How different theories on Youth are shown in the TV series Misfits

1. Alfie Bradbury

2.  Giroux’s theory states that youth in the media is an
‘empty category’ which means that due the
representations being created and animated by
adults, they do not truly reflect what youths are like.
 This theory is very solidly represented in misfits due
to the main focus of the programme being focused
upon a group of youths who are on community
service for committing varying crimes. However, the
reason why misfits supports this theory is due to the
fact that the programme never focuses on youths
which are seen to be ‘normal’ and when it does the
character always tends to have a delinquent side to
them or they become delinquent and break the law
themselves later on in the episode and/or series.

3.  Acland’s theory states that youths need to be under constant
supervision in order to successfully grow and develop as a
person and if they don’t have this supervision then they just act
like delinquents who cause trouble and break the law. This
theory is known as the ‘Ideology of Protection’.
 As a whole Misfits supports this theory as during the main
characters community service they are required to have a
probation worker who’s job it is to rehabilitate them and turn
them into the ‘good Samaritans' which society expects of them.
As soon as the probation workers are gone the characters
immediately turn back into the delinquents they are portrayed
as and they start to break the law and cause even more havoc.
 However, there are points in the programme which challenge
this idea such as one of the probation workers who does not
care for his job and cares about the main characters even less
therefore he treats them even worse than they treat each other
and he, at some points, breaks the law as well but gets away
with it.

4.  Gramsci’s theory is know as Cultural Hegemony
which is the idea that one social class (or group of
people) is able to dominate society by making their
own way of life appear as the norm.
 Misfits supports this theory due to there being
constant acts of both physical and verbal violence
along with the way the characters don’t act out
about it which shows that it is just a part of their
normal lives and how they act. This occurs not only
in the main group of characters it also happens
largely within the area they live in which also helps
to support the fact that this is perfectly normal for
them and that, even though some of the things
they do are wrong and illegal, they aren’t as bad as
people make them out to be.

5.  Cohen’s theory is the idea that societies appear to be subject,
every now and them, to periods of ‘moral panic’. A condition,
episode, person or group of persons emerges to become
defined as a threat to societal values and interests and are
referred to as ‘Folk devils’.
 Misfits largely supports this theory in multiple different ways the
main of which being that they are serving community service for
breaking the law and causing harm or panic amongst society.
Another cause of moral panic in misfits is that random people in
the area where it is set gain ‘superpowers’ which vary depending
on the persons past and how they act, and these powers are
used for both good and bad but mainly bad causing more
danger to the public.
 An example of these powers going wrong is the power that the
first probation worker of the series has which causes him to go
feral and try to kill the people on community service due to him
having previous anger issues.

6.  Gerbner’s theory focuses on the effect of television
on people’s perceptions of crime. He found that
those who watched a lot of television which
included large amounts of violence tended to
overestimate the levels of crime in the real world.
He called this the ‘Cultivation Theory’.
 Misfits does not necessarily support the theory,
rather it is one of the causes of it and of ‘mean
world syndrome’ which is the name given to those
who tended to overestimate crime as there is
constant violence throughout almost every episode
whether it be physical or verbal violence and it
shows it to be the normal way of life for some
people in certain parts of the country.