age has become increasingly irrelevant.

Task 1 : UK Tribes

What is UK Tribes?

Created by Channel 4 and Crowd DNA six years ago, UK Tribes is a long-standing study of British youth culture. 

Looking for something more innovative and authentic than a socio-demographic segmentation model for youth, our goal was to study the youth market in a way that reflected how they actually arrange themselves in our society. 

Tribal culture lives on in modern times, and we’ve got our neo-anthropological hats on to take you to the heart of young Britain. 


Working with over 80,000 young people since the project’s inception, the research approach is fluid and flexible, so each year the findings truly reflect what’s happening now. Absolutely no pigeon-holing in sight. Just simple, honest inputs we can use to dizzying heights in our output. The challenge is distilling the barrage of information into lucid insights for the marketing community, but we’ve got it down pat. 

You can view the UK Tribes website by clicking here. 

The project identified the following as the 2013 UK Tribes which represent British youth culture.

Which of these tribes do you think you fit into? Search Youtube for UK Tribes 2013 as I showed you in class in order to help you place yourself.

The Media and Collective Identity

We will be focussing on the ways in which the media represent the identity of British Youth Culture.

Through the work we undertake you should be able to resopond to the following 4 prompt questions:

• How do the contemporary media represent 'British Youth' in different ways?
• How does contemporary representation of 'British Youth' compare to previous time periods?
• What are the social implications of different media representations of 'British Youth'?
• To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?

We will explore the representation of 'British Youth' across at least 2 different elements of the media. For film this will include theories of film representation and realism in relation to the history of British cinema, a range of British films from recent years, funding, Government and industry practices, and discussion of a critically informed point of view on how Britain is represented to itself and to the wider audience at the present time.

In order to be fully prepared for the specific requirements of the question, the material studied must cover these three elements:

Historical – the development of the media forms in question in theoretical contexts.

Contemporary – examples from no more than five years before the examination. That is, in our case, from no earlier than 2009.

Future – personal engagement with debates about the future of the media forms / issues in relation to the concept of 'British Youth'.

Rules For The Exam

The majority of examples you refer to in the exam should be contemporary. However, theories and approaches may be drawn from any time period.

If you refer to only one media area in your answer, the mark scheme clearly indicates that marks will be restricted to a maximum of the top of level 1.

If you fail to provide or infer historical references and / or future projections, marks will be restricted to a maximum of the top of level 3 for use of examples only.