Dick Hebdige once said that "youth is trouble or youth is fun"which is referring to the media's representation of youth culture in films. They're either represented as fun loving kids who goof off all the time, or ghoulish trouble makers that prey on the weak like hooded monsters, I'll be looking into this using my case studies as evidence.
Firstly there's the 2009 thriller/drama by Daniel Barber, Harry Brown, whose opening sequence is filled with evidence of the "trouble" half of Dick Hebdige's quote. The opening is an initiation into a gang which already represents youth as dark thugs since it's shot in an underway passage with handicam movements and low lighting. They are also depicted handling drugs and firearms which are both illegal actions, all done in the stereotypical hoodies that the media has told us to fear so much. The now initiated hooligans mount a moped and begin causing trouble in their area, they disturb the peace by rushing around the estate screaming like madmen as they make their way to the nearby park, where they proceed to demonstrate their cruelty by firing a handgun at an innocent woman and her baby in a buggy, which ends up getting her killed as a result of the youths firing too close to her head. This represents them as inconsiderate, cruel, irrational people who are fine with being the villain as long as they're having fun, and in a really dark resolution they are killed fleeing their manslaughter as they are it by a truck which is kind of the payoff in this whole sequence. This goes to show how Daniel Barber perceives these kinds of people, he sees them as scum that need to be taken care of.
My second media text used for a case study is Joe Cornish's Attack the Block, this film has an interesting representation of youth; Joe Cornish has represented the main cast as stereotypical thugs that live on a council estate with hoodies and masks on, however there's a twist, they are actually the heroes of the movie, even though they are visually represented with dark costumes they're also given some typical hero symbolism as well, for example there's a scene in the final act of the film where the main character, and "leader" of the gang, goes through a kind of transformation, over the course of the film he's been getting wounded and battered which leads to him removing his hoodie when he decides to act as a distraction for the aliens. At this point he's wearing a tank top exposing his muscular arms and scars, he even grabs a sword from his apartment as a weapon, all this imagery paints him as a heroic figure in the end, his costume turns him from street thug to anti-hero and his katana sword represents him as an honorable warrior. Plus the situation at hand represents him as a matyr or saviour to "The Block" he tries to protect. Joe Cornish has taken the negative stereotypes of british youth and turned it into a somewhat positive representation of a hero.
A couple other films I'd like to mention are The World's End, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Paul, all movies that don't have a focus on british youth but they do provide a similar representations of youth in scenes dedicated to them. The World's End demonstrates the main antagonists assimilated threat by having the main cast of adults have a 5 vs 5 fight against 5 replaced youths which can be seen as representing young people as a violent hive mind, like how people today are constantly plugged into social media services.
Shaun of the Dead has a scene with a similar meaning behind it where you see a group of youths in hoodies and tracksuit bottoms shambling down an alley way bobbing along to their music, as if they have already become zombies before the zombies ever appear, which represents young people as a mindless collective of threatening beings.
Hot Fuzz represents young people as unlawful citizens in the first act, when Nicolas Angel goes into a pub he realizes that the majority of tennants look underaged, and in a comedic sequence of questioning scenes its revealed that everybody but 3 or 4 people were a too young to be drinking, which implies that young people are irresponsible and can't be trusted.
Finally there's Paul which I believe emphasises the "fun" part of Dick Hebdige's quote, in Paul the main characters attend a comic con for comic books and "nerd" paraphernalia which is filled with young, nerdy teens, to me this implies that if kids aren't doing something wrong then they're off wasting their time at a fun party, or in this case a comic book convention.
Moving away from films I'd like to delve into how the news represents the news, for this I'll analyse how The Times has handled the representation of youth. August 9 in 2011 at 02:09am an article titled "Mobs rule as police surrender streets" was published in The Times, the title of the article refers to youths as "Mobs" because of how they're currnently represented by the media and they say that the "Mobs" are "ruling" the streets, as if we are having a hostile take over across the country. The imagery used isn't any better either as it a photo of people running away from the scene silhouetted by the flames of a burning building; the silhouettes I suppose are meant to be the "youths" as that's the medias prefered reading of the encoded meanings in this image, this represents young people as destructive, demonic psychopaths, it looks almost apocalyptic, like World War 3, since all they decide to show off to the readers is destruction.
Another medium I though would be relevant nowadays would be the representation of youth in video games, gamers already have a world wide representation of whiny teens who are super competitive and nerdy, but I'm going to use a single game as a case study, Grand Theft Auto 5 by British game development company Rockstar. This game's notoriety was enough to have the media give it a bad reputation but that reputation seems to have spread to the players too, because there's of course been some cases of under aged children obtaining this game, as I myself played my first GTA game back in year 5, but even if an 18 year old gets the game it will still be a problem in the media's eyes because of the controversy around it.
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