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.