The document discusses how the media product represents teenagers and social groups. Key aspects of representation discussed include location, gender, ethnicity, costume, class and age. Right-wing media tends to portray teenagers in a negative light, using headlines like "Thugs and Thieves" and describing them as "mobs" or threatening. The document's media product aims to represent teenagers consistently with these stereotypes through the protagonist's mixed ethnicity, hoodies and tracksuits as costume, and run-down locations. Researching films like Kidulthood informed the representations employed.

1. How does your media product represent
particular social groups?

2. Key representations
In my film introduction, I made sure that the audience were straight away able to
relate/acknowledge what the film is about and what’s going on (mischief). We want the teenage
audience to straight away guess that the film is targeted at them.
Some key areas of representation:
Location
Regional Identity
Gender
Ethnicity
Costume
Class
Age
There are key elements used in real world social realism films, such as using an estate for
location, the use of tracksuits are used for outfits a lot of the time or by focusing on working class
to fit the stereotype. Therefore, in order to get our media product to match these real world
products, we planned ahead and made sure of what key aspects we need to focus on in order to
match correctly. We did this by researching and watching several social realist films e.g.
Adulthood and One Mile Away and making notes on them.

3. Costume, ethnicity and location
By dressing our actors up in hoodies
and tracksuits, it is portraying the
teenage stereotype ‘correctly’ as this
is how many young British boys
represent themselves as it perhaps
brings a sense of intimidation to the
public. To have our film appear
conventional, the main protagonist
is mixed raced. This portrays the
stereotypical look of a violent
teenager up to no good.
The location right at the
beginning shows the area in a
dark setting with street lights on
and a grey, dusty fence. This is so
that the working class ‘look’ of
the area is clear to the audience
and signify negativity or trouble.
As you can see on the right, we’ve made use of young
faces and dark costumes. We decided to choose black
costumes as it connotes intimidation and evilness. This
fits in well with the behaviour of our characters and our
genre of media product as it matches the other key
elements of social realist films. As you can tell between
the different media products, the age, gender (male) and
ethnicity is very similar. Many of the protagonists in
British social realism films are of a different background
other than white British. In Kidulthood, the main
protagonist is of Turkish/North African decent and in
One Mile Away he is black. Therefore we believed that
having our main protagonist mixed raced made it look
more conventional
Anuvahood; Kidulthood; One Mile
Away
The Way Out

4. Media portrayal of teenagers
It is clear to us that the media tends to represent teenagers in a negative and usually, awful way. I have
gathered some right wing vs left wing news papers and how the two differ when it comes to teen representation
and clips from movies giving a clear demonstration that it is targeted at them by using some key elements to fit
the negative stereotype.
Examples of left and right wing UK newspapers
Left wing
- The Mirror
- The Guardian
Right wing
- Daily Mail
- The Times
- Daily Star
- Daily express
Neutral
-The Sun
- The Independent
Left wing newspaper (mainly targeted at working class) beliefs usually look to the future, aiming to support those
who cannot support themselves and believe in equality. Whereas right wing (mainly targeted at conservatives)
beliefs usually lean over to a traditional point of view and believe in survival of the fittest, meaning they believe
that we should all look after ourselves and believe they shouldn’t have to pay for other peoples education and
health service.
From my research and prior knowledge coming across newspapers, I’ve found that right wing newspapers tend do
portray teenagers in a much more negative way. Left wing newspapers attempt to avoid representing teens in such
a dreadful way however they frequently do.
In the next slide, you will see the ways in which the two represent teenagers...

5. Right wing: Representation of teens
The sub-heading ‘Thugs and Thieves’ written beside the young male
fit the rest of many other teenagers stereotype and representation in
society.The flames firing behind the boy whilst he’s showing no
reaction but a relaxed and laid back attitude show that
he’s careless just like other teens. This brings about a very
negative image amongst British teens.
He’s wearing a tracksuit with trainers and his hood up. This sort
of look reflects the majority of what young people wear in teenaged
dramas (example on previous slide)
‘The Times’ another newspaper leaning
towards the right wing, refer to the young
rioters as ‘Mobs’. Suggesting teens are
troublesome and violent.
The word ‘Rule’ implying that teens are
threatening and want to take charge.
Again, associating a teen issue (rioting) with
fire, connoting that they are dangerous and
warning.
My media product fits in very well with the representation of teens in terms of costume, age group,
use of language, ethnicity and location. My general knowledge and research of teenage representation
has allowed me to gain more information than before, to be then creating a successful media product
by putting all of this information into use (our final piece.)

6. Right wing: Representation of teens
The sub-heading ‘Thugs and Thieves’ written beside the young male
fit the rest of many other teenagers stereotype and representation in
society.The flames firing behind the boy whilst he’s showing no
reaction but a relaxed and laid back attitude show that
he’s careless just like other teens. This brings about a very
negative image amongst British teens.
He’s wearing a tracksuit with trainers and his hood up. This sort
of look reflects the majority of what young people wear in teenaged
dramas (example on previous slide)
‘The Times’ another newspaper leaning
towards the right wing, refer to the young
rioters as ‘Mobs’. Suggesting teens are
troublesome and violent.
The word ‘Rule’ implying that teens are
threatening and want to take charge.
Again, associating a teen issue (rioting) with
fire, connoting that they are dangerous and
warning.
My media product fits in very well with the representation of teens in terms of costume, age group,
use of language, ethnicity and location. My general knowledge and research of teenage representation
has allowed me to gain more information than before, to be then creating a successful media product
by putting all of this information into use (our final piece.)