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.