Media simply represent collective identity, they don’t create it.” How far do you agree with this statement? Make reference to one or more group(s) of people in your answer.

To answer this question I will be looking, in depth, at two kinds of Media, TV and film. I will be looking at how each one represents youth culture and the different representations of young people throughout the history of TV and film. The media play a major impact and is very influential in shaping the way youth culture is looked upon and seen throughout the world. This was more the case in the 60s/70s when people hadn’t much seen all the different types of youth culture groups so heavily relied on TV to represent young people and how they were and the way they acted. Many different theorists have looked into and have had ideas about how youth culture in particular is portrayed in the media. One of these theorists was Cohen who studied the Medias response to the Mods and Rockers riots in the 60s. This was two contrasting groups of young people who shaped the way young adults and teenagers were viewed for the next few years.

One historical film that portrays youth culture, and in particular, the Mods and Rockers that Cohen talks about is Quadrophenia. Mods and Rockers were two different groups of young people who had a huge rivalry throughout the 60s. The film shows how the two groups were funny when with each other, but were major trouble makers and caused most of the suffering in a lot of the 60s throughout England. Although, the film also goes into depth about the troubles young people face such as love and family relationships. It portrays how the youth of the 60s dealt with these struggles and how they would mainly resort to violence to get over the issues. Many adults and older people were scared and worried by the actions and the violence they were seeing before them and were beginning to realise enough is enough. This links back Cohen’s theory and the idea that a moral panic had occurred due to the portrayal of the new groups and violence. He argued that the media’s coverage and reporting of these youth cultures made everything seem worse than it really was. He also argued that this reinforces hegemony by the media making it clear what values society do not accept. This meant that violence in the streets would not be tolerated or if any young person expressed themselves in a way that adults did not like, such as having children at young ages or being gay then they would be stopped by adults by it being showed as a major negative. Another theory this links to is Acland’s theory that the Medias representations of delinquent youths allow the state to control them. This means that young people are not free to be their own person but instead are told what to do by adults and people older than them and must do the most to keep them happy.

One contemporary film that I believe only represents collective identity and does not create it is The Inbetweeners 2. The film follows a group of four young male adults through their journey into Australia as they go to visit their mate who’s on a gap year over there. The youth culture represented in the film is not a present or recurring theme in today’s society or through the teenagers of today. Although some of the individual actions carried out by the characters in the film may be present through today’s youth.

 With historical TV, youths weren’t very prominent in the TV shows up until Grange Hill aired in the 1970s. The show looked at issues such as violence, sex, alcohol and drugs. The show was aired on TV as a tea-time show meaning families would sit down on the sofa at 6pm and watch the show. This made all the issues very controversial as it was the first of its kind at the time it was shown. This pathed the way for future TV and what it would be like.