Representation: How Have the Youth of Today Been Portrayed in Documentaries Essay

The youth of instantly ar viewed as being an contumacious generation events such as the London Riots have created a sackful of perspective of youths in the United Kingdom. This uncontrollable generation is depicted through fond releases such as binge drinking, drugs, smoking as closely as violence and unemployment. most(prenominal) of the representations in the media to twenty-four hours are magnified to an extent for entertainment purposes such as documentaries, news and reality telecasting shows.I will be looking into documentaries to view how the youth of today are being portrayed whether it is positive or negative and if it conforms to ethnical stereotypes of society. The image of teenagers has changed over the many years with Stanley Cohens Folk Devils and object lesson dis mays The Creation of Mods and Rocker (1972) has led the innovative discussion on the evermore growing image of the teenager. He drug abused moral panics to describe the ontogenesis of individu als or groups to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests 1.His book has been evolutionary to the perspective of teenagers and his inspection of youth work partys nigh notably the Mods and Rockers. This links to the London riots of 2011 that had shook the nation, the tension in the midst of gangs and the police grew resulting into chaos. Such a social issue is viewed as a taboo of the current era and the media took a pivotal role to soften facts and spread anxiety and fear thus creating a Moral Panic in the UK. The first documental that I will be analysing is line of work 4s documentary Educating Essex.The Passmores School in Harlow, Essex, is a productive school in a ch whollyenging area. The documentary exposes what life is very like for todays disciples and teachers. The school had been rigged with 65 heady cameras from the corridors to the canteen, and from the head teachers office to the detention hall to founder every detail of daily life. The f irst programme of the serial joins the deputy head at Passmores School in Essex and sees how he deals with emotional teenagers. The photo of teenagers in this documentary varies and the audience views a lot of head on confrontation between students and teachers.The new growns in this documentary are all shown to be underachievers who hassle teachers, and cause problems within the classroom. The portrayal of teenagers in the series is progressively negative, due to their constant confrontations with teachers and their actions in lesson. The dress code of the adolescence in this documentary is disordered. This is shown to the reality to allow viewing what teenagers look like at school and the deteriorating education system. The documentary also displays the binary oppositions between the student and teacher, and soon it becomes the centre of attention of the documentary.Channel 4s documentary making is heavily edited (also mediated) and shows only the points of commotion througho ut the day at the morselary school. The target audience is identified through the documentaries use of colloquial language. The target audience is teenagers and young adults/ parent with the ages ranging from 14- 24 years. Most will watch as to identify with the students, but some may watch for information. The media plays a key role in the representation of teenagers as well as influencing their young minds.In the research study The limit of Media Violence on Youth vehement television and films, video games, and harmony reveal unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behaviour in both immediate and long-term contexts2. The research paper goes on to describe how reality television, gaming and music are leadership in the influence of youngsters minds. In Dr Kate Orton-Johnsons talk on Youth Culture, Media and parliamentary law she describes how Mass media plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion about youth culture and t he various forms of social practices that young people engage in 3.Albert Banduras Bobo-Doll Experiment highlighted the role of social imitation of aggression. Thus, the more you are exposed to violence the more you are prone to repeat the same acts that you as the individual have witnessed 4. The second documentary I will be analysing is Ross Kemp on Gangs Liverpool where he visits Liverpool to investigate the infamous postcode L11 gangs. The murder of an 11-year-old boy in a Liverpool suburb alerted the country to the citys escalating gang culture. Rhys Jones was an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of gang war.Ross Kemp goes in search of the youth gangs said to be causing mayhem on Liverpools streets and asks whether this area is becoming a reputation of a hub of gun and gang crime. Ross Kemps documentary style is investigative and it involves one of the sixsome types of vogues of documentary 5 that Bill Nicholas identified. This documentary in particular involves t he participatory mode of documentation in which the film maker is directly involved with the subject, spell all events are recorded. The youngsters in this documentary are portrayed as being violent, ignorant and unemployed.This conforms to the cultural stereotypes of the teenager. The guardian newspaper wrote an condition on the cultural stereotypes that young adults face and tries to show the two ends of the spectrum. The bind allows youngsters to have an input to the stereotypes that they face and express their view on the issue at hand. It doesnt matter how you look, speak or dress, the only touchstone required is whether youre a young person 6. The newspaper highlights a binary opposition between youths and adults.Ross Kemps approach to the youngsters in this documentary appears to be welcoming. As he interviews them he climaxes the fact that young men from deprived, and that miss areas are failed by the show and thus, these youngsters resort to violence, drugs and overal l suffer from unemployment as a consequence. These young adults are not only failed by the state but also on behalf of the education system and their parent. This documentary is revealed to be somewhat sympathetic towards the youth of today reiterating the fact that youngsters are victims of the adult world.