http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDR1hqKSHUI

RIOTERS ATTACKING POLICE

Judith Butler - Performativity

Performativity is an interdisciplinary term often used to name the capacity of speech and language in particular, as well as other non-verbal forms of expressive action, to perform a type of being. It is a forum, a performative act, a ritual, a social action that is omnipresent and without restriction; it extends socially, beyond constraints of system or structure. It is the construction of identity or position through active expression. The term derives from the work in speech act theory originated by the analytic philosopher J. L. Austin, who did not use the word "performativity," but did give the name performative utterances to situations where saying something was doing something, rather than simply reporting on or describing reality. A "performative utterance," Austin argued in How to Do Things With Words, cannot be said to be either true or false, as a constative utterance might be. It can only be judged either "happy" or "infelicitous" depending upon whether the conditions required for it to succeed have been met. In this sense performativity can be said to investigate the pragmatics of language. Judith Butler, as mentioned above, has done much research and writing on performance theory, and has focused much of this work on gender performativity. Butler sees gender as an act that has been rehearsed, much like a script, and we, as the actors make this script a reality over and over again by performing these actions. “For Butler, the distinction between the personal and the political or between private and public is itself a fiction designed to support an oppressive status quo: our most personal acts are, in fact, continually being scripted by hegemonic social conventions and ideologies.”

Emile Durkheim - Collective Conciousness

Collective consciousness was a term coined in Psychology by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim collective conscience as a superior translation of Durkheim's concept, in part due to the busy association of the word "consciousness" with both Marxist and Freudian thought, but also as "a conscience for Durkheim is pre-eminently the organ of sentiments and representations; it is not the rational organ that the term conciousness would imply." The term collective consciousness refers to the condition of the subject within the whole of society and how any given indivdual comes to view herself as a part of any given group.  

Script

Footballers... Teenagers... Old People... Chavs... Ethnic Minorities... - these are all examples of collective identities. In fact, the list is endless.
Media and collective identity means how the media interprets different groups of people But what is Human identity? It's the set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.
Identities are represented through contemporary media in a number of ways, whether it be through TV, Radio, Press, Film or Internet. The most topical representation at the moment is of British youths. With the rise of Teen dramas such as Skins, Misfits and The Inbetweeners, teenagers are constantly being represented negatively and positively. We have to also consider the coverage of the London riots, which sparked a huge negative representation of these adolescents. Newspapers had pages full of rampaging teens, creating explosions and battering police cars, aswell as bold headlines to create a massive negative representation of the specific group. Obviously the representation was subsequently generalized throughout the whole of the collective.

So where did this representation come from? The British TV Drama Skins hit TV was screened in 2007 and created a stir amongst critics, parents and young people themselves. The show, which is written with help of youths, focus' on controversial story-lines such as drug abuse, mental illness, sexuality and death. The program highlights what youths get up to when at Sixth Form College and many viewers find the representation very realistic and believable. For example one show started with scenes of clubs full of underage teens drinking heavily and taking class A drugs - the result was a death of a girl on ecstasy. This instantly gave teenagers a negative representation just from this scene. Throughout the episode it was also made apparent that characters skipped lessons, got into fights and slept around. One scene showed a couple having sex in a hospital - was this showing the collective group as irresponsible and inconsiderate. Skins did have its positives too. The end of the episode showed a character bonding with his family after using his religion to understand his feelings and thoughts. This representation seems to show that teenagers are just curious and will eventually come to their senses.

But the nature of the show isn't the first of its kind. 80's BBC drama Grange Hill was primarily a tamed version of Skins. Relationships, sexuality and drug abuse was spotlighted throughout series' and at one point the show was asked to be "toned" down due to such controversial publicity.

Newspapers also represent teenagers negatively, particularly during the London riots in 2011. We observed that the majority of the negative representation was coming from 'Redtops' (e.g The Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Star). We noticed that the more sophisticated newspapers (e.g The Guardian, The Times and Daily Telegraph) focussed on the incident itself rather than targeting the groups responsible. The 'Redtops' headlines' purpose was to shock the reader, for example: "Rioters aged 7" and "Olympics girl, 18 'Trashed Cop Car'. whereas the more sophisticated newspapers purpose was more intended to inform, rather than to make judgements, for example, "The Anarchy Spreads". The more intellectual newspapers accepted the incident and tried to figure out why it had happened. Emile Durkheim tries to explain crime by arguing that when collective conscious and values are unclear it can cause 'anomie'. Anomie is defined as a state of norm-lessness - where society doesn't understand or share the same clear goals anymore. Emile Durkheim's arguments can be clearly seen within the riots, society didn't feel they shared the same goal as the government.

You could argue that teen TV drama's has had an affect on the on the way that young people learn the values of society, and are partly responsible for anti-social behaviour within teens. For example: in the pilot of the hit teen TV drama, Misfits, aggression is a constant theme throughout the episode, particularly against their probation worker. From the start of the episode the main characters are seen not listening to and swearing at their probation worker, implementing an anti-authority value into the audience. Judith Butler argues that people take on different forms of their personality whilst around different types of people - she calls this Performativity. For example: people act cocky and aim to impress when around their friends, but around authority people act sensible and try hard not to offend. However, when the values of acting in an acceptable way around authority (e.g police) break down when influenced by shows such as Misfits - which follow a group of young offenders - and Skins. A video which was highlighted in the Press, shows how this transfers into real life. You can see a group of police officers attempting to fight off a number of youths in London, before a whole mob comes out of nowhere and attacks them. This could be used as an example of how teenagers are influenced by these shows and also how the press used performativity to show the riots.

To conclude it seems very obvious that the representation of teenagers throughout the press and television is usually negative - with violence, sex and drugs always being associated with the collective identity. Obviously this is partly because it makes great television and draws in customers, yet it does not seem right that media business' should do this at all teenager's expense. So where next? It seems that constant negative coverage across the media will only make things worse. Teenagers will probably adhere to the negative things associated with them because of the stereotype being created. It seems simple, but the only way out of this situation is to give teenagers some good representation and a voice to disprove the stereotype. The likes of the British Youth Council and UK Youth Parliament are attempting to help, but without the aid of TV and Press, it is unlikely anything will change. Perhaps in the future we will see a variety of positive representations of the teenage collective in all media forms, which should remove the likelihood of more violence and improve the stereotype of youths all together.

Misfits Representation

Straight from the beginning we noticed that there were negative representation of young offenders/people. Some characters were smoking, not listening to their probation worker, swearing at him, talking on their phone and starting fights among each other.

When starting community service, the characters try really hard to dress up and look good - even though it is just community service. This is hinting that there is such pressure on young people and they are assumed to want to dress up and look stylish no matter what. You see that when Gary gets white paint on his hat he goes mental!

There was also hints to different social groups throughout the episode, with Simon being called the "wierd kid", Kelly being called a 'chav' and lots of name calling of 'sluts' and 'virgins'.

Curtis is adamant that he "shouldn't be here", which is representing the fact that young people always think that the worlds against them and they are always treated unfairly. This perhaps could be the case though!

Gary was seen smoking drugs in the toilet - which again is always associated with young people and perhaps criminals.

Response to Prompt Questions

1. How do the contemporary media represent nations, regions and ethnic/social/collective groups of people in different ways?

2. How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?

3. What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

4. To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated?


My initial response to the prompt questions is that we should focus British youth. We could focus on how British Youth are represented in TV, for example the TV series Skins and Misfits. We could focus on how British Youth are represented in Film, for example films like Kidulthood. We could also focus on how music, certain music genres and how contemporary media represent the people who listen to different genres and categorises/label them through the music they listen to.  We could look into how British Youth are represents by music artists too. 

For question 2 we could focus on how the previous generation are struggling to adjust to the current one and may be a possible reason for contemporary media to be so critical of British Youth. 

For question 3 we could talk about how the labelling and categorisation of British Youth from contemporary media can cause them to feel united against whatever force is governing them. For example, police in the London summer riots. 

Write a summary paragraph explaining what we understand about our theme and what types of things it could include.

Media and Collective Identity means how the media interprets different groups of people. Throughout our blog we will be explaining our thoughts on involved subjects of our title, such as teenagers with student protests and how that effected the media, also the representation of the people involved in the London riots. From physical actions to media incorporated subjects like YouTube where people express themselves in different ways to attract some attention either from their viewers or the press. young social groups will be through about constantly throughout our blog as being young people we can understand who's in what social groups, for example how music can change peoples social groups.also we'll be looking into how young people are represented on TV for example skins, top boy, misfits and the inbetweeners. All of these idea's will gradually build up in our blog to give us enough information we need to write up our critical response. 

Prompt Questions

Media and Collective Identity Prompt Questions

1. How do the contemporary media represent nations, regions and ethnic/social/collective groups of people in different ways?


2. How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?


3. What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?


4. To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated?

Possible things to think about:

- Representation of Young People from Press - London Riots and University Protest

- Social Networking Groups

- Young People Representing themselves through Youtube

- The idea of fitting in with a group - Music and different tastes

- Representation of Footballers and Football Fans through Press and Film

- Young People through Tv and Film - Skins Etc