Pete Turner: Representations of modern youth.
Typical representation of young people in Britain is the image of the 'Chav', which has become a symbol of David Cameron'd 'Broken Britain' and a cultural movement of young people that is easy to recognise.
Hooded, tattooed and anonymous due to a covered face, 'chavs' wear tracksuits, trainers and wear some dazzling gold jewellery aka 'bling'.
Supposedly this is what the youth in British streets:
- Uneducated
- Poor but covered in labels and logos
- Aggressive
- Making hand gestures such as gun and gang signs
- Indecency such as hands stuffed down trousers
However Tom Hampson argued that 'It is deeply offensive to a largely voiceless group, especially when used in middle- class conversation and on TV. Reveals level of class hatred'.
Little Britains 'Vick Pollard' is the ultimate chavette. Her character became a symbol of the ladette-ish teenage girls who are seen to be mouth, stupid, working class and sometimes pregnant. The word chav is associated with snobbery, an attitude which the working class is looked down on.
But the stereotyping of Britain's young women has received criticism for being- 'grotesque' sketches about chavswritten by public school educated comedians like David Walliams and Matt Lucas. (de Castella, 2011)
More positive representations came onto TV screens with Shameless(2004) and Misfits(2009)
Frank Gallagher(Shameless) may not be a young hoodie, but he epitomizes the 'council' background often presumed to go hand in hand with the chav. (Fuller, 2009). Franks family may be stupid and working class but have alot of love and care for each other.
Misfits' Kelly at first impression is that she is your typical chav who wouldn't look out of place on Jeremy Kyle but behind all that shes got a heart of gold and is fiercely loyal.
Chavs are now appearing in British 'hood' films, there is concern that the representations are doing more harm than good.
Kidulthood (Menhaj Huda, Damian Jones 2006) has been accused of glamorising violence and chav culture.
Noel Clarke, writer of the film defends it as being honest representations of Britain's modern youth.
With so many youth movements from mods to rockers, hippies and emos music has had a large part of creating the 'chav' image.
British band N-Dubz have been referred as Chavs.
Plan B's music video for Ill Manors uses images from the London riots 2011 and celebrates the stereotypes that the media perpetuate about council estate youths.
'If you stereotype people as socially worthless then they will grow into those stereotypes' - Lynskey, 2012
Recent stories of Chavs in the media have risen:
'71% of articles from a range of tabloid, broadsheet and local papers involving young people were negative in tone, and a third were crime orientated. - Heath, 2011
Not surprising that Plan B and others are concerned about stereotypes becoming self fulfilling prophecies:
'Here, then is a modern folk devil maligned just about everywhere, from schoolyards to the offices of upscale newspapers' - Harris, 2007
The 2011 riots broiught the chav back into the headlines, hooded youths causing trouble committing crimes across the country. The were all over the news, front pages of newspapers, headlines.
This cased some to declare that:
'What chav seems to me to mean is an aggressive, self assured, unashamedly materialistic person. I don't think 'chavs' are an innocent group of victims'. - Thorne, BBC News
Although youth crime has been around for years we hear about it a lot more now.
So both negative and positive representations have been found on Chavs.
No comments:
Post a Comment