Zoe Stuthridge A2 Media Exam

INTRODUCTION Over the past 100 years, the media has portrayed youth in a mainly negative way for the largest majority of this time period. I am going to explore this question further with reference to various case studies I have been studying from online media, films and newspapers from the last 100 years. I will also make references to the theories of Hall (1904), Medhurst (1998), Cohen (1972), Osgerby (1988) and Hebdige (1998) to support my argument. One example of a film that disrupts the negative portrayal of youth is ‘In which we serve’ (1942), as the film portrayed youth as a positive patriotic representation. This is also supported by a newspaper headline from The Daily Mail (1939) which stated; ‘these men laid down their lives for this country’, (Daily Mail, 1939). This disrupts the theories of Medhurst who said that those who are outside the dominant group are portrayed as; ‘awful because not like us’ (Medhurst, 1998) and Stanley Hall who argued; ‘youths are extreme and ...

With reference to any one group of people that you have studied, discuss how their identity has been ‘mediated’. Theorists: Stanley Hall (1904): ‘Adolescence is inherently a time of storm and stress when all young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval, before establishing a more stable equilibrium at adulthood.’ Hall also argued that: ·       The common mood for teenagers is a state of depression ·       Criminal activity increases between the age of 12 & 24 ·       Young people are extreme and need excitement. ‘Youth must have excitement and if this is not at hand in the form of moral intellectual enthusiasm it is more prone to be sought in: sex, drink, drugs’. Osgerby (1988 ): ‘We do not have to search hard to find negative representations of youth in the post-war Britain. Crime, violence and sexual liaisons have been recurring themes in the media’s treatme...