The Representation of Youth Tribes and Subcultures in the Cinema of John Hughes
The Representation of Youth Tribes and Subcultures in the Cinema of John Hughes.
In this research essay I expect to find that the use of youth tribes and subcultures can clearly be identified in mid-80s comedy-dramas; particularly in those written, produced and directed by John Hughes. The primary texts I will be analysing are The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science. I have selected these texts as they are few of many that represent young people in an oppositional approach compared to the dominant ideologies of society at that time. I will be using Paul Hodkinson’s Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes and Stuart Hall’s Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices as secondary sources to inform this essay. I will also be looking at how teenagers have been represented in other media texts such as Grease and the American Pie sequel.
The term “representation” can be defined as to how the language of media and its conventions are used to represent certain people and objects to the text’s targeted audience. Stuart Hall states in his book Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices that his definition of representation is:
“To put it briefly, representation is the production of meaning through language”. Hall, (p.16).
Since the film industry blossomed it has been dominated by many ideologies as to what is ‘acceptable’ and what can be perceived as taboo; these theories also suggest how people should be represented. For example, theorist Vladimir Propp proposed that there are eight main characters to a film, stating that the woman is the passive “damsel-in-distress”. In Propp's book Morphology of the Folktale it is stated that the children who are interested in the fairy-tale genre, they apply their personalities with the character they feel most connected with:
“Presumably, the kinds of choices made by a child might be related to his personality. For example, does a little
In this research essay I expect to find that the use of youth tribes and subcultures can clearly be identified in mid-80s comedy-dramas; particularly in those written, produced and directed by John Hughes. The primary texts I will be analysing are The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science. I have selected these texts as they are few of many that represent young people in an oppositional approach compared to the dominant ideologies of society at that time. I will be using Paul Hodkinson’s Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes and Stuart Hall’s Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices as secondary sources to inform this essay. I will also be looking at how teenagers have been represented in other media texts such as Grease and the American Pie sequel.
The term “representation” can be defined as to how the language of media and its conventions are used to represent certain people and objects to the text’s targeted audience. Stuart Hall states in his book Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices that his definition of representation is:
“To put it briefly, representation is the production of meaning through language”. Hall, (p.16).
Since the film industry blossomed it has been dominated by many ideologies as to what is ‘acceptable’ and what can be perceived as taboo; these theories also suggest how people should be represented. For example, theorist Vladimir Propp proposed that there are eight main characters to a film, stating that the woman is the passive “damsel-in-distress”. In Propp's book Morphology of the Folktale it is stated that the children who are interested in the fairy-tale genre, they apply their personalities with the character they feel most connected with:
“Presumably, the kinds of choices made by a child might be related to his personality. For example, does a little