Monday, 19 September 2011

Similarites between 'Kidulthood' and 'A Clockwork Orange'

Although the films ‘Kidulthood’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’ are very different in storyline, what time period it is set in and genre it has some similarities as well.

‘Kidulthood’ is shown to be quite shocking and thought provoking, but the director wanted to do this to shock the audience and also let them think ‘is this what the youth are like in some places?’. In ‘Kidulthood’ violence is shown in quite a normal way, for example when the girl beats the other girl up in the classroom no one intervenes they just stay quite.

Also there is no older authority in ‘Kidulthood’ there are no teachers around when the girl is getting beat up and the teachers seem quite anxious around the pupils.

There also seems to be a status system in the school with Sam being the highest. He doesn’t even go to the school but seems to have a hold over all the pupils in the playground. He even says to one girl that he can make everything go away if he sleeps with her.

In ‘A clockwork orange’ there are similarities with the fact that Alex is in a gang, like Sam is. They inflict violence on other people for fun whereas in ‘Kidulthood’ the violence is to show status. There is a similarity with oblivious parents. In ‘Kidulthood’ the parents of the girl who was beat up seem oblivious that she is being bullied and when they realise, it is too late. In ‘A clockwork orange’ the parents of Alex don’t know what he does at night but it’s almost as if they don’t want to know.

I think there are more differences than similarities in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Kidulthood’ but they do have some similarities.

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Media Theories

There are many different media theories and specific example in the media which support these theories.
Stuart Hall’s theory is that young people rebel because they don't want to end up like their parents.
Another theory is Marcel Danesi's theory that youth is important so older people hold onto their youth and act immature as a result of it. An example of this is in the TV series Friends. There are numerous episodes where the characters don’t act their age and do immature things that they regret later on. For example in the episode 'the one where they all turn 30'  the characters do things like get drunk at their 30th birthday party, or make bargains with god to not let them turn 30. All these example support Marcel Danesi's theory.
http://www.tv.com/shows/friends/the-one-where-they-all-turn-thirty-17474/

The Marxists of the Frankfurt school of social studies says that communism is important and every man should be equal to one another.
The last media theorist is Stan Cohen who believes that the mass media labels young people and the behaviour they show is a result of being labelled. For example in the TV show Eastenders the character 'Fatboy' is portrayed as a chav by the way he dresses and his dialect.