Task #4 - Essay plan

Criticial Investigation Plan

To what extent does the film 'Bad Neighbours' represent teenagers in a negative way and what is the impact of this? 

Introduction:

My critical investigation focuses on the representation of the youth in the media. I will be investigating whether these dominant representations have remained and if my hypothesis is correct or not. I will be also comparing my primary text, Bad Neighbours, with a historical text from the 70s to compare the difference in the youth's society.  

hypothesis:

I believe teenagers in this generation are portrayed negatively. Furthermore, I think films like Bad Neighbours influence teenagers to behave in a certain way. 

• "One of the most striking aspects of this analysis is that whilst overarching conceptions of 'youth' do remain, young people are also represented as racialized, gendered and sexualized beings set in specific class positions within these research texts" 
• "According to Madge’s research (2006) the strength of the influence the media has on children and young people increases as they get older"
• "Adults also said they thought children were depicted ‘very badly’ in the media, over 75% thought children were depicted as ‘troublemakers’. In addition, 47% of adults said that children were portrayed in a negative way."

1. - PRIMARY TEXT:Bad Neighbours

• The film Bad Neighbours present the youth in a negative manner, are teenagers influenced by this? 
• Institutional information. (MIGRAINE)
• Target Audience. (MIGRAINE)
• P1- Textual analysis - hot house scene 
• P2 - Textual analysis - party scene (adults)
• P3; Secondary text - 21 Jump Street (brief comparison)
• Are teenagers influenced by what they see?

Quotes:

• "This touches on the deranging effect, not only of parenthood, but also of inescapable, inconsiderate neighbours, all of it confused by the tyranny of the teenage dream." 
• "One of the film’s great successes turns out to be Efron, who invests his buff, tanned, hard-partying character with equal measures of charm, resilience and borderline psychopathy, all wrapped up in the superficially confident, explosive insecurity of youth."
• "The frat-house obsessions of sex, drugs and drunken excess while also openly reveling in them – it’s more perceptive than it might first appear."
• "Young people’ you hear about them a lot in the media. Either portrayed as anti-social yobs that all drink, smoke and have sexual intercourse on a daily basis. Or else they are portrayed as victimised and the future of the world we live in."
• "There are plenty of adults who go out and get drunk on a Friday night. I don’t see why teenagers should be blamed for all drunken conduct and vandalism."

Book references:

• 4.Easthope, G. (1994). Book Reviews : REPRESENTATIONS OF YOUTH: THE STUDY OF YOUTH AND ADOLESCENCE IN BRITAIN AND AMERICA Christine Griffin, Cambridge, Polity Press,
• Osgerby, B. (2004). Youth Media.

- Theories/ Key Words:

• Stuart Hall - Dominant ideologies 
• Moral Panics
• Audience theories - the groups or individuals targeted by the producers as intended. (David Lynch)
• Hypodermic Needle Model
• Uses and Gratifications:
  Diversion: escape from everyday problems
  Personal Relationships: using normal teenage scenarios on screen
  Personal Identity: teenagers seeing themselves reflected on screen
• Barthes 
• Dyer - stereotypes are a projection of the real world.
• Reinforcing stereotypes
• Jennifer Pozner 

2.Secondary Text: 21 Jump Street

•  Similarly, 21 Jump street presents a negative representation of youth.

Quotes:

• "Obvious affection for teen genres, and for teenagers."
• "21 Jump Street is extremely vulgar and obscene, but the movie is humorous enough that it could be popular enough with young people".
• "By forcing them to inhabit new character complexions, the movie avoids the stereotyping techniques that often hurt comedies by allowing Jenko and Schmidt to discover different sides of themselves."

- Theories/ Key Words:

• Stuart Hall - Dominant ideologies 
• Moral Panics
• Audience theories - the groups or individuals targeted by the producers as intended. (David Lynch)
• Hypodermic Needle Model
• Uses and Gratifications:
  Diversion: escape from everyday problems
  Personal Relationships: using normal teenage scenarios on screen
  Personal Identity: teenagers seeing themselves reflected on screen
• Barthes 
• Dyer - stereotypes are a projection of the real world.
• G. Stanley Hall - model of adolescent 

Issues and Debates:

• Representation and stereotyping 
• Moral Panics 
• Ownership and control 
• Regulation and censorship
• Uses and Gratifications
• Are the youth presented in a negative way?
• Are teenagers influenced by what they see?
• Reinforcing stereotypes

Quotes

"Young people’ you hear about them a lot in the media. Either portrayed as anti-social yobs that all drink, smoke and have sexual intercourse on a daily basis. Or else they are portrayed as victimised and the future of the world we live in.

"To be fair, the media are not misrepresenting teenagers, they are merely reporting the bad side of them. "

"It Can Be Safe To Say That The Portrayal Of Young People In The UK Is Mostly Negative.  Young People Have Been Described As Violent Yobs That Only Seem To Care About Their Street Status."

"Robert Benayoun's list of 'normal qualities' of youth: idealism, humour, hatred o of tradition, erotomania, and a sense of injustice"

3.HISTORICAL TEXT: Grease

• Intro to why I chose this historical text: 
  
  

  The purpose here is to be able to demonstrate the difference in society regarding the youth in the 70's in comparison to the youth in today's society.
  The film shows a completely different side to society in comparison to the one today. Yes, the youth are seen having fun, and there are characters who do smoke and drink. However, it's to a much less extent and they aren't presented as out of control. Furthermore, the film doesn't just show a change in the behaviour of the youth, but it shows the difference in the way teenagers dress, speak and act. However, the youth in the film are still despised by the older generation, just like today's youth. 
  This film therefore helps differentiate the change in the youths behaviour in the 70s to today's youth.
  I've decided to pick this film because it shows a clear representation of the youth and even though there are some similar behaviours that can be seen in the society of today's youth, there's still a large difference, and this film shows a clear example of that.

• What Media was like before
• Representation of youth in the 70s. (SHEP)
• Link to historical issues in the 70s.  (SHEP)
• Similar films such as Grease
• Scene analysis (MIGRAINE)
• Comparison with youth in today's society. (Bad Neighbours). (SHEP)
• Compare the changes, and why there was a shift (SHEP)
• Are teenagers influenced by what they see?
• ZEITGEIST

 Quotes:

• "beginning in the silent era, before the term 'teenager' was ever used. The genre was more clearly recognised and prolific by the 1950s" 
• "1968 would be significant for the movie market at large, since it was the first year of the new Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system"
• "A shrill illusion to the difficulty of the encroaching 1960s"
• "MTV helped to propel certain movies through playing videos from their soundtracks; it offered endorsement of films...and it became the court where youth culture was told what was cool"
• "Hollywood tried to keep up with changing teen interests and styles to ensure ongoing profits" 
• "Motion pictures were first shown in public schools in the 1930s, when teachers started to incorporate short, educational films into their daily lesson plans". 
• "They all admitted they were fans of The Breakfast Club, yet they were also quick to point out some of the problems they have with the teen genre in general: - kids always hate their parents, female characters are limited to supporting roles, male characters are only interested in sex"
• "Youth Justice in England and Wales has taken a wrong turn. The early to mid 1990s witnessed a seismic shift in the ways in which young people were dealt with by criminal process"
• "a wide variety of popular examples - men's magazines, fashion and style, books, film and music - to argue that the bachelor and the teenager were complementary and interrelated stereotypes that shaped America's youth. Magazines such as Esquire and Playboy, and bands like the Beach Boys, framed and shaped a new meaning of the young American male that contrasted sharply with previous values of sobriety and moderation" 
• "The sexual liberation that found it's way to college campuses in the 1960s found its way to teen films soon after"
• "One of the single most important teen films of the entire decade - for it's experimentation, character development, and lasting legacy - was Hughes' 1985 film The Breakfast Club. 
• "Here, the souls of these teens would be laid bare for the duration of the film, as they slowly opened up to each other about; parents, popularity, sex, sports, drugs, clubs, wealth, angst and suicide.
• "Curiously, the one topic that became the most sensitive, was juvenile delinquency. After being the dominant issue of teen films going back to the 1950s, delinquency became increasingly difficult to address from the mid-1990s, primarily due to the real-life violence of numerous school shootings by students"    

Theories/key words:

Perkins - Stereotypes are not always negative, establish elements of the truth.

Alternative representation

Subverting social boundaries

Moral Panics?

Dyer - stereotypes are a projection of the real world.

Dominate ideologies

Reinforcing stereotypes

Thomas Doherty

4.Conclusion 

• Is the youth portrayed in a negative manner?
• Are youth influenced by what they see on screen?

Quotes: 

• "Attention is given to the various ways the media have constructed 'ideologies of youth' through the deployment of specific representational codes"
• "As a group, ‘youth’ have become a ‘matter of concern’ – the target of various policies, schemes, interventions and strategic attention. A review of 198 countries across all continents found that only 43 did not have a national youth policy"
•  "For youth who are vulnerable (or ‘at risk’, disadvantaged, marginalised or disenfranchised – terminology varies) the interconnectedness of various indicators of vulnerability are a phenomenon of life. They experience all of these mutually reinforcing issues at once"
• "Yet Hollywood studios realised that they did need to appeal to the young audience, first through matinee shows that played well to children with or without their parents, and by promoting morally respectable young stars, which fulfilled the expectations of adult majority."
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