This document provides an analysis of the film Harry Brown and how it represents concepts of collective identity and subcultures. In the opening scene, teenagers are shown initiating a new member by having him smoke crack, representing their subculture through style. Harry Brown represents the dominant adult ideology that the teenage gang challenges. Scenes with the teenagers use shaky, low-quality camerawork to place the viewer in their perspective, while Harry is shown alone in steady shots to depict his individual strength against the collective gang. The analysis explores how Harry and the police reinforce the dominant ideology and state power through their actions against the gang throughout the film.

1. Collective Identity:
By Vanessa Maselino

2. INTRODUCTION
0 The film Harry Brown is an emotive plot about an old
ex-marine who is living on an estate that has been over-
run by a gang of teenagers, who leave nothing but
crime, death and devastation in their path. The film
follows Harry Brown as he takes the law into his own
hands in order to seek out and punish the youths
responsible for killing his friend.
0 The reasons for studying this film in regards to
collective identity is that through the technical
elements of mise-en-scene, camerawork and
editing, this film creates many representations, such as
the representation of young people, which serves as
evidence to numerous theories and concepts.

4. THE OPENING SCENE
0 In his book ‘Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), Dick
Hebridge states that “members of a subculture often signal their
membership to the group through a symbolic use of style, which
includes fashions, musical taste, material
possessions, mannerisms and the use of language or slang.” This is
exactly what is portrayed from the teenagers in the opening scene
of Harry Brown. Here we see the young people huddled together
in a group as Noel says to the youngest member “Are you ready to
become a man” and passes him the ‘crack pipe’. After this youth
inhales the drug, all the other gang members pat him on the back
and cheer in a celebratory manner. This supports the quote about
subculture by Hebridge, because it is almost as though this is a
ritual initiation into the group and a signal to their membership.
This concept of ritualistic initiations also reinforces the idea
quoted that “there are no longer youth sub-cultures, but ‘Urban
Tribes’ ”.

5. 0 In this opening scene we the audience are quickly exposed to
extreme violence, gun crime and drugs. This is because young
people are seen as the “subordinate group in relation to the
dominate, adult society”. Therefore the groups that they form are
usually seen as oppositional, and the film shows that these young
people are oppositional to Harry, by showing that they live their
life in accordance to everything society deems undesirable.
0 This is a particularly important concept, because Harry
represents the dominant ideology, thus by the teenagers being
oppositional to him, they are in fact being seen to “challenge
dominant ideas”, which is normally the case with youth-
subcultures.

6. 0 Referring back, this opening scene is filmed entirely on a handheld
camera, to almost simulate that of a phone camera. This is done
for two reasons. Firstly, the low quality camera makes their faces
seem blurry and in a way quite fuzzy. This makes their faces less
identifiable and therefore the audience are forced to just identify
from the clothing and use of slang, that it is a group of
teenagers, rather than identify individual characters. This is
done, because they are not meant to be identified as
individuals, as the audience, we are supposed to only
acknowledge them as a like-minded collective force that is against
the dominant ideology. Secondly, this is the only time in the film
where we are placed on the same level as the teenagers, therefore
the unsteadiness and grainy qualities of the camera, coupled with
the later fast paced shots, makes us to want to watch the film from
Harry Brown’s point of view instead, because the picture is
clearer, the camera is steady and the longer shots allow us to take
in what is happening at our own pace.

7. 0 Judging on the basis that the camera is an indication of the point
of view we are being placed in, this could also have been linked
with the theory of Moral panics. This is because this imagery
could be suggesting that whereas adults see the world clearly and
from a traditional and stable viewpoint, teenagers collectively
have an impaired outlook, which is why they are causing a “moral
decline” in society.
Binary oppositions feature throughout the film: e.g. the way
Harry and the Youths treat women.
Women need to be looked
after: Seen from the fact
that Harry, being the male
has to save the female
officer in the end.
Women are
sexual
objects.

8. Smartly dressed in
contrast to the uniformed
youths.
Low angle shot to
show power.

9. HARRY BROWN- The Dominant Ideology
0 We immediately know that Harry is an important character
because for a large portion of the film he features in my scenes by
himself and is often focused in shots by himself. Whereas, the
teenagers are always in groups. This is because the teenagers are
only a threatening force when they are together, but Harry does
not need others to reinforce his strength. We also see through the
film, that once Harry begins to kill off members of the gang, they
become weaker and weaker, and by the end of the film, their
threat is completely removed, thus allowing Harry to become
stronger in a sense, because he is able to do things he could not do
before, such as go underneath the canal route. The lighting on the
estate is brighter and the children are finally able to play outside.
This perhaps suggests that although the dominant ideology is still
strong against these threats, if we were to repress young people
completely, members of the dominant ideology would then have
the power to do things they weren’t able to do before, and better
society.

10. Features of the Dominant Ideology
0 However the question is, what features make Harry a
representation of Althussers theory of the dominant ideology and
the Ideological State Apparatus(ISA). Firstly, Harry Brown is an ex-
marine. This means that at one point the he would have been a
part of the Repressive State Apparatus(RSA) which is another
integral part of this capitalist infrastructure, and thus all his
training would have been in accordance with the values of the ISA.
He is also not only an adult, but old man, which means that he
comes from a generation in which these traditional values would
have been enforced to a greater extent whilst he grew up. In the
film we see him acting on these traditional values, by donating a
large amount of money he found in the drug den to the church.
0 Numerous references are made to his military background to
show that (like the police and other forms of RSA) his violence is
for a cause and is necessary in keep order in society.

11. 0 Again, this important because the police who are also
representatives of the RSA, are portrayed as losing control of the
estate and effectively losing to the young people, but because
Harry plays the hero and saves the day without taking credit, the
police are able to maintain that it was their operations that
cleared up the problem. On the surface this shows that despite it
not being the police, another form of the RSA still saved the
day, reinforcing the importance of this structure. Analysing this
deeper, this is a representation of the relationship between the
RSA and the ISA and the ways in which they support each other.