Question 2

How does the contempory representation of a particular social group comare to representation from the past?

Intro:

Describe what the particular social group will be, say that you focusing on britishness and then specify that you will be using film and television to compare the contempory representations of the present and the past.

Para 1:

Write about how the working class in britain are depicted in contemporary media and compare it to past representations. Say how today the working class are now decipted to be less hard working people and more rough and this is shown in fish tank with the mum not being hard working and just drinks instead and lives of benefits and then compare this to Alfie and how annie is a working class female and stays in and tidys the house and cooks dinner. this shows how the working class have unconformed from there steretypical role 

Para 2:

Write about how the females themselves have changed over time. Say how in kidulthood the womans have become free and able to do what they want in a unconformed way. This contrasts massively to in Alfie and they way

Exam question structure

To what extent do you think that contemporary representations of a particular social group mirror current social attitudes towards that group?

introduction- The media areas we have looked at have been film and tv and they have all been British which is the collective group that I will talk about. The case studies that we will be using to analyse are Fishtank, Kidulthood, Misfits and Inbetweeners.

main

In Kidulthood there is a scene where two girls want to get some drugs but dont want to spend any money so they perform sexual favours for the drug dealer and his friend. They are very casual and don't really care about their actions and this sort of behavior is accepted and normal within their social group. This can be related to Strykers theory (explain theory). This is because it comes across that one of the girls does this on a regular occasion. This forms an opinion for the viewer, and presents the girl, and her friends leading a "promiscuous" lifestyle. This can be backed up by the friend as the other girl is pregnant. (compare to Alfie where this kind of lifestyle doesnt exist and pregnancy is a very big deal)
This mirrors the current attitudes of teenagers in Britain as they are always portrayed negatively in the media for very similar things.

2. How does the contempory representation of a particular social group compare to representations from the past?

Introduction.

We are looking at Britishnes through analysing film and tv.
The films we are looking at are, Alfie, An Education, Fishtank, kidulthood.
The tv programs that we are analysing are, Inbetweeners, Misfitts, Corrie, Upstairs Downstairs

Main.
The key scenes we have chosen to analyse of An Education is when David is stealing the painting and tells Jenny to stay in the car as its his business. The way in which Jenny is portrayed is typical for this genre and time. She is seen to be more vunreble than David. 

Question 1

1) To what extent do you think that contemporary representations of a particular social group mirror current social attitudes towards that group?
PLAN

• INTRO- I have looked at the collective group of Britishness focusing on: family, gender roles, class, age through the years of 1966 to 2010.
• PARAGRAPH 1 - Family: Fish tank shows the vast majority of children could be from broken homes. A broken home is when a family lacks either a mother or a father figure.  This is also true for the Inbetweeners - he lived with mum but did see his dad sometimes (who was gay). This links to Stryker's theory of identity labels, as we are constantly being told that the children of Britain live and are brought up in broken homes so we believe it. This also co-insides with Marcuse's theory of a passive audience as we readily accept that this is true for most of Britain. WHEREAS in past medias, families are shown as a unit, for example in Coronation Street families tend to live together, or nearby, and they work together (hairdresser+son). Medias in the past are unlikely to show broken families as this was not the social norm for this era.
• PARAGRAPH 2 - Gender roles: In the key scene in the contemporary tv show the Inbetweeners, the females are portrayed as powerful. For example, the girl who owns the house has power over all the other characters, and the girl who one of the boys is trying to sleep with has power over him, unlike in Alfie, where the females would have to try to 'attain' the man and would never be the head of the household. Althusser's theory of Interpellation shows this by saying that the mass media place a subject (women) in a way that their representations are taken to be reality.
• PARAGRAPH 3 - Age: Kidulthood presents young people as highly sexualised. An Education presents the opposite view; of sex being a mature thing to do, as opposed to Kidulthood where it is just what everyone does, even at a young age. Examples of this is the beginning scene of Kidulthood; in the school ground it is made very obvious that some of the children are sexually active, however in An Education all Jenny's friends gather around her in a class room to hear all about her relationship with David as they are naive to the world of 'adult' relationships. Stryker's theory of Identity and Labels shows this through 'Identity Negotiation'  They develop a consistent set of behaviors that reinforce the identity of the person or group (young people).
• CONCLUSION - Contemporary representations of Britishness do mirror some social attitudes. For example it is a knoen fact that poeple don't feel the need to either get married or stay together whereas in the past it was unheard of/ shunned if you had a sexual relationship without marriage.