Youth Culture Essay - Film

A2 Media – Youth Culture

The way youth culture is represented is hugely depicted through the various forms of media available to the public. Youth culture is often illustrated as being very disruptive, violent and troublesome through the news in both newspapers and on television. Part of this is true and is backed up through evidence of knife crime, drug use, vandalism etc. but it is only a part of the entire youth culture that is accurately represented through the media. The main reasoning for the news and other media platforms (TV and Film mostly) illustrate youth culture like this is because it draws more attention from those outside youth culture and makes the specified media platform more interesting to watch. If these platforms decided to document the life of most young people, they wouldn’t gain as many ratings or views which would render the showing pointless. There are other different ways in which the youth culture of today is represented. Most films such as Kidulthood and Attack the Block focus on the teenagers living in inner city London, Manchester, Birmingham etc. which the public would generally associate with knife crime and drug use as this is how these teenagers are portrayed in the media.


At the other end of the spectrum there are films such as Juno and Superbad which have a more comical approach to them but address issues that affect teenagers. Juno tackles the teen pregnancy issue but has a twist as the girl is not someone who would be seen as sexually active and neither is the father but they end up having a baby together. Another twist is that the girl does not expect her parents to do everything for her; instead she acts more independent about the situation and manages to sort things out. Superbad does not particularly tackle a serious issue such as teen pregnancy or knife crime but illustrates how three teenage boys who struggle with being unpopular at school overcome obstacles to lose their virginity before college. The film is based around this issue and has a very similar element to the British TV series ‘The Inbetweeners’ with the story line and the added comical effect.


The main youth culture film I have watched is My Brother the Devil. This film is set in Hackney and follows a family who have migrated from Egypt to find a better lifestyle. The eldest brother, Rashid, is involved in a gang and is considered one of the senior members of the gang. He is also highly idolised by his brother Mo who has just received is GCSE grades and Rashid has set a goal for him to go to college. Mo however wants to be like Rashid and starts doing work for the gang behind his brother’s back. Rashid then decides he wants out of the gang due to personal reasons and the two brothers begin to cross paths and become near enough enemies. The film illustrates the issues of gang violence, drug use, murder and also homosexuality which is different for a gang culture film as it is not widely accepted in areas such as Hackney.