Collective identity implies a homogenous group, each with common interests and a

similar lifestyle. Representation is the way in which the media mediate, repackage or represent individuals, people, places and social groups to audiences. Anything can be a
representation. Theorists like Richard Dyer argue there are political and social reasons for
maintaining a hegemonic collective identity in perpetuating social divisions, maintaining
the dominant culture and legitimising inequality. Hegemonic assumptions about
collective identity are often reinforced and circulated by the media as common sense
and this can lead to marginalisation and can also embed ideological beliefs e.g. the myth
of older age and its association with wisdom. This in turn can be underpinned by moral
panics wayward youth culture was seen to blame for the 2011 London riots and
applying Stanley Cohens appropriation from Wilkins 1964 of the concept deviancy
amplification, youth was demonised in tabloid, mid-market tabloid and television news
coverage.
Changes in technology and the liberalisation of social values has led to more pluralistic
representations however. Web 2.0 has changed the face of media and technology
empowering youth more, not just in relation to the manifest rise of youth entrepreneurs.
It suggests a more confident identity and a more valued contribution to society than
archaic cultural stereotypes. David Gauntlett argues that the idea of identity is
complicated and that everyones got one with the added suggestion that the idea of
a collective identity is slowly being eroded this would link with the idea of the
young prosumer as both consumer and producer of media, exploring digital parameters
and sharing media via social networking. David Buckingham approaches the concept of
identity in a slightly different way suggesting that it is the way we relate to, or fit in with
those around us. This in turn could relate to notions of the disintegration of youth sub
cultures, prevalent historically but now perhaps recognising the power of the individual
and with identity as a unique marker of a person.
Cultural stereotypes and moral panics still remain however but arguably are as less
obvious than before. Passive computer game culture, obesity, young female drinkers and
smokers, unemployment and general social deviance are all still recurring though and are
often used to blame for problems within society. Quadrophenia is a 1979 film that can be
used as a historical frame of reference to explore the changing representation of youth
culture using a 1964 event on Brighton seafront as a visually iconic, recognisable
narrative the film builds to a climax by recreating the well-known fight between two
traditionally opposed youth sub cultures - the Mods and the Rockers. Stanley Cohen
described the event as a moral panic that was used to show how youth had become out
of control but in the film it could be argued elements of these sub cultures are
represented as glamorous and aspirational. Produced by The Who, the film had a primary
objective to entertain target audiences and as such, although themes and issues are
explored, particularly through the character of Jimmy it is a musical journey as much as a
spiritual one. A young Ray Winstone plays a biker while Sting (Ace Face) is represented as
the ultimate Mod with his Vespa GS 160 scooter that Jimmy drools over; his good looks,
smart dress, attitude and the ability to pay his fine in court immediately by cheque.
This representation is later smashed with Jimmy seeing the Ace Face for what he is as a
Bell Boy in a hotel, running around catering for the dominant classes which leads to his
complete break away from any structure or support mechanisms whether family,
girlfriend or youth sub culture. Older, middle class representations
inQuadrophenia reflect Gramscis concept of cultural hegemony middle class lives are
seen normal, natural and commonsense while the behaviour of Jimmy and his friends is
seen as different and unacceptable with social class as much as youth underpinning.
This struggle for acceptability changes over time in as much as the negative
representations of age and social class in 1979 is seen differently in more contemporary

television teen dramas such as Skins (E4, 2007 2013) and Misfits (E4 2009 2013) and
British films such as Fish Tank (2009) and The Selfish Giant (2013). The idea
of spectatorship and the encoding and decoding of, according to Stuart Hall dominant
preferred meanings is also important with interpretations varying.
Jimmy, for example could be seen as a more contemporary representation of youth (in
the end) looking to break away from his social, and in the end cultural straightjacket with
which he becomes so embittered and disappointed. In the 21st century his mental illness
and problems potentially would be identified but in Quadrophenia he resembles notions
of difference and the outsider as he reflects and obsesses over his own mod identity
which leads ultimately, applying Taijfel and Turner to his marginalisation from the
collective group (the Mods) to which being part of was so important. Jimmy is semi
suicidal, pill pops and in a final scene, the dominant reading of which is that he takes his
own life by riding the Ace Faces scooter off a cliff provides audience with a negotiated or
oppositional reading Jimmy instead is symbolically trashing the culture of the Mod and
with it, his collective identity. He is seen at the beginning of the film walking away from
the cliff furtheranchoring his individualism with the realisation that youth culture and the
politics of youth is built on fragile foundations.
In Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige posits the idea that youth sub culture
maintains divisions in society identifying two stereotypes youth as fun and youth as
trouble. In The Selfish Giant, an independent social realist film distributed in 2013 the
latter trouble stereotype is explored it portrays the dysfunctional lives of two young
boys, Arbor and Swifty who steal copper cable for Kitten, the unscrupulous boss of a
scrap yard in Bradford, west Yorkshire. The film compares well with Fish Tank as two films
from the same genre focusing on the representation of youth and regional identity but
also for British film, seemingly unable again to detach itself from issues of social
class. The Selfish Giant explores the innocence of childhood, myths surrounding this
construct and the idea of consequences. Both boys attend school but Arbor is
permanently excluded and both have as priorities making money, long before they would
be stereotypically seen as legitimately on the job market. Arbor actually gives some of
the money he makes to his family in a reversal of parental expectations.
The film stops short of developing a macro narrative on the problems faced across the UK
in impoverished areas where young boys will risk their lives stealing cable from railway
tracks and other hazardous areas like behind power stations. At the same time youth is
represented as arrogant, selfish, aggressive, deviant and criminal but Arbor and Swifty
are also framed as kind, emotive and vulnerable with the key criminal in the film the
adult owner of the scrap yard who exploits them. Skins, on occasion offers similar
narratives to encode a challenging representation of initially deviant youth but
as victims of adult crime. In series four, episode one audiences immediately are
introduced to youth culture through drugs and club culture but soon into the episode we
see a morally correct young DJ challenging his unethical club owner boss who on a
regular basis has no problem with having his club flaunting health and safety guidelines
in terms of numbers allowed in.
The Selfish Giant has parallels with the 2007-2014 long running Barnardos Believe in
Children campaign, also social realism which asks the public to challenge the aggressive,
cultural stereotypes they are being presented with in the poster campaign and think
again about the vulnerability of youth. Martin Hoyles in The Politics of
Childhood examines how and why children have gradually been separated from the adult
world of work, in turn leading to a form of marginalisation where their role in society is
stereotypically to be looked after having no economic value (the Barnardos children are
represented as marginalised as everyone has turned their back on them).

Under no circumstances is Hoyles suggesting a return to child labour but points out that
media representations of childhood commonly conform to stereotypical assumptions
while a large proportion of young people earn a small amount of money to sustain
themselves and to facilitate independence. In The Selfish Giant and in Barnardos
advertising Aclands ideology of protection can be studied with Arbor and Swifty
promoting the collective notion that young people are in need of constant surveillance
and monitoring, allowing society and the state to have more control over them. The two
boys in the film strongly challenge this collective ideology on one level but in terms of
narrative outcomes it arguably is reinforced with Arbor hiding under his bed and refusing
to come out until the Swiftys Mum (Swifty has just been fatally electrocuted while with
Arbor stealing cable) appears in a scene that suggests emotional understanding and
forgiveness.

In Fish Tank, representations of youth are similar. The more middle class Connor exploits
Mia sexually and she is seen in a victim role, despite her manifest aggressive behavior in
a similar way that Arbor and Swifty are exploited by Kitten. Her family, like Arbor and
Connors is also dysfunctional and the film takes a Broken Britain approach to
representations of family and social class. Mia is an interesting character in that her
youthful vulnerability is evident and is given over to audiences as equally as her anti
social behavior this references Martin Barkers ideas of how moral panics of deviant
youth culture are often challenged through good and bad deeds. Mias positive feelings
for her sister are apparent and her symbolic desire to free a horse she thinks will be killed
by Billy and his brothers is admirable (the role of horses is also important inThe Selfish
Giant). Andrea Arnold positions audiences however into decoding intelligent, sympathetic
readings of poverty, neglect, abuse and notions of the difficulties faced by single parent
families on a low income and the idea of consequences. Through the mise-en-scene the
film represents all of the youth chav stereotype signifiers but arguably suggests a more
pluralistic representation.
Using Stuart Halls framework, this dominant or oppositional reading would be dependent
on audience I witnessed a white, middle class west London independent cinema
audience laughing at the representations, aghast that people could live like that while a
BFI audience fully understood the social realist conventions and the directors encoded
meanings. The film had a limited theatrical release in only 40 cinemas and for some
audiences it was reassuring in how it perpetuated cultural stereotypes, applying Dyers
theory again of legitimising ideas of difference to maintain unequal power relations in
society. Mia could be seen as belonging to a collective group of dysfunctional, urban
teenagers with no value in society, economically or socially. The representation of this
collective group is frequently alluded to in the right wing press, e.g. during and after the
London riots and similar images are circulated and reinforced, often deliberately placed
in binary opposition to more normal mainstream culture. Levi Strauss framework is
useful in understanding this with middle aged, more respectable representations seen as
the dominant culture in teen dramas such as Waterloo Road and mainstream soap
operas like Eastenders.
Like Jimmy in Quadrophenia however, Mia manages to break of out this spiral (hence the
title Fish Tank) and is empowered to escape from her life when narrative resolution sees
Mia driving away with her boyfriend to a new, albeit uncertain life in Wales. Tyler, her
younger sister waves her farewell uttering the immortal line, Say hello to the whales for
me. Tyler is also wayward in that she drinks, smokes, swears but has more of an
emotional, dependent loyalty to her mother and ironically is seen in some scenes telling
Mia off for not attending meetings with the local education authority about getting her

back into school. Youth culture in Fish Tank on one level is seen as empowering despite
the fact that Mias childhood innocence has been destroyed by her upbringing as she
challenges societal norms, escapes from a recognised collective identity and builds her
own future.
Fish Tank, Kidulthood (2006) and Adulthood (2008) reflect the recent trending of social
realism towards youth audiences central protagonists of social realist films have always
been young, angry and alienated but potentially a more compassionate reading is
becoming evident. An oppositional reading to this could reference the aspirational genre
hybridisation of recent social realist films like Shifty, Ill Manors andShank with the
gangster genre. The deviant threat of criminal youth culture could potentially be
amplified by the hybridisation with a negative collective urban group reinforced passive
consumption by youth audiences remains a possibility but there are moral messages
encoded into the films. Many contemporary social realist films have moral closure e.g.
Shaun turning his back on racism at the end of This is England or Rickys younger brother
Curtis symbolically turning his back on gun crime in Bullet Boy. In Kidulthood, Trevor pays
the ultimate price for exploring his individualism with collective identity a key theme of
the film in relation to youth and gang culture.
The representation of age is also subject to biological and social constructions. Youth
culture is mediated through media representations to an audience who read potential
encoded meaning. The TV teen drama Waterloo Road is an interesting text that explores
this concept as it main narrative function the main characters in the drama are school
children and teachers, often teachers saving and looking after their charges with
parents rarely seen throughout the nine series. A latent meaning from Waterloo Road,
and on occasional manifest is how the programme takes a critical approach to parenting,
often blaming parents within the narrative for the anti-social behaviour of the children.
Originally set in Rochdale (Greater Manchester) it again, like many other British media
representations of youth makes clear correlations with deviant, anti-social behaviour
linking with working class culture. The programme moved from a dysfunctional school in
Rochdale to an independent academy in Greenock, Scotland for the eighth series but for
the ninth series currently airing (as of February 2014) the school has lost its benefactor
and has returned to a comprehensive status.
Waterloo Road in its ninth series presents audiences with exaggerated narratives that
deal with hyper real, although potentially realist scenarios including a teacher
discovering a pupil is suffering from neglect, finding out her brother is dealing cocaine
from their family home, a kidnapping by a supply teacher, alcoholism and social
exclusion Gabriella, a pupil from a privileged middle class family who has recently been
excluded from school arrives in Greenock as a form of tough love metered out to her by
her parents. Other themes explored over the years have included homosexuality, racism,
rape, cancer, divorce and suicide; all directly involving the children in the school. The
programme borrows from soap opera conventions in terms of familiarity with character
and setting also the dramatic nature of the representations encoding at times a form of
hegemonic cultural stereotyping (common for mainstream texts aimed at mass
audiences).
Waterloo Road concerns itself with negative and positive representations of youth culture
with an emphasis on the negative. David Buckingham, in Youth, Identity and Digital
Media explores the idea of deviance and delinquency as a social problem which
legitimises various forms of treatments e.g. the work of social, educational and clinical
agencies that seek to rehabilitate troublesome youth. Problems are omnipresent in the
drama, normalising the traumatic world of the teenager by way of hegemonic
representations suggesting even that narrative events are a form of rites of passage.
While good drama is not always born from normal, non-dramatic

representations Waterloo Road perpetuates the idea of youth as trouble and

successfully marginalises working class youth culture into a collective identity.
On the other side of the social class spectrum, Outnumbered is a British situation comedy
based in west London that focuses on the role of the children within a middle class,
barely functional family. Sue and Pete are literally outnumbered by their children who do
not conform and engage in stereotypically adult dialogue with their parents, suggesting a
form of pluralistic representation. It is worth remembering however the fact that the
programme follows mainstream genre sitcom conventions and is scheduled on BBC1.
Audiences are positioned into understanding the innocence of childhood and into feeling
the love in that there is a clear feel good element to the show as the two central
parent protagonists actually like each other which is a key appeal cynically the show
has surveillance aspects to it and it is actually promoting the ideology of a middle class,
nuclear family lifestyle. Although the children on one level challenge cultural stereotypes
they exist within the safety and parameters of a stable family environment. To explore
representations of youth in British comedy further it is often worth turning to C4 and E4
for more alternative approaches that potentially offer a more obvious critique of
hegemonic constructs revealing collective identity.
Misfits for example was a science fiction comedy drama broadcast on E4 between 2009
and 2013 about a group of young offenders sentenced to work in a community
programme service where they obtain supernatural powers. On one level, the comedy
presents audiences with the familiar idea of ASBO teens (audience identification) but
represents them in a likeable way. By giving them superpowers it directly contradicts the
negative stereotype, offering audiences a point of view from the protagonists
themselves. As with parents in Waterloo Road adult roles are represented negatively with
characters like probation officers being represented as monsters this leads audiences
onto a latent preferred meaning that what is in fact monstrous is the negative
representations of youth in society and the whole idea of stereotyping. Again linked in
with working class culture, the programme is a genuine site of struggle exploring societal
hegemonic constructs through humour. As with any text however, the audience is crucial
and as with all E4 programing, the positive representation of youth culture may be
explained by the niche 15-35 target audience.
Film and television, despite social networking and viral interactivity are still one-way
narratives that either challenge, reinforce (or sometimes both) the idea of youth and
collective identity. Perhaps looking at digital technology and developing further the role
of the prosumer is a way of analysing the changing representation of youth culture in
society with young people constantly exploiting new commercial
opportunities. Memes are quite an interesting construct as a shared representation and
Facebook also makes a perfect case study to discuss notions of the construction of ones
own identity. Michael Wesch suggests the idea of peer to peer sharing has led the to
fragmentation and implosion of traditional youth identity. Henry Jenkins reinforces this by
challenging the dominant, mainstream belief that internet communication reduces social
skills by stating instead, that users are actively participating in multiple communication.
Without end loading this resource with theoretical input this in turn would support David
Buckinghams argument of the fragmentation of traditional collective identity. Digital
technology, of all media is fundamentally changing the concept of collective identity
while traditional media still mediates cultural stereotypes but dependent on audience
and context. Audiences still expect these representations but are increasingly challenged
by moves towards self-construction and pluralism within a changing hegemonic
framework.