Our product represents one major social group, young people (teenagers). Our main target age that we are representing is 16-18 year olds. However, we are specifically representing two groups within this social group; specifically victims of violence from their own peers and the young people who inflict this violence on their peers. We based the events in our film on the Columbine High School Massacre. Two senior students, Eric and Alex, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and one teacher. They also injured 21 other students directly, and three people were injured while attempting to escape. The pair then committed suicide. Therefore in our product we hope to represent the young people involved in a non-glamorous way to reinforce the horrific events. Currently there has been a rise in violence affecting teenagers involving gun and knife crime, our product reinforces this and makes people aware that this violence does happen.
Eric and Alex are ordinary and very much a part of the fabric of the high school and its array of student actions. In fact it’s hard to distinguish them from all the other students. The school is filled with various students discussing each other, playing sports, and learning about Science and Civics. Alex plays classical piano and Eric plays video games and they are interested in seemingly average things. They calmly watch Nazi programs on TV and purchase and demo automatic weaponry that they buy over the Internet. They seem just as ordinary and interesting as any of the other students. They analytically draw up plans for their killing spree, indicating that they have enough bombs and ordinance to last the afternoon. They walk through the school killing their school peers and there is no rescue from the authorities. Another example of a media product that represents violent teenagers is Kidulthood. Kidulthood is a British film which follows a day in the lives of four poor youths living in an impoverished neighborhood in West London, where the pressure and desperation of poverty propels each of them towards the choice between a life of bleakness, violence, and crime.
The media (newspapers, magazines, television) tells us there are various reasons for the young committing violence on their peers. It could be a lack of education, poor mental health, poor parenting, drug problems, bullying and abuse which they therefore inflict on others; some argue that a fascination with violence (computer games, Nazi history etc) leads to influencing young people to commit violence. Influence of their
peers (gang violence) also leads to young people being peer pressured into committing crimes. The media reinforces this, if the media tells a person they are a criminal it le
ads them to act like one for example wearing a hooded top.
Skins is a British television drama set in Bristol purely based on young people. It explores themes of violence, death, love, drugs and substance abuse, bullying, sexuality, friendship and personality disorders. Skins explores perhaps exaggerated (to create entertainment and set it apart from soap-operas) situations that teenagers in reality face but also the consequences of ‘living the fast life.’ On the whole Skins represents teenagers dissimilarly to our media product as we focus specifically
on two teenagers who choose to commit violence on their peers. The rest of the teenagers in our product are portrayed as happy, ‘normal’ young people up until the actual shooting. Cook, a character in Skins is perhaps a similar representation to the characters in our product. Cook represents a violent teenager who cannot control his emotions and therefore lashes out and causes harm to his peers. However Cook is less extreme as we do not witness him committing murder in Skins.
No comments:
Post a Comment