Textual Analysis - Hoodies Can Be Goodies

‘Hoodies can be Goodies’ is an interactive documentary which looks at the ways in which the teenager in today’s society is being represented as bad. This documentary looks into campaigning against the media making a bad name for teenagers and how it is only a minority of teenagers creating trouble and a bad name for the rest of the teenage society. The narrator and presenter of the documentary campaigning is Gavin Mitchell who was brought up in north London. In the documentary he visits the area in which he used to live in and it is known to people as ‘Shank Town’, which is slang for (stabbing/knife town) because of the large number of knife crime in that particular area of London.
In the documentary we see lots of different representations of teenager’s right from the beginning to the end where we are left at an un-closed decision of teenagers today. The representations of teenagers we see are of lower class teenagers running the streets of London specifically creating crimes. The presenter, Gavin, speaks to the teenagers who live in rough areas of London about how they feel. The teenagers respond saying ‘there isn’t anywhere for us to go, they turned our football area into a car park’. This therefore has created problems and it is seen that teenagers then turn to crime. This creates a negative representation of teenagers.
The main representation though which is portrayed is the idea of the hoody and how people see the hoody as a symbol of danger/trouble. Gavin Mitchell travels to L.A in America to find out about how much worse it is about the gun and knife crime of youths and how there is 100,000 members of the worlds largest group ‘MS XIII (13)’. He meets with a group of young teenagers who have been affected by gang culture who have joined street dancing that has helped to change their own lives and the representation of some American teenagers. Gavin Mitchell then gets the idea to create his own gang of hooded youth, ‘the goody hoodies’, who are teenagers, he acts as the ‘good father’ in the act to make a better name for teenagers who wear hoodies. Altogether this act of creating a positive representation for teenagers in the UK builds up the idea of youth of today being good and that only the minority bring down the teenage name for everyone.
Gavin Mitchell says, that ‘if you get rid of the hood for good there won’t be any more crimes, there won’t be any more stabbings, there won’t be any more deaths… Ban the hood for good and all of these things will disappear’. He clearly mocks the idea of the fashionable hoody being a negative representation of teenagers. The decision he comes to is that hoodies aren’t bad. I know that not all people who wear a hoody are bad, but elderly people see people in hoodies and feel ‘vulnerable’ and ‘scared’. This is what creates a rather negative view of teenagers.

Pilot questions for postal questionnaire

Please fill in this questionnaire. To fill it in copy and paste the questions below into the comments page for this post, many thanks.

Think of a teenager, how would you picture them?

Why do you picture them like this?

What forms of media have you seen this picture of a teenager?

What affect do you thinks this has on teenagers?

In television media which genres convey this, for example documentary, tv drama and news?

Do you think there is a difference between the representations in different genres?

Are teenagers portrayed as positive or negative in the media?

If positive, why?

If negative, why?

Why do media organizations represent teenagers like this, eg. Channel for the BBC?

What kind people are representing teenagers?

Why are they representing teenagers like this?

What did you think were the key representations of teenagers in the following, Hoodies can be Goodies and We are the Lambeth Boy's?

Give some examples that you though were interesting?

Why do you think this?

Momma Don't Allow Documentary

http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/momma_dont_allow_player.html

Questionnaire

I will ask a large number of teenagers at college a range of questions about the representations of teenagers in 4 video clips from documentaries and how they feel about them. these video clips and questions will be found soon on this blog. I will ask a wide range of social groups to see if the documentaries reflect a fair representation of teenagers. All of the video clips are different in their style and general age of release, which helps to identify different representations. From this questionnaire i hope to gain information that is quantitative and qualitative, which is also fair and ethical into my research of 'how has the represenatation of the teenager changed over time?'

Brat Camp (Part of Episode 1 Series 3)

Research methods I will carry out

Primary methods

• Textual Analysis
• Structured Interview
• Postal Questionnaire
• Focus Group
• In depth Interviewing

Qualitative data – opinions and subjective
Quantitative data – facts and figures


Validity is important time, gender, age, social class, background, ethnics, culture
Watch for bias results
Equal Balance


Representative – Channels (BBC, Channel 4)
Schedules (Day time, Evening)
Certificates (PG, 12, 15, 18)
Target Audience (Teenagers)
Social Class (Lower class, Working class)
Gender (Male, Female)

Ethics - Permission
Safety
Appropriate
Sensitivity

Textual Analysis - Momma Don’t Allow

‘Momma Don’t Allow’ is an observational documentary that looks into the representation of social and teenage class. In the documentary we don’t learn very much because there is no narrator. This leaves the events of the documentary to be rather up to the viewer of the documentary to make judgement on what they feel is being presented to them.

I believe what is clearly being presented is the idea of teenagers generally enjoying themselves. They are seen dancing and socialising with there friends, drinking and smoking is also apparent in this short documentary too, which opens up the ways in which these teenagers/teddy boy’s are being portrayed to the audience. This documentary is one of many documentaries that follow the social aspect of teenagers. We see a positive representation of these teenagers despite not knowing what really is actually going on because of the style of documentary, but we do know that the Toff's come in to try and see who's better at socializing.

One scene from the documentary shows a bit of conflict between the teenagers that arrive at the social event. These teenagers are the Toff's. With two groups that are well known in the area of London we would expect in today’s society to see some sort of conflict or tension between the two groups. However, this is not as apparent from the documentary. This could be seen as bias because of the style, but could also been seen as a neutral approach because the documentary is observational.