Daisy Stone 13S

Youth Culture Essay can be adapted to a particular question

The media influences society on a massive scale; this is especially evident
through film and TV. The media represents youth culture in very similar and often
negative ways. This shapes the perception of an audience and can lead to the
public feeling that certain youth groups are more violent, dangerous and
misbehaving than others. For example, Stanley Cohens theory of moral panic
links to films such as Quadrophenia as the film itself portrays youths as violent,
troublesome, drug-addicted, rowdy and sex-driven criminals. In addition, the film
includes newspaper clips on the wall of the main characters bedroom, that
depict real events and riots that occurred; the main character is then part of the
Brighton Riots - this suggests that this riot (a real event that is rec-created in the
film) was inspired by other youth riots. The fact that the media portrayed youth
subcultures as having this major rivalry, e.g. Mods and Rockers, kick-started a
comradery between young people who had similar styles, this made some of the
youths feel as though they had to act in a certain way to be accepted by their
peers some of the youths themselves were also willingly accepting and forming
these groups on a large scale and this worried the public, especially adults and
the police force. Moral panic refers to a reaction that exaggerates an event and
creates a negative perspective towards something the media usually enhances
moral panic and the wider public often accept this view as the norm; this links to
Gramscis theory of hegemony.
This theory refers to one ideology dominating a society this ideology is (on the
whole) a white, middle class view other groups and classes then accept this
ideology and this means that lower classes will nearly always be shown in a
negative way as they cannot have the same lifestyle as the middle classes. One
way in which hegemony has affected our society is through the concept of
identifying someone through fashion-related prejudices. For example, male
youths in hoodies are often portrayed in most films and TV programmes to be
lower class, uneducated vandals who rebel against the social norms therefore
there we see them as more of a social threat and tend to alert the authorities
about their behaviour when in fact they could be causing just as much trouble as
other youths it is just that they get caught because society has been
indoctrinated with the idea that they are dangerous and troublesome. More
modern films such as Kidulthood show an extreme view of how violent young
people can act. Moreover, this view on hegemonic view is even shown in the 60s
through the kitchen sink drama, A Taste of Honey. The lead character Jo, a
working class illegitimate child whose Mother abandons her and whose father is
no-where to be seen, drops out of school and becomes pregnant to a black sailor,
in her teens, to whom she is not married to. Jo is seen as poor, and is obviously
ashamed of being pregnant; she finds it hard to support herself she is
portrayed as angry and emotional she is also supposedly called names by the
children and people in the flats around her but Jo doesnt seem to really care.
She buries her deep feelings but has outbursts at other times this film is ahead
of its time in way as it begins to look at the sycosis of young people and how the
negative ways society can view them can force them to act-out.
Film started to show teenagers as rebellious social outcasts in the 50s through
pieces such as Rebel without a Cause, and The Wild One, making people think
that many teenagers had nothing to do but be disruptive for no reason. The next

Daisy Stone 13S

stage of films began to think of teenagers doing things that they regret, e.g.
sleeping with people or abusing people films such as Look Back in Anger really
show this portrayal of young people being out of control and emotionally
unstable. The films then started become more realistic, kitchen sink dramas
started to be made and teen pregnancies, school drop-outs and criminal youths
became more common characters as social outlooks on things were changing; it
wasnt as scandalous and sinful to be a pregnant teen but it was still shocking
and did make many parents at the time panic. Films and TV programmes today
are often realistic as the teenage audience can find it interesting to relate to the
characters they are watching, and adults find it funny to look back on their time
as a teenager and relate what they used to be like to what they are seeing. In
this way TV dramas such as The Inbetweeners are a modern, humorous, and
exaggerated reflection of male middle class youths, whereas films such as The
Fundamentals of Caring show a snippet of the lives of a more unorthodox couple
of youths, one of which is a disabled, middle class boy, and the other is a
confident, working class girl. This particular film does not create moral panic but
creates a heart-warming feeling towards the main character, Trevor however,
even though the main character is a disabled youth, his attitude, humour and
general language-use is rude and this stereotypically portrays the mind-set of
troubled youths as being negative and egotistical. In my opinion, through the
decades, we as a society have been moving away from portraying and mediating
acts of violence and physical disruptions of teenagers and focusing more on their
mental state and how this can affect them and others. For example, depression
and anxiety are common in young people especially students and film and TV
are focusing a lot more on how mental issues affect the behaviour of youths: this
media coverage shows that youths can act-out emotionally either by being
rude or through new technologies, e.g. cyber-bullying as well as acting-out
physically through violence. The threat of teenagers has evolved there is
beginning to be a moral panic that they have too much power: the internet
allows them to access people even when they are not close enough to physically
cause them any harm, also cyber-crime levels are rising, and the fact that most
technological communicators use the internet and the fact that adults and
veterans are not as used to the technologies of today makes it more difficult to
stop youths from getting online and causing chaos; an extreme example of this is
A Girl Like Her a film about a girl who secretly films her life to prove that she is
being bullied both physically and online by another girl.