Evaluate how far audiences are able to represent themselves and/or their ideas and opinions in media products from your cross-media study. Support your answer with reference to a range of examples from three media platforms. [32 marks]
The 5-minute plan we wrote at the start of the lesson contained the following ideas:
Section 1: Ill Manors e-media - Tag London campaign, Twitter, Facebook, UGC etc.
Section 2: Ill Manors print - contrasting representations in Men's Health and NME magazine
Section 3: Ill Manors broadcast - representations of young people in the media, TEDx lecture, music video, film trailer.
Section 4: independent case study examples e-media/UGC
Section 5: independent case study examples e-media/UGC
The broadcast section is potentially the most challenging but also the most interesting part of the plan. This is what we came up with as a class:
In making Ill Manors, Plan B wanted to create an opportunity to discuss the negative representations of young people that dominate the media. He used the broadcast platform in order to further this point of view. Ben Drew (Plan B’s real name) gave a critically acclaimed TEDx lecture as part of the Guardian newspaper’s TEDx programme. He used the lecture to talk about the lack of opportunities for young people and how with Ill Manors he wanted to give unknown actors from the part of London he was from the chance to break out of their circumstances and demonstrate their talents. This opportunity for young people to represent themselves and the reality of growing up in certain parts of London was a major reason Ill Manors was so gritty, realistic and critically successful. The TEDx lecture would particularly appeal to a middle class, ABC1 left-wing Guardian reading audience. These people would fit into the Reformer psychographic group and would be angry that young people are not given more opportunity to represent themselves in the media.
However, the broadcast platform for Ill Manors also contains media products that offer extremely negative, highly stereotypical representations of young people. The Ill Manors music video that was released alongside the film and designed to cross-promote both the film and the soundtrack album contains plenty of stereotypes that go against Plan B’s ambitions to represent another side of young people. The mise-en-scene (particularly costume and locations) and the many shots of anti-social behaviour (particularly the London riots) would simply reinforce a negative view of young people and make it less likely that they will be given opportunities in society. One of the paradoxes in the media is that young people are simultaneously angry about the representation of themselves in media products yet also attracted to media products that contain negative or anti-social representations of themselves. The film trailer further reinforces this, with fast-paced editing showing a huge number of shots with iconography of criminal behaviour and drug use (guns, costume, locations and more). Plan B’s music soundtracks both of these broadcast products which seem to go against the key message of his TEDx lecture.
