3. COMMON STEREOTYPES OF….?
• Children – often shown as being young, innocent, naive, pure, sweet,
helpless, powerless
• Teenagers – Often shown as being aggressive, moody, lazy, criminals,
hate school
• 20’s-30’s – Often shown as the ideal age for love, parties, fun, making
money, being glamorous and attractive. In films the heroes are often
this age group.
• Middle Aged – often shown as being past it, unattractive, not aware of
popular culture, uncool, boring lives, dominant over others, no real
connection to their kids, grumpy. In films the villains are often from
this age group.
• Elderly – often shown as being unattractive, slow, weak, ill, confused,
pathetic, powerless, not important, dependent on others.
8. THEORISTS
• Dick Hebdige (1979) explored the polarised
(contradictory) media representations of teens as
“trouble”(dominant) or “fun” (alternative).
• Michael Brake (1985) categorises the media
representations of teens into:
• Respectable (alternative)
• Delinquent (dominant)
9. MORE THEORY
• Daren Garratt (1997) suggests that negative
media representations of teens as trouble
invite teens to be trouble. “Media coverage
represents how they should behave, even if,
largely, they haven’t been.”
• Graeme Burton (1999) argues that teen
subculture is in opposition to the dominant
culture (of adults). He uses the term
‘problematisation’ to describe the idea of
youths as problems.
10. ONE MORE BIT: STUART HALL
(1978)
• Argues that the negative representations of
young men by the media, is deliberate as it
justifies social control by authority figures,
such as the police and government.
• Hall identifies the media as having a key role
in this ‘social production’ of news. Youths are
often portrayed by new media as a social
problem.
11. MORAL PANICS!
Ideology
❖Stanley Cohen (1972)
❖A moral panic occurs when society sees
itself threatened by the values and
activities of a group who are stigmatised
as deviant and seen as threatening to
mainstream society’s values, ideologies
and /or way of life.
❖Mods & Rockers (1960s), football
hooligans (1980s), hoodies, muggers,
vandals, knife/gun crime, binge drinking,
under age pregnancy
12. CONSIDER DIFFERING
READINGS –
SKINS SEEMS ‘FUN’ FOR A
TEEN AUDIENCE
(PREFERRED/DOMINANT
READING)
BUT
MORE LIKE ‘TROUBLE’ FOR
AN OLDER AUDIENCE
(OPPOSITIONAL/
ALTERNATIVE READING)
13. WHAT IS ‘OLDER AGE’?
According to a 2012 survey,
old age that is believed to start
at 59.
Among 16 to 24-year-olds, this marker of middle age
begins at 32. The over-80s believed that for them it
began at 52.
A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions
said “the disparity in perceptions” of ageing showed “the
potential for age stereotypes to be applied in very
inconsistent ways".
14. OLDER PEOPLE
• The representation of older ages in the media today is as equally a
controversial area as that of young people.
• Ageing is not always seen positively and older people are often
constructed in a very stereotypical way
15. SOME TYPICAL IDEOLOGIES
AND STEREOTYPES OF OLD
AGE
• Sociological studies show that when that older people do appear in
the media, they tend to be portrayed in the following one
dimensional ways:
1) As GRUMPY – (conservative, stubborn, resistant to social change)
16. • 2) Older people are also portrayed as,
enjoying a second childhood – as reliving
their adolescence and engaging in activities
that they have always longed to do before
they die. Or just being a bit cheeky.
AO!: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of media concepts, contexts and critical debates
Nana Shreddies
17. • 3) Older people are also represented as pitied,
dependent or an economic burden – helpless and
dependent on other younger members of society
or family.
18. IF YOU GET “AGE” AS AN ISSUE IN THE EXAM,
YOU SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT THE
FOLLOWING THINGS WHEN WATCHING THE
CLIP:
• Can I identify what approximate age the characters are?
• Are people from different age groups shown as having different interests,
personalities, attitudes, behaviours? If so, how?
• Is their age represented as being important in their life?
• Are people from particular age groups portrayed as being better, more powerful,
than others?
• Are people from particular age groups portrayed as being abnormal /weaker/
more pathetic than others?
• How do other characters in the clip treat the characters from different age groups?
• What is the message the clip is trying to portray about age?
19. TASK: RESEARCH YOUR SELECTED AGE RANGE.
LOOK FOR STEREOTYPICAL AND REALISTIC
REPRESENTATIONS
• Find examples from British and American TV dramas
You could look at the differences in British and American TV drama
7-12
13-19
20-29
30-50
50-60
60+
Present your findings in a suitable format. Include clips to illustrate
your points.
