Representations of age-Youth

Ways in which young people are represented in the media.

The youth population is represented in many different ways through a variety of different media platforms. One way that the youth are represented in the media is through archetypes. An example of an archetype used within the media is the typical high school nerd used within the popular comic book series of 'The Amazing Spiderman', with the main character Peter Parker. This archetype is used for the audience to gather a better understanding of the main character in a short amount of time and builds expectations around this character. These expectations are either met or challenged to help develop the character further from the archetype originally used to show the characters personality and traits.

Another way in how the youth are represented in the media is through mediation, this is best shown through the 'reality' TV program Sun, sex and suspicious parents. As most reality programs, even though they sell their unique selling point of it being true reality. This isn't entirely correct, as it will have been edited and much more will have been left out than actually shown. We're also shown different angles that convey different emotions to what might actually might be getting said or done. The main focus of this mediation is to show the teenagers on the show, as sex craved (also shown through the title of the show), alcoholics who don't care about the responsibilities that they have to hold. This also plays with one of the stereotypes associated with the youth, this being that teenagers don't care about others and only wish to party. As people know of this stereotype they'll tune in to have their expectations of this stereotype met through the mediation used on the program.

Finally another example of the youths representation within the media is through ideology. This is shown through the film trailer 'Shank'. From the title choice referring to the the London slang of getting stabbed. Already connotes knife crime, which is also heavily associated with today's youth due to the rise of knife crime in the UK. The trailer also shows our main characters, who all look like teens and are all affiliated with gangs. Through the trailer we see the directors ideologies put into it. That being that most young teens, fall into the wrong group and get affiliated with gangs and end up committing crimes against society, mainly knife crimes. Another possible ideology that the director might of intended is that most of these teens who fall into these gangs are black, but this is up for debate whether this is either a racist view or a comment of what society is truly like within London. Also showing youth through another way and that being through comments on current society as this film trailer seems to use both ideology and society to express it's view on the youth.