- US psych GS Hall is generally credited with the ‘discovery’ of adolescence
- Pre-industrial European societies made no distinction between childhood and other pre-adult phases of life.
- Coincided with a new form of muscular Christianity which shaped dominant constructions of femininity as well as masculinity.
- The early model of the Latin School was akin to a monastery: women and the feminine were potential sources of temptation.
- The new public school system associated women with weakness and fragility and men with masculinity and strength. (Gillis 1974)
- According to Kett the mid-nineteenth century concept of adolescence was in its crudest form an embodiment of Victorian prejudices about females and sexuality.
- Most of the changes which laid the foundations for the discovery of ‘adolescence’ occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century with the growth of factory production, working class families were fragmented by migration to cities of the 15-25 yr olds who stayed there. The factory conditions also improved the conditions of young working class women’s lives.
- Sentimental ideas about children did not arise until the late 19th century.
- Changes in the education system played a major role in shaping the emerging ideology of adolescence.
- In US cities social reformers used religion to ‘protect’ and ‘civilise’ urban working class youth groups.
- Hall borrowed from the Great Chain of Being adapting it to a ‘life-stage’ model of the move from birth through childhood and adolescence to the fixed point of maturity at adulthood and down again to old age.
- The roaring twenties saw a widespread moral panic over youthful female sexuality during a time of increasing independence for some groups of women. (Kett 1977)
- The 1950s saw both the development of the ‘first distinctive post-war youth sub-cultures’ (Springhall 1986) e.g. in the Teddy Boy and a reassertion of women’s ideal role in the home and at the centre of nuclear family life and the ideology of domesticated femininity. (Summerfield 1984)
- For Anna Freud, adolescence was constructed as a period of inevitable psychic turmoil and vulnerability.
- Lee Ellis in US journal Delinquent Behavior: criminal behaviour stemmed ‘fundamentally from genetic factors, although social factors could also play a part.’ He concluded that individuals from large families, whose parents were no longer cohabiting, aged between twelve and thirty, black and male, are assumed to be most likely to commit ‘serious victimful crimes.’
- The key argument in deprivation theory is that young people turn to delinquency as a consequence of a variety of social, cultural, economic and psychological influences, all of which are constructed as negative.
- Deprivation theory received a major boost in Britain during 1970s when Sir Keith Joseph as Minister for Health brought the idea of a cycle of ‘transmitted deprivation’ out of academia into the popular domain.
- Bowlby did work on maternal deprivation
- Early childhood experiences and anti-social values transmitted through the ‘broken home’ thesis.
- ‘Delinquent youth’ can occupy the position of both victim and perpetrator.
- So-called ‘conflict theories’ were forged by the political changes of the 50s – 70s in Western societies.
- Focus was on how and why certain young people…came to be seen and treated as ‘deviant’ and / or ‘delinquent.’
- Deviance is represented in terms of individual failure to attain normal positions in the spheres of sexuality, family life and the job market. Denise Kandel.
- Young men were assumed to be actively and often aggressively ‘deviant’ and young women were usually treated as passively ‘at risk’ and in need of protection or as actively ‘deviant’ usually in sexual terms.
- The absences are equally significant here. We seldom read of the need to ‘protect’ working class young people or young people of colour from the periodic or sustained use of harsh policing strategies directed at certain groups.
Work scheme for theory and context teaching, summer term 2010
| Week | Theory |
Exercises | How to apply to your coursework evaluation | Key concepts for the exam |
| Introduction | Remember your theoretical evaluation of production will be examined in the form of a question (1a) on one or more of the following:
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But 1b will specifically refer to:
Which of your production pieces best fits each of these e.g. A will suit your music magazine, soap, website and posters; B will better suit the soap trailer; C again music magazine and trailer; D all of them and E all of them |
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| 1 Monday 19th April Lessons 4 (SS) +1 no teacher |
Audience Lesson 1 Notes sheet on Audience. (2 sides) |
1 Research into products 2 Memories 3 Clip of skins or Shameless or misfits (Adam has this) discuss audience pleasures. 4 Find out how many have made and uploaded product and how many have been involved in such products – why? 5 Read student notes 6 Make notes on Audience pleasures |
1 Why are people going to buy your music magazine? 2 Why are they going to watch your soap trailer? 3 What are they going to get out of these in terms of pleasures? Be specific. 4 Have you had any hits on your soap on YouTube? Any comments? |
Audience / genre Which pleasures do audiences get out of your chosen texts? |
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Narrative Lesson 2 Twilight Notes sheet on Narrative and character |
HW Class ex watch some agreed programme and survey attitudes and feelings about it 6 Read notes sheet on Narrative and Character 7 Watch episode of (?) and identify narrative stages |
1 Who is going to be buying / watching your product / what are they bringing to them? 2 What narrative decisions did you make – think about time / information / codes of action and enigma 3 What kinds of decisions did you take about character in your soap trailer? |
Narrative |
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| Collective identity Lesson 3 |
Classwork individually – what kind of things are you going to write in your answers to these (opposite) for your chosen topic? | These are the four prompt questions on Media and Collective identity:
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| Lesson 4 Twilight |
Continue above. | |||
| HW ESSAY ‘The modern representation by the media of a particular social group has changed a great deal over the past 100 years.’ Discuss |
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| 2 Monday 26th April Lessons 1 (SS) |
Character Notes sheet on Stereotyping and countertypes |
1 Read the student notes 2 discuss Stereotypes and counter types find examples |
1 What examples of stereotypes and counter types have you got in your products? Why did you put them in? | Genre / representation 1 What are the representations of your chosen social group? 2 What codes and conventions are used to represent them? |
| HW In your text books read p 30-39 on writing about the production. Make sure you can relate the ideas here to |
your own products – write your own mini answers |
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| 3 Monday 3rd May Lessons 4 (SS) +1 no teacher |
Post-modernism Notes sheet on postmodernism Lesson 1 (1-3) Marxism Hegemony Lesson 2 (4) Twilight Lesson 3 (5-6) Lesson 4 see *1-5 |
1 Read notes on postmodernism 2 Discuss the different types involved in post-modernism write examples down 3 Hyper-reality – examples – what is New York like? what do you know of Jade Goody / Tiger Woods / Colonel Khadafi – how info gained? 4 Gavin and Stacey Case Study 1 – give grid with categories to be filled in with examples from the programme. 5 Role play on Marxism. (Footnote 9) 6 Discussion on effect of Hegemonic values on our own lives and values. (Footnote 10) |
*1 How / to what extent does/ do your products use postmodernism? *2 What examples of binary oppositions have you? *3 What is the role of your chosen institutions in adhering to stereotypes or sanctioning countertypes? Are they slaves to bourgeois ideals? Capitalism? *4 To what extent are you towing the hegemonic party line with your products (think soap: girl wants boy / teen pregnancy bad…) *5 Which hegemonic values are you reinforcing are there any which you are challenging? |
Media language 1 To what extent do your chosen texts reinforce hegemonic values?
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| Collective identity | HW ESSAY ”The Media does not construct representations of identity merely reflects them.’ |
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4 Monday 10th May Lessons 1 (SS) |
Anti-hegemonic representations |
1 Little Miss Sunshine (Case study 2) opening sequence – do spidergram of hegemonic expectations of older people and little girls now see how different they are in this film. |
1 Do you have any anti-hegemonic representations in any of your products? |
1 Do any of your chosen texts offer anti-hegemonic representations? 2 What institutions have produced your chosen texts? Why them? What are their hegemonic ideals? |
| Collective identity | HW ESSAY ‘Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group you have studied.’ |
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| 5 Monday 17th May Lessons 4 (SS) +1 no teacher |
Hyper realism Feminism Context Notes sheets on Marxism Feminism Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Lesson 1 (1) Lesson 2 Twi (2) Lesson 3 (3+4) Lesson 4 Twi (5) |
1 Watch episode of Shameless- discussion about hegemonic values (See case study 3) 2 If time role play the two adverts – (footnote 14) 3 Angela Mc Robbie and Marjorie Ferguson then Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory – use Skins episode see case study 4. 4 Story board or film a woman to show how women are viewed by our society (see footnote 15.) 5 Mind map examples of changes in media due to historical events, social changes or law. |
1 Do your texts make use of hyper reality? 2 Did you adhere to the male gaze theory in your use of the camera on your women? How? 3 What kind of contexts affected your products both in their making and in their acceptance? |
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| Collective identity | HW 1 Go on the website longroadmedia.com/resources and look at the resources on Audience and on Narrative. 2 ESSAY ‘Looking at two media describe the ways in which a particular group of people are collectively represented using specific examples to support your answer.’ |
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| 6(SS) Monday 25th May Lessons 1 |
Creativity | See separate document. | Apply creativity theory to your products. |