Primary Research

1. Find clips you want to use. Obviously use Skins, but also ty to find clips from Buffy, Waterloo Road, Eastenders.
2. Produce a detailed analysis of how teenagers are represented in these clips. I'll do the first clip with you.
3. Decide on a group of people for your primary research - and decide on how you are going to structure your research with them, and what questions you are going to ask.

Sean

Teen storylines (from Serial Culture)

What to do

The basics
1. Get hold of some reading about represntations of the teenager/youth
2. Analyse some TV drama represnetations from Skins, Buffy, Waterloo Road, Eastenders.
3. Choose some clips which show the differences which you have identified in the representations.
4. Show these clips to a group of teenagers and explore their feelings about these differences and their attitudes to the general portrayal of teenagers on TV.

Change of mind

Television Drama
Research into the significance of television drama.
Place of television drama in the schedules. The changing face of television drama. Issues of
“quality”/dumbing down. Drama documentaries/”faction”. Representations of social groups.
Drama series and serials. Soap operas. Comedy drama, costume drama. Literary
adaptations. High culture v low culture debate. Audience reception of TV drama. Historical
development. Notions of authorship in television drama. Relationships of genre to television
institutions.

Representations of teenagers in TV drama.
Skins
Waterloo Road
Eastenders
Buffy

Reading:
stuff on representations of youth
The Teen Series chapter from The TV Genre Book

Your initial ideas

Your current ideas are too unfocused Jack, and also vague claims of “brainwashing” do not attempt to explain how media texts work, they just fall into a sort of over-simplistic conspiracy theory approach to things. Your line “schools teach people to be brainwashed and then newpspares and tv brainwash them” is a good example of this. You may well be right that the institutions of education and the media have a role in reproducing dominant attitudes and beliefs which are then hard to challenge and question, but you have to have a clear analysis of how this happens. There are a number of Marxist media theorists that you could read about in relation to this idea.

If you are interested in this area then I would suggest you focus on the politics of “spin” – ie how politicians attempt to influence news coverage to be favourable to them. I will discuss this further with you in class.

Sean