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

·         Rebel Without A Cause

·         Kidulthood

“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. As a society, we have constructed the idea that people’s identities are the person we are inside. We believe this is defined by factors such as gender, age, class, sexuality and social group we are in. This is what we believe identity to be and represented, though how has this changed over the years, specifically in reference to youth being represented in the media?

 Let’s take a look at two media texts which show a representation on how youths have changed considerably over time.

Rebel without cause is a film which shows the life of a rebellious young man living in a middle class system. The character in the story seems to show that he has led a bad life in the past, but comes to a new town where new emotionally confused suburban middle class teenagers await him. In the film James dean play a 17 year old character called Jim stark who is a rebellious teenager who arrives at a new school, meets a girl, disobey his parents and causes contentions between himself and the school bullies. This therefore creates an ideology in rebel without a cause we see that the film focuses on youths being either in the ‘in’ group or ‘out’ group and the struggle they face in finding which they belong to. 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. The individual self esteem is maintained by being part of a group. 

Kidulthood on the other hand is a British film, based in the recent Y2K era. The film focuses on the lives of a group of 15 year olds from a mixed social class living in the inner area of west London. The story follows mainly the life of Trevor and his girlfriend Alisa who is pregnant by him. This immediately creates an ideology of women belong to men due to the fact that she is pregnant but the character herself seems to subvert the view by standing up for herself in situations where a man should have been needed to protect her.

If we compare this small ideology to “Rebel Without A Cause” we would see that the change in social group already is quite a lot. Back in the 1950s teenage pregnancy would have been un-heard off therefore this would have not been seen in films such as Rebel without a cause as the teenagers back then were not facing any problems regarding that but jump 50 years later and we see the change in problems for social groups facing teenage pregnancy.

In both films however we see that both social groups back in the 1950s and also in the Y2K era faced violence. However in scenes involving violence in rebel without a cause we see that there is not as much close up shots to depict where they got hurt etc, but once again in Kidulthood things have changed. The violence in films has heightened whereas in the 1950’s such things will be censored and be put at rating such as an 18 and not 15.

However though both films have been able to share a similarity which is the fact that the youths in each film have been able to demonstrate juxtaposition between their actually family lives in general when in comparison to their own, as we see that youths in both setting have families that live a rather balanced lifestyle whereas the children would rather prefer to live a completely separate lifestyle. In Kidulthood we see that girls in the film seem to live in a middle class environment but want to get drugs and would willing perform sex in order to get it therefore also creating a binary opposition, through the Mise-en-scene we see that they actually live in a nice area , although this maybe exaggerated for a group of girls at the age of 15 to act, the principle behind still remains that children in general carry a juxtaposition

Over the years we have seen through the use of these two films that even race and language has changed over the years. In rebel without a cause we that the film has a cast which is primarily white and adopted a slang which is slightly different to today’s, using words such as ‘g-wiz’ to express that a certain thing is cool. Whereas in the film Kidulthood we see that primarily the cast are all from multicultural background, but the use of colloquialism has changed considerably as now there is more swearing and foul language used in the movie, 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 is is now considered the norm.

The theorist David Buckingham was correct, over the years the media has affected the way in which social class act now than they did before when in the 1950’s. We have seen that youths have grown worse over the years creating for them a stereotypical identity based on their actions, although it was the same a few years back, youths back then were considered to be more calm and light-hearted  rather than cold and rude like the youth we see today. 

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

‘Identity is complicated, everybody thinks they have one’ – David Gauntlett. Youths today have been convinced they have been able to form their own identity either through the way they dress, speak or act around their peers, family or workmates. However though theorists have proved that youths have been able to form a collective identity through the use of the media, by watching TV shows based on reality, but how?

Many youths in the UK have recently been tuning their television sets to e4 to watch the long awaited show ‘Made in Chelsea’ which is set in wealthy Chelsea in the district of London. The show follows the lives of rich and spontaneous socialite youths whom have no sense of direction into want they want to do when they are older. At the moment the show seems to focus on their extravagant lifestyle, of moving from one party/club to the other. Here is a quote from the shows 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 is our life’! This statement has been able to manipulate adults and kids into thinking that all youths live a life that is short-lived with fun and partying all the time. The lifestyle that this show has portrayed has been able to create a collective identity for youths living in London, that through materialism and value you will become popular and recognized among your peers. This has therefore manipulated youths to act the same way in its settings such as at school, college, or even in a recreational environment, to go on living somewhat a pleasurable lifestyle, amplifying that capitalism makes you beautiful.

Another example of a reality TV show that seems to have a collective identity is Geordie Shore. This show follows the lives of 9 housemates living in Newcastle, working and primarily parting most of the time. Considering their age and their personality on the show, this show has been able to create for itself a collective identity, through their 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. Therefore the cast in Geordie shore are social extremes rather than socialites.

However the social extremes that we see on this reality TV show seem to come to terms that the way the live their lives is what they are and they will not change for anyone, that rather the lifestyle they live is the life most people would want to watch as it is more funny and real. 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.....”

Even her poor language, constructs to us the identity that she and the others on the show are sharing. That rather being elegant and posh, they are in fact low middle class, party loving people whom live a provocative and immoral lifestyle.

The theorist Michel Foucault therefore was correct in 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. Therefore this is the case for youths in reality TV shows as Geordie Shore and Made in Chelsea as they all come together forming this one collective identity whom both want to be able to move outside of a fixed boundary but instead find themselves settling into one which is then stereotypical to the audience watching the programme.