Teenage Riot! Youth, Media and Collective Identity.

Richard Jenkins

• We need to interact in order to form our identity
• With other people or with other people or with the media
• Partaking in an event (in reality or virtually) with people whom we feel affinity helps us to form collective identity
• Identification
• Solidarity (around media texts)

Constructing the Teenager

• Creating and targeting a youth audience
• And what the youth did next
• 19th Century America 'Bowery Boys' 'Soaplocks' - own slang, dress code, music
• First time fashion ha targeting the youth.

1900-1940

• 400% rise in high school enrolment in USA
• peer culture
• magazines targeted adolescent girls
• 1940s WW2 demand for labour=young people with disposable income

1945-60

•  economic potential
• first negative stereotypes
• 'culture of moral decline'
• first sign of adult cultures dichotomous image of teenagers
• e.g 'The Wild Ones'

1950s RocknRoll Culture

• not trying to fit in to adult mainstream
• happy to rebel against it- first indication of a 'geneartion gap' in values and lifestyles

Adult Hegemony

• Hegemony= a dominant social group keeps oppressed group in their subservient position by making them feel this position is normal or desirable
• adult mainstream exploited the image of the 'rebel teen'
• solid teenagers as aspiration

Antonio gramsci

• 1891-1937
• cultural hegemony
• diverse culture can be ruled/dominated by one group or class
• everyday practises shared beliefs provide the foundation for complex systems of domination
• advanced industrial societies hegemony cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture have indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness

Stereotypes

• characters in a media text who are 'types' rather than complete people
• 'nice old lady', 'bad cop'
• children's media text often use stereotypes so a young audiences can identify quickly with the characters

Extension/restriction of our experience of reality

• by giving audiences information, media text extend experience of reality
• every time you see a media text you extend your experience of life ina a second ahd way (vicarious)
• producers of the media text have selected and constructed the information we receive, then our ecoerience is restricted

CASE STUDY. James Dean- an accurate portrayal

• first celebrity to represent youth? Capture the dissonance of youth
• 'rebel without a casue'- lots of delinquent behaviour
• adults/teenagers could empathise with him
• 'live fast due young'= the start of adults fetishing youth?

1960s-70 subculture to counter culture

• next generation of teens very cynical about commercial exploitation of youth
• rebellion chimes with social upheaval
• young people support civil rights, feminism, anti-Vietnam, the rebels now have a cause
• resistant to marketing and consumerism, wanted to make the world better
• e.g 'easy rider'

Punk & Hip-Hop

• punk= reaction against optimism of the hippies, cynical of mainstream
• rebellious, anti-consumerist, punk was anti-establishment
• punk= aesthetic and political rebellion
• hip hop= dealing with reality of poverty and racist oppression
• e.g scratch