BFI: Youth, Media and Collective Idenitity day

On Wednesday 5th of February 2014 our class went to the BFI (British Film Industry) in Southbank London for a trip to experience and learn new things about the constructing the teenagers and how the media had effected or changed the way the audience view teenagers. This was a great opportunity to find out more about youth, culture and Theory presented by Matthew Hall. We began the day by discussing how the child begins to developed their identity and looking at Jacques Lacan which is a psychoanalyst looking at the mirror image and the psychoanalytic film theory and about how we use the cinema/TV screen as a 'mirror' to reinforce our identity. Matthew discussed that we need to interact in order to form our identity and when we do interact our own identity of influenced by other people that have different thoughts or view to how maybe we look at things. Media representations may influence the way we react. We watched a few different clips that we had to identify the textual detail, dominant messages sent about youth, the negotiated interpretation and what kind of audience would interpret in this way. These short clips were from:

• The Wild One
• Rebel Without A Cause
• Quadropenia
• Kidult hood
• Human Traffic
• My Brother, The Devil

Each of these clips that we watched allowed the audience to recognise how the teenagers were interpreted and their dominate message sent about the youths.

 One of the clips that I analysed was 'The Wild One' presenting a different culture with a black and white viewing, an old town in a motorbike sense. The dominate message sent about the youth allowed the audience to notice the difference from some youths trying not to 'fit into' the adult mainstream and their generation gap. The characters were trying to challenging traditional values and lifestyle by changing the way they act and presenting a different form or life behaviour. This clip fits into the adult hegemony as the film presents a lead ship and dominance of the adults sticking together in the same way and interests. The textual detail that we established after watching this clip, we could identify the jazz music in the background with helps to support their generation and culture that they were currently in. The motorbikes presented the group of boys to come across as rebellious comparison to the other characters in the scene.  The audience were able to clearly identify the fact that the group of men was challenging traditional values making the film become more interesting.

From this experience at the BFI, as a class we have learnt a new range of different perspectives of Media culture and Identity which will be very useful to use in our exam. It has provided a wider view to what positions and different job roles the media industry provides whilst allowing me to learn what is expected of me in my A Level media class to successfully achieve a good A level in Media Studies. As a result I enjoyed the Media Trip and have come away with ways in which to improve my own opening sequence and involve more textual details throughout.