familiar debate, about whether or not representations are accurate: ‘misrepresentations’ and ‘stereotypes’ have to be replaced with realistic images. However, the demand for political correctness can often conflict with the demand for accuracy: for example, positive stereotypes may serve useful political purposes, and accurate representations (for example, of disadvantaged people’s lives) can easily be construed as negative.
In his influential book Subculture, published forty years ago, the British sociologist Dick Hebdige argued that media coverage of young people could be understood in terms of one such binary distinction: either we had ‘youth as trouble’ – for instance, in stories about youth crime, drug-taking and violence – or we had ‘youth as fun’ – in images of youth as energetic, carefree pleasure-seekers.9 Hebdige was writing primarily about news coverage, although this binary can to some extent be traced through the fictional case studies here. The juvenile delinquent films I consider in chapter 2, for example, are predominantly about ‘youth as trouble’, while the pop films of chapter 3 are mostly ‘youth as fun’; and if the majority of ‘trouble’ narratives are about young males, those in chapter 5 explore the different kinds of trouble provoked or experienced by young females. However, in most instances, the picture is much more complex than a simple binary: fun can cause trouble, but trouble can also be fun; what troubles young people may not trouble (or even be apparent) to adults, and vice versa. ‘Images of youth’ cannot be so easily divided into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’.
The issue of representation obviously raises questions about realism. This is partly a question of visual aesthetics (for example, camerawork, mise-en-scène, the use of locations) and partly about narrative plausibility. I don’t explore either of these areas in any detail here. However, I do consistently return to an issue that is a central preoccupation in representing youth, that of authenticity. By this, I mean the sense not only that a text offers an accurate, or at least recognizable, image of young people’s lives but also that it somehow ‘speaks’ to and from their everyday experience. Authenticity in these terms is notoriously difficult to achieve; and the risk of failure – of being judged as somehow ‘fake’ or ‘phoney’ – is exceptionally high. Yet, as we’ll see, especially in chapters 6 and 7, the imperative of authenticity doesn’t necessarily imply documentary-style social realism.
As I’ve suggested, most representations of young people in mainstream film and television are produced for them rather than by them. They may invite us to enjoy the hedonistic antics of youth, but at the same time they may seek to provide cautionary tales or warnings or to reinforce moralistic ‘adult’ views. The central question, then, is the extent to which such texts provide a ‘youth-centred’ or an ‘adult-centred’ perspective, or both at the same time. Do they view youth in their own terms, as ‘beings’, or merely as ‘becomings’? Do they speak to or for young people, and how do they do this? Are we getting an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’ perspective, or some combination of these?
Answering these questions is unlikely to be straightforward: for example, a text in which young people occupy central roles might nevertheless take an adult-centric perspective. Many narratives about young people focus on their experience of ‘coming of age’, yet they often reflect an implicitly adult perspective – although coming of age can be seen as a corruption or loss of innocence as well as an acquisition of knowledge and enlightenment. This process of transition is itself frequently shown as precarious and risky, and its success is far from guaranteed. An incomplete or unsuccessful transition is likely to end very badly indeed – as is the case in several of the films about girlhood discussed in chapter 5. In other instances, adulthood may be seen as positively undesirable: the transition may be achieved, but only through surrendering autonomy and freedom, as in the case of some of the films discussed in chapter 4.
At the same time, all these texts are also bound to view youth or childhood retrospectively, from the perspective of the present. Implicitly or explicitly, this frequently involves a comparison between past and present, which takes one or the other as better, or as preferable. We create narratives about the ideals or the freedom we have lost or the misery and oppression we have escaped. These issues of retrospection and nostalgia run throughout the following chapters, although they come into particular focus in chapter 4, which looks at films explicitly set in the past, and chapters 6 and 7, which explore how characters are tracked across time in long-form television drama.
As I’ve suggested, many representations of youth on screen are not targeted solely at, or watched by, young people themselves. On the contrary, they often address both youthful and adult audiences at the same time. They may offer points of identification and recognition both for younger audiences and for adults. They may enable us to interpret a narrative, or the outcome of a narrative, simultaneously from an adult and a youthful perspective. This ‘dual address’ is apparent in many of the texts I discuss, even those that appear to fall on one or other side of this divide. The youth-oriented pop films of chapter 3, for example, offer many pleasures for adult audiences, from wishful escapism to ironic humour, to rueful regret at the follies of youth. Even Skins, the paradigmatic British ‘youth television’ drama considered in chapter 7, seems to permit a retrospective adult reading – despite its predominantly negative representation of adults themselves. Youth appears here as something wild and hedonistic but also as fleeting and precarious – and this is something that adult viewers recognize, even if the young people they are watching on screen do not.
Here, again, we need to beware of seeing this in terms of a simple binary distinction. A given text may have multiple audiences – and, indeed, many ‘youth films’ (or TV programmes or novels) may appeal not only to the adult but also to the youth in us all. Adults may ‘identify’ with young people on screen and vice versa; some adults may refuse moralistic readings of young people’s dangerous or troublesome behaviour, while some young people may fully accept them. Audience responses to these representations may thus be quite diverse, and even contradictory. Of course, there are limits to how much textual analysis can tell us about any of this: it can reveal the potentials and parameters of interpretation, but we have to consider real audiences (of various ages) as well. Nevertheless, I hope that Youth on Screen will at least play a useful part in this broader investigation.
Notes
1 The Guardian’s account can be found here: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/24/police-attacked-during-machete-brawl-at-birmingham-cinema. 2 This distinction has been much debated in the sociology of childhood (see, for example, Prout 2005), although it clearly applies to youth as well. 3 There is a vast literature here, but Griffin (1993) and Lesko (2001) remain useful contributions. 4 Bourdieu (1993). 5 See Bennett (2007). 6 See Doherty (2002) and chapter 2 for further discussion. 7 See Davis and Dickinson (2004), Ross and Stein (2008) and chapter 7 for further discussion. 8 Driscoll (2011) contains a useful account of (mostly US) ‘youth film’ from earlier decades. 9 See Hebdige (1979) and chapter
