Collective Indentities and Theorists

1) It is hard to argue that there are any strong collective identities in the modern day as there is so much variety and options that people can choose to dress with and the invention of the Internet makes many identities get old very quickly.
An collective identity that is quite strong today are people who play computer games such as World of Warcraft or Call of Duty, they are usually portrayed as being quite nerdy, not really caring about their personal appearances. However a fashion movement that has come out of this is geek / sheek, people who dress similar to a stereotypical nerd eg big glasses vests and make it look stylish and 'cool'.
Another Collective identity that has become quite popular are emos, people who are emos generally dress in black with black hair etc this fashion movement was derived from punks however emos are more often then not quieter and less misbehaved than punks.

2) Stryker's would say that all the nerds/geeks will be more likely to group together because they have similar appearances so they think that they will be the most likely to get along with people who look the same.
A key scene from Fish Tank that shows this is when Mia goes out with the gypsy because they have similar dress senses and moral values so they are drawn to each other because they feel more comfortable around similar people.

Althusser's theory dictates that the mass media turns the acts of an individual or group into how the whole collective identity is represented, for example many people believe that all emos are self-harmers however this is not the case but the majority of people believe this because a very small minority of emos do. This is called interpellation when somebody makes a decision on someone because of the ideology connected with their appearance/ race or gender.
A key scene from Alfie that shows this is when Gilda asks Aflie what time he will be home and he becomes angry and says "I'll be home when I'm home!", this and other scenes throughout the film especially when Gilda is with Alfie being told what to do would make us believe that all women in the 60's were just bossed around by men and that they just stayed at home however this wasn't the case. Through the media of film we could easily believe that this was true as it is shown as being the case so many times in the film.

Marcuse's theory tells us that the mass media forms our opinion of a collective identity so how we react to different people won't be based on our own experience but on the sometimes twisted reality that the media portrays them. For example adults will try to avoid teenagers especially if they are wearing hoods even though they might not be doing anything wrong and even if they have had no previous bad experiences with teenagers, they avoid them because the mass media represents them in a bad light.
A key scene from Kidulthood to show this is when a teacher is telling all the kids to go back inside for lesson, one of the kids gets up in his face but instead of confronting the kid he backs away and does something else because he believes that all kids/ teenagers carry knifes or are violent even though the vast majority aren't.