2. Skins…
- Skins is a British TV teen drama , following the lives of a group of teenagers
during their two years of six form.
- Skins storylines touch on many troubling issues such as death, love and
mental illnesses.
- Each character expresses many stereotypical features around “youth” as
well as “students”.
- However some of these stereotypes that are constructed show elements
of exaggerated reality, and so therefore come across as a construction
of reality rather than a reflection of reality.
3. Narratives…
- Skins deal with a range of issues that are evident in society, however they
go about this through two types of stereotypes “students” and “Youth”.
- An example of this is a quote taken from the 4OD website… “It's the end
of an era. The exam results are in and Alex is throwing the mother of all
leaving parties.”
- This quote highlights an important part of sixth form life “exam results”.
With the fact that the characters are within education highlights them as
“students”, however it’s the bad issues with society that give off bad
connotations around young people such as “parties”, that the older
generation pick out more than the good reflections of “youth”. With
various narratives being around drug use and alcohol issues, the TV drama
highlights many bad issues around teens that are more of a construction
of reality, taking true/ real aspects of the younger generation, and
emphasizing this more than ever, allowing the whole TV drama become a
hyperbole of negative issues.
4. Social Class…
- There are various social classes shown within the TV drama…
- Frankie – All though this character tries to escape from home as much as
she can, she actually has a suitable home and loving family who adopted
her. However throughout the series her attitude and personality shows
which of another class. As she never realizes how precious this is too her,
with the audience viewing the character as trying to runaway when
possible, with her friends the only thing holding her back.
- The most common thing shown throughout the series is the lack of
support from their home life.
- Within series 6 character mini gets pregnant, however does not confront
her mum about the situation, as she is too scared and lacks in self
confidence round everyone but her close friends.
- I feel that this is one of the characters in which conveys to various true
factors of elements within reality, However I feel that this is needed within
the series to enable viewers to engage with the content.
5. Compared to Facebook?
- There are various elements of the TV drama that are similar to Facebook…
- Drunk images on Facebook are one of the factors that link with the TV
series the best. With various shots of the teenagers drinking and clubbing,
we see this expressed by both students and young people on Facebook.
However I feel that this is a mediated factor that individuals use from the
TV series, enabling them to fit in and use the characters to try and convey
to the roles and factors that they choose to do within the series.
- However I feel that skins show aspects of the characters in which they
themselves would not express on Facebook as they are more dominantly
negative factors, in which that are not wanting other people to see.
Facebook forms a collective identity of students which is selective, people
can pick and choose which aspects to show to people. This is one thing
Skins doesn’t do, as a fly on the wall drama it shows all aspect of ‘typical
teenage’ life, and isn’t selective with what it shows.
6. In Conclusion…
- It’s probably best to look that we consider Skins to offer an emotional
representation of 17-18 year olds trying forge relationships, both sexual and
social, in a cosseted middle class world. This is a true representation I feel, as
people are using Facebook to forge these relationships. To do so however they
are adopting the traits from skins to form their own identity, so therefore its
mediated, and more of a collective, as most students do it. Programs like skins
are what influence teenagers to form this collective identity through the
media. They use Facebook to pick and choose aspects of there life to display to
others, that conforms to the character types in Skins. For example profile
pictures of them drunk etc. There are a few things shown in skins which
Students would probably tend to hide on their facebook pages, and therefore
hide from their collective identity. Examples of this are drug use and/or sex life
etc. These are things they may want to hide from family members, and so
don’t put on Facebook, showing how the Facebook identity is again a selctive
one.
