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.