Stephen Cook, Niall Palmer, Matt Liddle

Representation of Youth Culture

Youth culture is the way adolescents live, and the norms, values, and practices they share. Within youth culture, there are many types of subcultures meaning that there are different types of cultures in youth culture. Furthermore, Frith described youth as “not simply an age group, but the social organisation of an age group” and also claimed that “culture is all learned behaviour which has been socially acquired”. This means that adolescents have shared different types of behaviours and created groups (subcultures) from the different behaviours. Additionally, the Hypodermic Needle theory which is a model of communications suggesting that an intended message is directly received and completely accepted by the receiver is relevant as most films that have been based around Youth Culture represented teenagers negatively. An example of this is in the Inbetweeners Movie where four teenagers go on holiday but struggle coping on their own and make many mistakes without the support of their parents. This means that the teenagers in this film have been represented as unintelligent and inferior to adults. Additionally, through the Hypodermic Needle theory, the audience then will see teenagers as unintelligent and inferior to adults after they watch the film as they have accepted the message. Also, this means that many films that may be based around Youth Culture will have an audience of adults as Youth Culture is represented negatively.

Moreover, our short film will therefore conform and go against these stereotypes so the film can appeal to both youths and adults. This can be done by making sure the camera angle, sound and editing do not represent Youth Culture completely negatively so our short-film can conform and go against the stereotypes.