Plan- Analyse a product you created on Representation

Who is being represented?
The detective is being represented in our production. The killer is also being also represented.

How is the genre created?
The genre is created using low key lighting and an urban abandoned location. The element of mistery also shows that this production is a thriller

Trump Card Theorists

'Kidulthood', 'Adulthood' and 'Fish Tank'

'Anti-Youth' or 'Pro-Youth' Film?

Kidulthood
This film is an Anti-Youth film as it portrays youths in a negative light through many different negative representations and exaggorates the negatives in a youths life. There are also not many positives for the youths in this film. Kildulthood is more of a comedy to youths rather than a serious media text which sends them a positive message. The film consists of Drug use, handling of illegal fire arms and other illegal weapons, underage sex, murder, colloquialisms and much more.

Adulthood
I believe that Adulthood is an Anti-Youth film also. Although in this film all of the characters from Kidulthood are a lot more mature and trying to make things better between one another, the title and the age of the characters implies that they are only more mature and doing these things because they are Adults now. As youths, these exact same characters are the ones who cause all of these problems, commit these crimes and behave so indecent but now that they are adults they are portrayed to be well behaved and mature. This implies that youths are the problem and adults are the solution.

Fish Tank
I believe that Fish Tank is a Pro-Youth film. Although throughout the film there are many negative representations of youths, it also implies that there is hope for youths and a positive side to them. This is not done directly, but instead through encoding of the text by the director and decoding by the audience. With Adulthood and Kidulthood, when a youth watches these films there arte no positives to take from them where as with Fish Tank, a youth can watch this film and decode the positive message of hope erasing all nehilism which the youth feels.


Accurate to actual experiences of teenagers?

Kidulthood
This film is not an accurate interpretation of experiences with teenagers. This film is very exaggorated, taking realistic events and making them unrealistic, often adding humour for the audience. An example of this is the speech and the colloquialisms in the film. They took slang words which youths really do use in real life but use them compulsively whereas in real life these words would be used often. Also it is very unlikely that so many youths wo are so indecent would all go to the same school, so the film implies that all/majority of youths are the way which they are portrayed in this film.

Adulthood
I believe that unlike Kidulthood, Adulthood is a lot less exaggorated and realistic.

An adult fascination of youth? How so?
Conforming To stereotypes circulated by news media?
Who makes these media texts and for who?

Fish Tank and Kidulthood Analysis

1) Who is being represented in terms of identity?

Fish Tank
In Fish Tank youths are being represented, Females in particular. However Males are also partially represented. These youths are of the Lower/Working class and live on a council estate (Urban). It is not only teens who are represented but also younger children (the protagonists little sister).

Kidulthood
In Kidulthood it is youths who are being represented (Teens) who live on council estates (Urban). These teens are of Lower/Working class. Both genders are represented, neither one nor the other is more dominant as there are multiple scenes dedicated to the female characters.

2)Who is representing them?

Fish Tank
In Fish Tank the director is representing the youths in the film. This film is used to put acrooss the views of the director who is an Adult.

Kidulthood
In Kidulthood Adam Deacon is representing the characters in this way. This is because a youth/young adult he believes that he can relate to youth behaviour and is putting it across the way that he sees the Youth situation.

3)How are they represented?

Fish Tank
They are represented as foul mouthed, violent and troublesome. Also, they have conflict witht their own identity (past against present) trying to break free of the chains which bind them (attempting to break the horse free). The characters are also represented as defient and thieving. Even the little children smoke, swear and act older than their age which erases any innocence which they may have.

Kidulthood
They are represented as very loud and illiterate, using a lot of colloquialism when talking instead of good English. The youths are also represented as permiscuous, violent thugs who act older than their age. The females in this film also take drugs, get pregnant when under age, talk about permiscuous topics aswell as take part in sexual actions and get pregnant while under age. This shows that the females are no better than the males and are not 'Ladies' like they once were, more animals.

4)What seems to be the intentions of the representation?

Fish Tank
The representation seems to be trying to put a message across to youths that there is always a chance to change and that there is always hope no matter how bad things are or how bad things get. It is a realistic representation so that it has more of an impact on the audeince and the audience take it alot more seriously.

Kidulthood
The representation seems to be very exaggorated and purely for entertainment purposes unlike Fish Tank. There are many realistic events which take place in the film but overall the film is very eaggorated and turn these serious events which take place on the streets of London into comedy.

5)What is the dominant discourse? (World view offered by the film)

6)What range of readings are there?
Fish Tank
One reading of this film is that a message is trying to be put across andf that the film is realistic in order to have an effect. Youths may see this and take the text seriously, taking the message which is encoded into the text in to account. However, adults may watch this film and create their own stereotypical view of youths, believing that all youths from these environments or social classes are like this. This will create prejudice and maybe even discrimination.

Kidulthood
One reading of this film will be from adults. Much like with Fidsh Tank the adults will create their own stereotypical view of youths which may cause discrimination and/or prejudice. However as Kidulthood is significantly more exaggorated than Fish Tank, this film will have a stronger effect on the adult target audience affecting their views alot more. However, for youths, this film may be seen as comedy and not taken very seriously.

With reference to youth, discuss how the identity of youths has been mediated

Foucalt said that our identity is mediated through other people and we then form a collective identity. By looking at the music video 'S&M' by Rihanna, we can see that she conforms to the stereotypical views of which adults have of teenage youths. Young girls will watch this video and see what she is doing and singing about as acceptable. They will then base their identity around the image which she is giving off in the video. This image of Rihanna is constructed, however teenagers will still follow this (Richard Dyer's Star Theory). This is just one example of how the identity of youths have been mediated as these videos are shown on the television often, not restricting explicit content within them, making this content acceptable in everyday lives.

The song S&M by Rihanna has many sexual connotations and implications. In the music video Rihanna is seen to be in control and to have power over the men, having men tied up or on a dog leash. This is a sexual implication and matches the lyrics of the song 'Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it'. These lyrics do not only influence defiance ('I don't care') for youths, females in particular, but it also implants the idea that sex is good and acceptable. This video will influence young girls to be like Rihanna, forming a 'collective identity'and continuing the hegemonic view that all youth are like this.

Winships notion of complexity is about being prepared, in terms of gratification, to finally recognise the ideal version of ourselves. Rihanna represents a glamorous, popular, ideal image for young girls and this may influence the way in which the youths identity develop Rihanna is portraying the image that this is how young females should be, sexual, permiscuous and careless. As youths already hate constraints and rules, the idea of being like Rihanna, granting them freedom will have a huge influence on their identity. This would then create a collective identity which will then be seen as the 'in-group' (Henri Tajfel social identity theory), mediating the image for the youths which Rihanna has portrayed.

However if you look at an older video released by Rihanna called 'If Its Loving That You Want' you will see that the artist has changed her image and appearance over time to sexualisation and promiscuity. Not only the the artists image changed, but so have her lyrics as they do not have sexual connotations behind them and are not explicit. An example is 'If its loving that you want, you should make me your girl' in comparison to 'Sex is in the air, I don't care I love the smell of it.' The clothing which she is wearing in the video is also appropriate as they do not reveal much of Rihanna's body. The mise-en-scene of the video is also very innocent and natural with people having fun and being happy. As these changes in the artist happened over time, us as an audience have grown to accept it and have become desensitised to the images and lyrics of these songs as they are fairly normal for us.

Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding theory uses the idea that the media encode a text with messages and as an audience it is for us to decode the text and take the message how we believe suits us best. By watching videos such as S&M, youths may take the negative, sexual, promiscuous images as positive. As these negatives are pushing the boundaries of regulations set, this will attract more attention from youths as the more a media text pushes the boundaries, the more attention it collects.

In conclusion, youths identities are being mediated through the development of music videos, which push the boundaries of regulations, as the stars change their image. Youths, who are still developing will then see these music videos and decode the texts in the way which they believe applies to them. As Jacques Lacan's Mirror Stage theory says; 'The media is the mirror. Youths look at the media and reflect the behaviour and trends as youths are still developing.'

Theories and Definitons

Apathy – Not caring

Associations – When things are linked together

Binary Oppositions – Class/race/gender/age/disability

Brand – The company or name that gets popular, attached to the person or product

Buzz Words – Words that have certain triggers

Collective Identity – Sense of belonging, sharing same interests as others

Connotations – The implied messages within media texts

Construction – The way something is put together

Counter Culture – A culture that goes against the mainstream

Democracy – The choice of voting for what you want

Direct Address – When a product or person is made to be reaching out to you personally

Enigma - Mysterious

Global media – The media worldwide

Hegemony – Dominant view

Iconography – Visuals associated with a person, can be part of their collective identity

Identity – Your characteristics and personality

Identity Construction – The creation of an identity

Ideology – A set of ideas

Intertextuality – Referencing other films

Marketing – The way something is advertised to the public

Marxism – Communism, one way of thinking and living

Media Saturated – Media is inescapable, we see it everywhere

Mediated – Changed, adapted

Mise en Scene – Literally what’s on the set (costume, props, backdrop)

Moral Panic – A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.

Narrative – Story line

Neo Marxism – Modern Communism

Perspective – The viewpoint of someone or something

Post Modernism – Our reality is constructed

Regulation – Censorship, blocking of content

Representation – The way something is portrayed. (editing, camera, colours, mise en scene etc.)

Social inclusion – The breakup of groups

Social Order – Stance and status (hierarchy)

Star – The popular figure

Subculture – A group with their own separate beliefs to society

Subservient – Doing something without question

Subversion – Going against the stereotype or social norm

The Feminine Mystique – Women are capable of what men are doing

The Male Gaze – Women objectified by male media

Web 2.0 – Websites that allow users to create and share content rather than

David Buckingham “A focus on identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups”.

David Gauntlett – “Identity is complicated – everybody thinks they’ve got one”.

Henri Jenkins – Teens are constantly updating and customising their profiles online adding photos and songs and posting to each other’s virtual ‘walls’. While this could be interpreted as just playing around, these activities could also be a means to construct an experiment with their identity. In particular, it can be a space for exploring one’s gender identification and sexuality.

Henri Tajfel – Individuals strive to improve their self-image by trying to enhance their self-esteem, based on their personal identity or various social identities - ‘in’ group, ‘out’ group.

Hypodermic Needle Model – Media is like a drug, it’s all around us and we even take it in without trying. The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated; the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text.

Jaques Lacan - Theory of mirroring behaviour

Karl Marx - Marxism theory

 Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs – A pyramid of needs:

Biological and Physiological > Safety > Belongingness and Love > Esteem > Self actualisation

Merlau Ponty – We have an embodied experience and anything in which we use our bodies to create, we help builds our identity.

 Michael Foucault – We are born with a basic identity. Our identity mediates as we get older and meet other people. We gain a collective identity by doing this and become part of a group. However, it can be seen as a negative to be part of a collective identity because this encourages stereotypes to be created. Once you are in a group, it’s hard to change and be seen as different.

Stuart Hall – Proposes that the media, as a principle from of ideological spreading, produces representations of the social world via images and portrayals. Hall asserts that ideological things become ‘naturalised’.

"The media do not construct collective identity; they merely reflect it."

I disagree with this statement as the media consistently portray youths in a negative light, particularly in news papers and online news sites which use biased words when describing an event or incident to make the audience see this group in a negative way.

Michael Foucault's theory on collective identity says that being part of a collective identity can be negative in some respects as this influences the creation of stereotypes. The media then takes these stereotypes and portrays all youths to be of the group which is behaving negatively. The media uses negative words to describe these events such as 'brazen', 'criminals', thugs and many more. It also generalises when describing these groups, using words such as 'youths', which creates a moral panic in society as they will then see all youths as dangerous or as a threat when really not all youths are how the media described this small group.

Stuart Halls encoding and decoding theory explains that the media encodes messages in their texts for us to decode into our own ideas and opinion, however by using biased words it sways the decision which the audience makes, creating a reality in their mind which doesn't really exist. An example of this is the London Riots. The media exaggerated the actions committed and created fear in society, blaming the entire event on youths. They did this through the use of pictures, video footage and biased words such as 'yobs', 'animals' and 'thugs' which categorises youths and controls the mind of the audience, telling people in society how to think instead of letting them decided for themselve.

This is a form of post modernisation, where the media controls the mind of the audience and constructs a reality for them in their mind which they will base their life around. If the media merely reflected on collective identity, they would not use biased words or construct any type of view in the audiences head but would instead just describe or explain an incident and allow the audience to make their own judgement. This point is backed up by Strinati's theory on post modernism. Stranati says; post modernism is said to describe the emergence of a social order in which the importance and power of the mass media and popular culture means that they govern and shape all other forms of social relationships.

In conclusion, I believe that the media constructs collective identity’s such as youth. Post modernism is used to control the way by which the audience thinks so that the view of which the media is constructing will be seen as the correct view and allow them to control the way people live their lives. The more the force of the media dominates society’s views, the more the Marxist theory becomes true; if we are all persaded to think the same way, we will all eventually have the same view about the collective identities of people, their behaviour, activities which they take part in and their interests.In the future, this will possibly lead to people realising the truth behind the media and that the media is constructing views rather than reflecting them which could possibly result in people not listening to what the media has to say or take notice of the points which they are trying to put across, resulting in the media losing its power in society.