Youth Culture/representation
Stanley Hall
Stanley Hall wrote Adolescence
in 2 volumes in 1904.
He came up with the ‘Storm
& Stress Model’, which pretty much meant that
“ Adolescence is
inherently a time of storm & stress when ‘all’ young people go through some
degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable
equilibrium at adulthood.
He thought that
1.
Common mood in teenagers was depressed
2.
Criminal activity would increase at the ages of 12
& 24
3.
Heightened sensation seeking “Youth must have
excitement and if this is not at hand in the form of moral intellectual
enthusiasms it is more prone to be sought in sex or drink”.
Bill Osgerby argues that the portrayal of ‘youth’ in the media has not
really altered much in the last 100 years (interestingly repeat patterns occur
e.g. 1980s hooliganism and the recent riots) and is by-en-large pessimistic;
“We do not have to search too hard to find negative representations of youth in
postwar Britain. Crime, violence and sexual licence have been recurring themes
in the media’s treatment of youth culture, the degeneracy of the youth
depiction as indicative of a steady disintegration of the UK’s social fabric”
(Osgerby, 1998).
However, Osgerby goes onto argue that; “the portrayal of youth is not
entirely pessimistic” he argues that “Mixed metaphors” appear when analysing
the representation of youth. He claims; “dual stereotyping of youth” creates
these mixed metaphors that Dick Hebdige (1988) termed; “youth as fun” and
“youth as trouble maker.”
Osgerby also argues that the portrayal of youth also speaks of society in a
metaphoric sense: “On the one level concerns have related specifically to the
demeanour and behaviour of young people but more generally (and perhaps more
significantly) they have also condensed a much wider set of apprehensions. An
important ‘metaphorical’ dimension exists to media representations of young
people. A crucial facet to the ‘youth’ debate is its capacity to function as a
kind of ‘ideological vehicle’ that encapsulates more general hopes and fears
about shifts in relations and the condition of cultural life” (Osgerby, 1998).
In other words, “representations of youth tell us little about the
realities of life experiences by young people, yet are revealing about dominant
social and political preoccupation…young people serve as a canvas on which
debates about more general patterns of social change are elaborated” (Osgerby,
1998).
It is important to remember young people are not the dominant social group
creating TV drama, so Medhurst’s; “They are awful because they are not like
us,” statement can be applied.
Positive representation of youth, that appears in TV drama (especially
those pitched at a youth audience), adverts etc, is; “images of youth are
deployed as a shorthand signifier for unbridled pleasure in the new age of
hedonistic consumption” (Osgerby, 1998).
Laurie (1965) argued something similar; “Teenagers are presented as a class
in themselves”
“whose vibrant, leisure-orientated lifestyle seems to offer a foretaste of
the kind of prosperity that could be in everyone’s grasp” (Osgerby, 1998).
WHEN discussing youth it is also important to consider the class, race etc
of the youths portrayed as this can impact representation e.g. working class
youths generally have a harder deal then upper class youths.
Bentley: new media
As
Bentley (1997) stated; “New media has changed the relationship between
producers and audiences…it is no longer useful to refer to these terms as
anyone can be a producer and reach a mass audience.”
Cohen:
Cohen
(1972) suggested subcultures are a “compromise between two contradictory needs:
the need to create and express autonomy and difference and the need to maintain
identifications to the culture within whose boundaries the subculture
develops.” This quote demonstrates the contradiction between individuality from
mainstream society, but conformity to the subculture.
Jordaan
and Jordaan 1993.
Jordaan
& Jordaan (1993) gathered information from lots of other studies of youth
subcultures and found, among other things, the following special
characteristics which the collection of people share, including:
•An
awareness of membership/a sense of belonging, i.e. shared interests etc.
•A
reason for being in the group/an internal motive, i.e. hippies spreading the
message of peace and love and punks spreading anarchy.
•Pressure
to conform, i.e. Jimmy not wanting to talk to his old friend who is now a
rocker.
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