The term youth culture means the ways in which teenagers and young adults establish a difference between themselves and other cultures that are outside of their social institutions and communities of family, work, home and school. They are able to do this by having their own distinct styles, behaviours, and interests, which can be shown through their choices in clothing styles, social activities, music genres and dialect. Therefore, the collective group of youth is the area in which I will focus on for this essay by discussing how the different contemporary films of “Adulthood” and the “Harry Potter” series represent the youth culture of Britain in a variety of ways and how these two films in particular contrast over this theme.
The film of “Adulthood” is a social realist film that was directed by Noel Clarke and was his first major feature film to be screened within cinemas across the United Kingdom. This is because the film’s prequel of “Kidulthood” was only shown in selected cinemas. He also wrote it by basing it on his own life growing up in London and starred within it as the character of “Sam”, who had first appeared in “Kidulthood”. This particular film was awarded £520,000 worth of lottery money by the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund as well as being backed by the Pathé film company. The UK Film Council's Fund that invested in “Adulthood” has £15 million to invest over three years in British filmmakers, writers and directors throughout the country’s different regions and ethics minorities. This is a way in which to encourage unique and creative film projects to be created using different methods within the British Film Industry so that there is a mixture of films that have the ability to attract a range of audiences.
As the film is completely British due to it being funded by the UK Film Council as well as its director, production team and all of its cast within it being from Britain and growing up within the country, it allows the film to be more realistic and gritty. This is because it included Noel’s own experiences and views of the youth culture within the capital city from his point of view so that displays serious issues that are common within today’s society, such as how gang crime is increasing within the urban cities of the country. This shows that the nation’s law is not abided by a majority of lower class youths that live within those particular areas, who are normally within a gang that carry out crimes but do not care about the consequences of committing them.
“Adulthood” represents the positive aspects of youth culture by showing its audience that there are teenagers and young adults that care for their parents, for example the main character of Sam missed his mother while he was serving his sentence in prison and that they have a great deal of respect for their elders within their gangs, for example by “not raising their voices” to them. It also shows that when youths are members of gangs, they are united and loyal to their friends because they are willing to commit crimes to protect one another or even kill people in rival gangs. However, this particular film does also portray the negative points of youth culture. This is because it represents a majority of youths as being criminals as the teenage characters within the film are drug dealers or take drugs as well as fighting with each and carrying weapons such as knives and guns to gain respect from others. The characters within the film show that many teenagers and young adults will do anything to gain money as well as respect because they are seen carrying out actions such as dealing drugs or killing people so that they do not care about the consequences of their actions and that they do not care about hurting others. The youths within it can also be seeing as racists because they have carried out racial attacks, which shows that they are not understanding of other cultures. Therefore, by looking at these points that I have made within this paragraph it can be used as evidence that “Adulthood” represents the ethnic diversity of the youth culture within London today and how they fight for power and social acceptance amongst each minority and gang that they are a member of.
The films prequel of “Kidulthood” was only shown in selected cinemas because of its controversial content that would not be suitable for a wide audience. This meant that its target audience was focused on teenagers and young adults that were the only age group to appear within the film. However, “Kidulthood” became popular within this age group and began to increase into a broader number of viewers. This meant that its follow up film of “Adulthood” was able to be screened in all cinemas as it had an increasing audience following. Therefore, this made it Noel’s first feature film to be widely released across the country. The audience who watched this particular film thought “that Adulthood is a good way of showing what life in Britain is like as well as telling us that violence and other crimes are wrong and dangerous” and that it “is very well made by Noel Clarke. He is an amazing director and writer.” Therefore, the audience thought that it fitted its genre of social realism well because it portrayed the lives of teenagers within Britain’s capital city realistically and believable by focusing on issues such as gang crimes that affect them in today’s society. However, the reviews of people within the film professions thought that that the film “paints a depressing view of young London” and that “Noel has neglected his responsibility when raising these issues” because there is a very big problem with gang culture which needs to be sorted and glorifying it will not help.” This means that “Adulthood’s critics thought that the film over exaggerated the serious issues that it contains so that it made the film overly gritty and depressing as well as glorifying these particular issues instead of highlighting them and showing that they are wrong. Therefore, there was a mixed overall review on the film between its critics and its actual audience members, who pay to watch and enjoy it at the cinema and on DVD at home. This point can be seen as evidence towards the film’s success because a majority of the general British public who gave their hard earned money to the film’s company approved of it.
Another contemporary film that I am able to compare this particular film to is that of the “Harry Potter” series. This is because it is an extremely popular franchise that has made over $5.4 billion worldwide. Even though it is based on wizards and a magical realm, which makes the genre of it a fantasy, it also focuses on issues and themes such as friendship, love, death, prejudice and fitting in within your peers. The film adaption of the original literary stories was funded by the film company, Waner Brothers. Therefore, it is considered to be only a partial British film because it was financed by Waner Brothers, which is an American production company. However, it can still be seen as being British because it contains actors and members of the crew such as a number of directors that originate from that nationality, such as David Yates who is a BAFTA- and Emmy Award-winning English film and television director.
It is hard to show a true portrayal of Britain and its many regions within these series of films because they are not completely British due to the company it was funded by so that they may see a different view of the country and may want to show it in a different way to many other films that have been a product of the British Film Industry. It may also be hard to successfully do this as they are not continuously based in the real world so that it does not contain many locations of Britain to be able to represent the country clearly. However, when the main character is staying with his aunt and uncle as well as when he is travelling to Hogwarts for another year of study there, it can be seen that Britain is a historical country. This has helped to increase the tourism within these particular areas that it was filmed, such as Gloucester Cathedral, whose visitor numbers have risen by fifty per cent following the release of the first “Harry Potter” film. This shows that the area of film making is far reaching because after people have seen certain films, it can give the audience an interest in the location in which it was set so that they may even wish to visit it afterwards.
The representations of youth culture can be seen within the “Harry Potter” films because Harry Potter is someone who learns from his elders, who are his teachers that are around him such as Dumbledore, as he develops from a boy into a young man. This is similar to teenagers within real life because their role models can be those of an authority figure such as their parents or teachers that they look up to and can be taught life lessons by. He also has to learn how to fight his fears and carry out morally good actions by discovering his inner strength. Members of youth can relate to this point because they are drawn to characters that have to find strength from within themselves because it is something that all teenagers go through to discover who they are while trying to live an appropriate life by not carrying out actions such as criminal acts. While Harry has to find his inner power, he also lacks self-confidence. This is because he worries about what others will think about him and his actions as well as being picked on by boys who are more aggressive than himself and lacking the security and love of parents as he became an orphan when he was just a baby. Teenagers can relate to Harry because of this as they all feel some form of low self-confidence at some point while they progress into adulthood and try to fit in with society and their peers. This may lead to pressure from those around them. Harry Potter is a suitable role model for the youth culture because he only surrounds himself with friends that mainly follow the rules of their society correctly as they try to defeat evil with good. However, these series of films cannot completely represent the youth of today because the teenage characters within “Harry Potter” are wizards that are struggling to protect the magical world from the evil wizard, who is known as “Lord Voldemot”. However, the teenagers and young adults within reality would not have to face those kinds of tasks, which mean that the main plot of the series is unrelatable to the issues that they would occur in their everyday lives.
It can be seen from my essay that it is easier to truly represent Britain and its regions if the company that a film is funded by as well as the cast and crew that are contained within it come from the same country because they are able to bring together their own views and experiences of their time in Britain to make it more realistic. Also, it is easier to represent youth culture by including characters that are within that particular culture because they will have to experience the same issues as the young audience that enjoy watching them and help to make the films money.
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