How is the collective identity you have studied represented in contemporary media ?

Collective Identity is when a group of individuals have attributes that they all share, for example when a group all share the same taste in music or film, or what age group they are from.

The collective identity i have been looking at is youth, i have been looking at films that show very different views on teenager's and youth's life's and personality's in general.  

In the film "fishtank" the lead character "Mia" is a 15 year old girl living on an estate in a block of flats. She was kicked out of school as is stated by her mouther in a couple scenes. This sets up her character's represition of youth as an uneducated and misbehaving youth. The opening scene's of the film confirm this and that it applies to other youths in the area that there are other teenagers not at school. The rebellious and misbehaving attitude of the youth is shown when Mia starts a fight with a group of girls (one of which was a friend of Mia's) When the tension between the girls gets to it peek in the argument Mia with out a second thought head buts one of the girls this shows how spontaneously violent she can be. The film shows that the environment these teenagers are growing up in is what is making them the way they are, the film as a whole shows that where they live is a very poor and harsh environment where the adults are loud argumentative or selfish so this forces the youths to be the same just to survive and not become victims.

In the film "a room for romeo brass" shows the life's of two young teenage boys from the north. The two of them both attend school and are shown as innocent but tong in cheek pranksters. A scene that shows this is when one of the boys who has been asked to find out what a girl likes a man to be dressed in, so that the man who has asked him can go buy the clothes to impresses her, he returns and tells him the opposite of what she told him she likes so he would dress up in a rubbish pink track suit to try and impress her. It is shown that the boy never indented to hurt anyone in the situation but just to get a laugh from it. A scene that shows there innocents is the way they behave with pornographic magazines, they understand what they are but they find it funny that one of there dads has a giant pile of them in his room.  

The comparison between the two films and there depiction of youth is very different. "fishtank" shows teenagers who are forced to grow up quickly but cant handle it and end up becoming very emotional, as where the boys in "a room for romeo brass" still have there innocents.