Media theories

Copycat theory

This theory puts forward the idea of recreating a violent act such as murder or suicide from a media text in real life. The film 'Child's Play' has been associated with a few 'copycat' crimes: In December 1992, four people who tortured and killed a 16 year old girl were said to be influenced by one of the 'Child's Play' movies. Furthermore, during the torturing, the perpetrators were said to have taunted her with quotes from the film.

Desensitization theory

This theory puts forward the idea that because people are so exposed to violence in the media, violence no longer has a strong emotional impact upon them. By watching violent films, a viewer will not become upset when watching others as they have become desensitized or used to it.  However, the debate surrounding this concept is whether people will also be desensitized to real life violence. If a person watches a violent film, and then sees a real dead body on the street, will this person still experience desensitization?

Cultivation theory

Cultivation theory focuses more on how people's attitudes are impacted by the media, rather than just behaviors. It therefore theorists focus more on how people think rather than what they do. Much of this research involves comparing the attitudes of heavy media users, moderate media users, and light media users.

This is England and Quadrophenia poster comparison

I will be looking at the comparisons between the posters of ‘This is England’ and ‘Quadrophenia’. Both posters are representative of the British youth culture, ‘Quadrophenia’ being that of the 70s looking particularly at the Mods subculture vs. that of the Rockers of the 60s and ‘This is England’ representing the Skinhead subculture in the 80s.

The main differences of the characters shown of the poster are that of their hair and clothing as they both represent the different subcultures: The Mods choosing fashion including, for the boys, tailor made suits and pointed shoes whilst the girls chose a boyish look with shorter hair and darkened eyes. This is different from the Skinhead subculture in ‘This is England’ as they wore designers such as Ben Sherman and Fred Perry, the boys having 2 or 3 grade haircuts reflecting the skinhead name.

Both sets of groups have adopted a similar pose in the posters. This shows that both subcultures have a strong group mentality both uniting to be different and rebel against the establishment. The locations of where the characters are in the posters is similar, the background of both being a fence. This could have been used to represent the poverty of both groups of youths as both films are set around housing and industrial estates.

The colour choices of the posters have many obvious similarities, the first of which being the use of blue, white and red in the titles. In ‘Quadrophenia’, the choice would have been to demonstrate the Mod culture having used of its sign on the letter ‘Q’, a sign which The Who, one of whose albums this film is based around, chose to adopt for themselves.  However in ‘This is England’, the colours correspond to the Union Jack, reinforcing the sense the British pride of the Skinhead subculture and helping to highlight the underlying themes of racism.

The background colours present differences between the two posters as ‘Quadrophenia’ is in black and white. This is reflective of the mood in the film as it possibly depicts the depression of the youths as employment was at an all time low. Whereas the ‘This is England poster’ is predominantly blue, the connotations of which are freedom, strength and a new beginning. This is slightly ironic due to the tragic ending of the film.

The ‘This is England’ poster shows many of its reviews such as ‘winner best film’ and ‘deeply impressive’ placing great emphasis on just how much success this film received. This makes the poster immediately busy and chaotic helping to demonstrate and foreshadow the events that occur in the film. This contrasts to that of the ‘Quadrophenia’ poster as it has little reviews written on it making it seem a lot cleaner perhaps helping to symbolise the simplicity of lifestyle of the characters.

Youth groups through the decades

View more presentations from HenleycolGemma.

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

• The web is about linking people
• YouTube is about expressing your identity
• It can mediate human relations which are constantly changing
• Strongest presence of YouTube uses 18-24 year olds
• Loads of videos are addressed to the 'YouTube community' - is this due to a loss of community in everyday life?
• You are able to play with identity - remove, change or exagerate what is real
• You can be anyone on YouTube - you are able to play with your identity
• Videos on Youtube that are not real sparked a debate of whether or not this should be it's use
• Anonimity andphysical distance allow for the freedom and comfort to say what you want to about other videos which may lead to a deeper connection
• Issue of leagality of lifting material

Katz and Blumler

Uses and Gratifications Theory

This theory suggests that there are four ways in which we consume media texts:

• Entertainment
• Education/information
• Personal identity
• Integration and social interaction

In recent years 'Escapism' has also been suggested as another way we consume media texts.

Character representations in This is England

• Unity: there is a sense of unity in the film because they all come together when having a good time and unite over their views on 'Britishness'. There is a family like nature and a sense of protecting one another
• Clothing: the clothing worn in the film is yet another way that the characters are united. The principal characters are all seen to be wearing designers such as Ben Sherman and Fred Perry reflecting their subculture
• Violence/bullies: this is represented right from the beginning of the film where footage of rioting can be seen demonstrating that right from the start, this is a key character representation
• Role models: as they have a group mentality in the film, there is always someone for the characters to look up to. For example Shaun, the youngest of the group is welcomed and looked after by Woody as an older brother might
• Simplicity of lifestyle: they lead a simple life as they are not represented to have stressful jobs or reaponsabilities

Ideology

Ideology tends to refer to the way in which people think about the world and their ideal concept of how to live in the world. It refers to a set of ideas which produce a partial and selective view of reality.

Stuart Hall's audience reception theory

Stuart Hall's theory of encoding and decoding is a theory of reception theory. Acording to this, audiences can have three different reactions to a media text:

• Preffered reading: how the director/creator wants the audience to view the media text
• Negociable reading: when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates their own meaning of the text
• Oppositional: where the audience accepts parts of the director's views, but has their own views on parts as well

Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

Born: 3 February 1932, Kingston, Jamaica
Residence: Ireland
Fields: Cultural studies
Influences: Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault

Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. He was President of the British Sociological Association 1995-1997.

British Youth

Aged 13-20 yrs old


Positive representations

• Girl teen magasines
• Front magazine
• Olympic swimmer
• Local newspapers
• Inbetweeners
• Glee (for American comparison)
• 90210 (for American comparison)

Negative representations

• Skins
• Eastenders
• Hollyoaks
• Kidulthood/Adulthood
• Student protests
• 16 and pregnant
• Jeremy Kyle
• Underage drinking