Films: 'Clueless' and 'Stand by me'

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Films: ‘Clueless’ and ‘Stand by me’

Magazines: Various: targeted at teenagers

Newspaper: Articles: from ‘The Guardian’

Adverts: in association with magazines read and more specifically advertising Coca Cola

What do people especially adult’s think of teenagers? Nice, polite, helpful, good example to younger kids. No! They think they are dangerous, unpleasant creatures for the dark depths of hell. Teenagers are portrayed in many aspects. Rich, not so rich (Clueless and Stand by me), dangerous and drug addicts who drink a lot (The Guardian), gullible and not to bright (magazines and adverts). None of those actually portrays who teenagers in general really are. Teenagers are the voice of the future just waiting to be heard. In this essay, I will be presenting a series of examples on how adults really think teenagers feel, act and like.

Films don’t always portray teenage life or aspects of adolescence using realistic sceneries. In ‘Stand by me’, two groups of teenagers are portrayed. The younger group of friends show a more realistic life-style of typical aspects of adolescent life. For example feeling alone like nobody loves you. In ‘Clueless’ the characters are shown as well of kids who thinks money grows trees. The characters in ‘stand by me’ are shown as smokers who always swear and get up to no good. The name of the title suggest that the person who wrote it must have nothing against teenagers. It does have some false aspects in it but at the end, it showed how an unprivileged teenager managed to turn his life around and do some good in the world. In there film there was one character in it that really stands out Chris Chambers, all in the movie he was putting himself down and encouraging Geordie to follow his dreams of being a writer. Geordie who was the narrator of the story explained that when Chris got older he became a lawyer but was later killed. Chris died for something he believed in and showed this all the way through the movie. There are also some older teenagers in the movie, there more tougher than the younger ones but they don’t swear as much. They have a leader Ace and what he says goes. In ‘Clueless’ however the teenagers live in mansions, sip cocktails by the pool and think the can argue a way to a good grade. The teenagers in the film are very materialistic and if no one dresses or acts like them they look down on them. They didn’t like the way Tye looked so Cher and Dion changed her and created a stuck up know it all. They learnt there lesson and have accepted people for who they are.

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There is tendency to highlight social denounce associated with teenagers in newspaper. Such as: crime, drugs, smoking, alcohol and teenage pregnancy. This medium may use sensational headlines in a blame culture. They use statistics that point to anti-social behaviour that perhaps mislead the public and are biased towards there findings.

In the article in ‘The Guardian’ dated September, 1996 (30% of boys 14-15 ‘carry a weapon’) it reports on a surveys finding culture. Eight years on, the statistics could still be relevant.

The article is about how teenagers and how they have gone from bad (e.g. Cannabis) ...

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