Case Study

The group I am studying are teenagers. I have chosen to study this specific group as in the media, teenagers are represented in different ways and create stereotypes which are positive, negative and controversial all around the world. I believe studying this group will give me a better understanding of the many stereotypes of both genders/sexes that have been created around this modern society.

The 4 media texts which I have chosen to study are Skins, 90210, Misfits and Inbetweeners. In the inbetweeners teenagers are represented as "casual students" who love to have fun and plain stupid most of the time. The boys are represented negatively as they are shown to sub-ordinate women and think of them only sexually and objectify them. At the same time when they are in contact with females they are quite shy and speechless. Women are shown to be stupid and naive and are over sexualised within some shots/camera angles.
In Skins the characters are represented differently through their gender. For example 2 girls are represented as bisexuals as they have sex with each other and also men. Effy is represented as an "emo" as she is shown hurting herself by slitting her wrists etc. This is controversial as it represents mental ilnesses negatively and makes the idea that people who are mentally ill will hurt themselves or people around them. The stereotype of misfits is that the protagonists are shown to be criminals. Certain characters such as Kelly are represented as a chav due to the jewlerry she wears and the amount of makeup she has on. She is stereotyped as a "typical chav" also controversial. Her superhero power is the ability to read minds which sub-ordinates her from her personality which is quite weird in a sense. However another character, simon is quite a shy person and the black sheep of the group, he has no care for his appearance and the fact that his superpower is the ability to become invisible connects with the shyness within his personality. Lastly 90210 is quite an opposite to the representations within UK. 90210 glamorises the daily highschool/college student life because it is set in Beverly Hills. It makes the idea that American lifestyles are much more better than UK as all students are driving fast expensive cars, and are living in big mansions compared to the settings used within Misfits and Skins.

One theory I should be applying is the Male Gaze. This is because it can be used in the representations within Inbetweeners as women are overly sexualised from a males point of view.