kidadulthood review. How are teenagers represented in the film 'Kidulthood'?

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How are teenagers represented in the film ‘Kidulthood’?

The film “Kidulthood” deals with a number of teenage issues and the traditional adult/teenage conflict. It looks at stereotypical teenagers, who are often described as moody, argumentative, violent, causing trouble (getting an ‘ASBO’, ‘Hoodies with lots of attitude, all in an urban back round. Set in west London, the film follows a group of teenagers for a period of 48 hours.

Bullying is a big issue in many schools around the U.K but especially in larger schools in cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham. Bullying is one of the main subjects tackled in ‘Kidulthood’. In the film, bullying has a huge effect on all of the teenagers. Everyone in the film deals with Katie’s suicide in different ways. Katie committed suicide after being severely bullied by a group of girls at school. An older boy named Sam also bullies Trife. Trife however, gets his own back on Sam after seeing the effects of extreme bullying. Most teenagers deal with bullying on a day-to-day basis throughout their school lives, whether they are getting bullied themselves, watching or taking part in it.  Either way, bullying is always a big part of school life. In the film, the presence of bullying shows the audience how hard it is to watch or to be around it. It shows parents should be more aware of teenagers and keep more in touch with them.

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The sound track to the film is an urban tune with only British artists rapping in the film such as Dizzy Rascal, and The Streets. As a British film, with London-born actors, the director and the cast thought it was important to make the music British too, as it’s a big part of teenage life. Music is the voice of the youth and adds to the theme of the film (teenagers). The music helps to bring home the message of the ‘youth’. Music plays almost throughout the film, intensifying and giving emotion to the film, without the music I ...

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I think that the author's conclusion is very insightful, but it is limited by lack of knowledge about both the culture being represented in the film, and about stereotypes in general. The extremely realistic and emotionally manipulative mode of representation of the film has managed to convince her that the characters and events in this film are in fact real. Rather than doubt the representation, she resolves the conflict between what she has seen and what she knows to be true from her own experience by concluding that they only exist in some places. This is very intelligent, but it also shows the power and danger of stereotypical representations and their ability to create (rather than reflect) cultural realities. Some research into stereotype theory, especially stereotypes of race, class and gender in contemporary urban culture, would have helped to clarify some of the confusion. 3 stars.