How far does the representation of a particular social group change over time?

Refer to at least two media texts in your answer.
The relationship between social groups and media representation is not straightforward. “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 Buckingham. Therefore the key things to look out for would be how the media would portray factors such as, gender, age, class and sexuality, especially in regards to youth social groups over time.

Let’s consider to media texts which both show representation of youth and compare to see the change over time.

First Rebel without a Cause directed by Nicolas Ray and distributed by Warner bros. The film centres on Jim stark played by James dean, a rebellious teen growing up in a middle class system. From the outset of the film it’s recognisable that “Jim Stark” has had a troublesome past and is about to enter into a new emotionally confused lifestyle where peers and friends await to influence him.  In the beginning of the film, we already see how the media portrays the outcome of the film, i.e. the opening credits being in red denoting, symbols of violence, blood etc, however collective identity is already demonstrated from the outset, James dean is in a police station for committing some sort of crime and slouching on the chair, highlighting his lack of respect for authority and total disregard to the situation. And seeing that he is from a middle class background it totally throws off his parents and the police officers who play the hegemony in the film.  Therefore media is portraying the typical social group of a well mannered background kid who ends up growing into a rebellious teen typical Hollywood.

Later on in the film James dean ends up going to a new school meets a girl, disobey his parents and causes contentions between himself and the school bullies. So as the film progresses we start to see the “in” and “out” group in regards to youths. Henri Tajfel talked about this in fact, he argued that there is a distinct ‘in’ group which is favouritism and the then there is the ‘out’ group which is then discrimination. Hence the reason why James dean character is consistently in trouble; however he subverts to the typical stereotype of a rebel for we clearly see dichotomous between dean’s characters.

For James dean is not the archetypal rebel, being that he doesn’t seem aggressive or out of control but rather is polite and looks out for people. But only seems to react towards his emotions of others more than his ambitions. Which further ties into Richard Jenkins theory of we need interaction in order that we from our collective identity.

But how has this ideology of youths changed over the years let’s take for example Kidulthood.

Kidulthood a British film based in the Y2K era focuses on the lives of a group of 15 year olds living around the streets of west London coming from mixed ethnic background. The story follows mainly the life of Trevor and his girlfriend Alisa who is pregnant by him. Immediately creating the ideology of teen pregnancy, very different to the one in rebel without a cause where ideology from the start in that film, was just misbehaving teens. But the character herself subverts the view of woman in that she protects herself and looks after herself when the man is not there.

Therefore if we compare the ideology from both outsets we can already see the massive change in social group.  For in the 1950s teenage pregnancy would of been unheard off, it wouldn’t of been an issue of being part of the “in” and “out” group, but rather this would have gone down to the core of morality among teenagers as a whole. Therefore such things like this wouldn’t have been part of rebel without a cause, but 50 years later media has continued to portrayed youths negatively and it continues to grow.

One thing that continues to remain the same though is violence, both in Kidulthood and rebel without a cause, violence runs a strong theme. However in rebel without a cause there is much close up shots or graphic scenes of actors being severely beaten up and portraying the realism towards such violence, it almost seems sugar coated to suit the audience. Yet, that time period though the violence was not in detail it still was frowned upon. Whereas again media has changed the way it represents youths; in Kidulthood there are many scenes where close ups are taken of the fights. So the violence in films has heightened in particular with youth culture displaying anarchy.

Still though both films have demonstrated that media still represents the relationship of a family at home to be in juxtaposition. For both youths in the two films have families that live comfortable lives, yet he children choose to live completely different lives. In Kidulthood we see that the girls in the film live in a middle class environment yet want to get and eventually do get drugs further they would be willing to degrade themselves by perform sex in order to get it, therefore also creating a binary opposition.

Over the years the most obvious change in the representation of youths is the language and race. In rebel without a cause, we see that the dominant cast is white, in Kidulthood there is a whole different mix of races all sharing the same type of roles. Speech has changed for in rebel without a cause, they use slang such as g-wizz to express their emotions to something “cool”. Whereas in Kidulthood we see that the youths their use foul language and swearing to express their feelings to a matter; therefore in comparison to rebel without a cause, the colloquialism found in Kidulthood would have never been used in film or television back then. However today society it is now considered the norm.

So now we see that over the years the media representation of youth over the years has changed dramatically and that it has just gone worse over the years.

-By Graham Oddoye

How do young people form their collective identity through reality TV?

“We need to interact in order to form our identity”- Richard Jenkins, therefore it can be argued that partaking in an event (in reality or virtually) with people with whom we feel affinity helps us to form our collective identity.

How would this relate to reality TV shows though, well looking at the perspective of interaction, we as youths interact with television more than face to face interaction. As highlighted in sociology the world has become a global village, which explains that due new technologies referring to mass media has made the world smaller and easier to interact.

Therefore us watching reality TV shows doesn’t make it any different from us being in the midst of those “stars” in a real life situation.

Take for example, many youths today have been watching the programme “Made in Chelsea”, which follows the lives of rich socialites youths whom have no sense of direction, partying constantly and partaking in immoral actions. Here’s a quote from the show’s opening scene from one of its characters Caggie Dunlop “You may have heard rumours that Chelsea is an exclusive world of royals, aristocrats and playboys. Where the gossip is as startling as the prices. Well it's all true, and I'd know. I'm Caggie Dunlop and this is my world. You might say that we've got it all, but having whatever you want can make choosing that much more tricky. In Chelsea the truth is more fabulous than fiction. This is our life.”

This quote leads to what Marxist would believe to be a false conscience; false conscience means that there is an illusion instilled into the working class (teenagers) that the capitalist system is fair for everyone in society. Therefore you would find many teenagers following blindly what they see in reality TV shows because they form their collective identity from there. Marxist and neo Marxist would say that this is what media does it portrays an ideological tool where people believe what they see relates to them and therefore they should interact with it.

But David Gauntlet says- ‘Identity is complicated, everybody thinks they have one’ because due to teenagers all having different taste in things, they all interact to different things in this global village.

The lifestyle in made in Chelsea has formed a collective identity for youth’ living in London is that through materialism and value and total disregard for their actions they will be able to get recognized from their peers.

Another way young people form their collective identity is through what Merleau Ponty said that we have an embodied experience and anything in which we use our bodies to create new things our identity. This can simply be done but imitating our favorite reality TV shows.

Another reality TV show that seems to have a collective identity is Geordie shore. This show focuses on the lives of 9 housemates living in Newcastle, who are working and primarily partying most of the time. The show has formed it own collective identity in that the “stars” have a constant appearance on the show wearing raunchy dresses that reveal perhaps a  bit too much, their crude and obnoxious personality demonstrate that they are in fact low middle class youths compared to the youths we see in Made in Chelsea.

The stars themselves have come to terms that they will not change and they have come to terms with identity Note what a member from Geordie shore had to say about Made in Chelsea Charlotte told the metro: “No one wants to watch fur coats, diamonds and pearls and stuck up posh people talking about Chanel and Gucci. People want to watch a group of lads and lasses.....”

Here she directly lets us know that people want to relate with someone in order to interact with them and form a collective identity from them.

Michel Foucault therefore was correct believing that it can be limiting for youths to create an identity as it is actually developed into a collective identity with a stereotypical group and people will then automatically make assumptions to that specific identity. So basically nothing that youths do it will always be viewed in a stereotypical way and thus collective identity is born.