Exam Question Plan

Discuss the contemporary representation of a nation, region or social group in the media using specific textual examples from at least 2 media to support your answer.

Introduction:

Identify two examples - cross reference Misfits and Fishtank and say how they both represent the youth of Britain to be corrupt.

Social group - teenagers

Nation - Britain

Region - London. Regions reflect the social group as they are also seen to be corrupt.

Theorist - Marcusse says that the mass media have the power to influence our judgement on social groups.

Main

How 'An Education' shows teenagers in London 1960s are shown to be hardworking and respectful of conservative values. Goes against present representation of London as we only see it to be corrupt in both medias.

Discuss

The contemporary of nations, religion or social groups.

Intro

• mention all three texts that your looking at and what your representation is eg. britishness.
• discuss how the nation has been portrayed through the media and if this is an correct or incorrect portrayal.
  

Main

• Use your textual examples, key scenes, and use TEA to support it.
  

Essay Plan

Discuss the contemporary representation of a nation, region or social group in the media using specific textual examples from at least two media to support your answers.

Intro

Explain the question in relation to what we are going to talk about
Introduce the products that we are going to talk about
- Fish Tank
- MisFits

Main

MisFits and Fish Tank in relation to the representation of nation.
Stereotypical view of british teenagers, and the environment that they live in. It does however in MisFits give a range of ethnic groups and social groups to show the range of society in britain.

MisFits and Fish Tank in relation to the representation of region
Representations of London and places near. Even if the show isn't set in these areas a passive audience automatically applies this representation to London as it is the most well known.

MisFits and Fish Tank in relation to the representation of Social Groups
Propps Character Theory gives lots of the false heros, etc.
Teenagers are stereotypical representations of villains and not very clever in contemporary hows, where as in the 60's and 70's Teenagers are shown as clever and dedicated students.

Plan

Discuss the Contemporary representation of a nation, region, or social group in the media using specific textual examples from at least two media to support your answers.

Introduction- Explain the meaning of contemporary representation and how you will use textual examples to represent nation, region, or social group. Use of FILM + TV
past + present + future representations

Main- 1- Nation. related to misfits and how there are portray as sterotpical teenagers. empathises this by idea of marcusse. mindless audience. passive auidence belive this to be true represent nation in negative way.
2- Region. relate to misfits , area highlights the characters

Prompt 2: How Does Contemporary Representation Compare to Previous Time Periods

In the opening sequence of Episode 1 of MisFits the comedy side of the show is focused around swearing. The Characters are stereotypically represented as negative teenage characters. This plays to the passive audience as they would take this as being the view of all teenagers. This comes into the Theory of Marcuse where he states that audiences are turned into a mindless mass. Also we see a mixed ethnic / social group of characters where as compared to coronation street that contains mainly white middle class characters.

The comedy side of the programme although mainly focused around swearing does also converge on one character who states all of the jokes through the programme. In both coronation street and MisFits it features an Irish character that is the main comedy focus. But this is also seen in Are You Being Served as this contains a gay character who is always the one to deliver comedy to the audience.

The stereotypical representations of the characters are initially shown by the camera angles and shots of the characters through the first minute of the shot. We see close-up of the Chav character, and the gangster character which shows that these are more aggressive characters through their facial expressions. We also see a mid-shot of the Weird Kid, which shows that he is not to be trusted as he stares directly at the camera giving the audience the creeps.

To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated?

Opening of misfits we watch and analysed:

The programme portrays each character as a certain stereotype, for instance, you have the chav, the funny Irish character. Although the show groups them together with the costume of the orange jumpsuit, showing them all to be 'scum'. The chavs are closely associated with violence, the one with the cap quickly gets into a fight, and we learn that the girl is doing community service because she got into a fight at Argos, associating the shop with this group.

Nathan, the irish character, insults and jokes around within the group and is hard to take seriously. This representation is summed up by the theorists Althusser and Marcusse, as they both agree that the mass media has the power to create these stereotypes.

Although we do see some differentiation between each characters as they each have their own item, these being: a cap, a hairbrush, lollypop, mobile phone, a religious necklace and a cigarette. But we can see through the generalisation of these social groups how they are increasingly mediated, making people views on them become warped and one minded.

What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

The TV show Misfits shows the different media representations of britishness through the young, disobedient cast. The opening of episode one highlights the social implications of the characters and their stereotypes primarily through their dress code and body language. For example wear a cap or vest top, or bra showing. The body language of Simon is composed and awkward in comparison to the relaxed stance of other characters, this suggests he is secretive and three dimensional and viewers will learn his personality through the series.
Media theorist Althusser's discusses the concept that audiences are influenced by the characters they watch. He believes collective identity is the key in modern society.