Exam Tips

Key areas of Media and Collective Identity

 - How do contemporary media represent [Youth Culture] in different ways?
 - How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?
 - What are the social implications of different media representation of groups of people?
 - To what extent is human identity increasingly 'mediated'?

From the Specification

 - Majority of examples in candidates's answers should be contemporary. However, theories and approaches may be drawn from any time period.
 - Where candidates refer to only one media area in their answer, marks will be restricted.
 - Where candidates fail to provide or infer historical references and / or future projections, marks will be restricted.

*Use examples from films and music from the year 2009+

Last years examiners report

 - Examples and case studies should be from within the last 5 years
 - Stronger answers managed to tackle the question of how dominant representations inform identity.
 - Balance is important.
 - Strong arguments present a balance argument with the clear structure, weighing up competing arguments, developing the case through the use of examples and working towards conclusion.

The Mark Scheme

Explanation/Analysis/Arguments (20 Marks)
Use of Examples (20 Marks)
Use of Terminology (10 Marks)

Music!

 - Historically the youth culture has stemmed from the music
 - Film has sought to represent youth culture WHEREAS music seeks to appeal to them.
 - Remember we talked about how the music industry was reactive to the culture (cool-hunting)

How I am going to use this to revise

 - Focus on films like Shank, Sket and iLL Manors to focus on urban 'Hoods' youth culture
 - Different theories to link with argument

Exam Prep

What is collective identity and how is it mediated?

- Collective Identity is a form of identifying a group of people such as youth sub culture
- Collective identity is the shared sense of belonging to a group. It is conceptualized as individuals’ identifications of, identifications with, or attachment to certain groups.
- Mediation is the processes by which messages and values are constructed and communicated to us.

- It is mediated in films and music by using stereotypical aspects that is found in the media.

- Mediated by repetition and micro elements.

Targets:

- Revise all theories needed and make sure I understand them

- Revise on the 20th century youth more such as 'Mods'

- Look at practise questions about film and music on youth

Q6 Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group of people you have studied. [50]

Focus on Youth Culture/Sub culture.

Look at 60's youth, compared to youth now. (Quadrophenia - Mods)

Good and bad representation of youth.

Bring in theories such as Richard Dyer and bring him in stereotypes of youths, how 'Hoods' are represented in society.

How youth culture came about, 'youth as a moral panic'

Frontline - Merchants For Cool

- Co-operate America see Teens as a mass market who they want to mediate & are seen as "Africa". 
- Most studies generation in history. 
- Teen runs today economy by spending over $1 billion and are given 'guilt money'.
- Teens will process on average 3,000 discrete adverts a day.
- 75% of Teens has a t.v in the world. 
- Due to technology the media can target specific groups such as 12-14 year olds girls.
- "Cool Hunting" is finding 20% of the population who are the 'trend setters'
- "Cool Hunting" is a paradox, as it kills what it finds. By discovering cool you force cool to move onto the next thing.
- These multinational companies have 'weaponary' in their arsenal to pick up the next big thing.
- MTV realised that kids were changing so therefore new things are becoming cool, something that was nee cool was not cool anymore as nothing stays consistent. They had to understand where teen culture was moving.
- MTC created the term 'Mook' who are obnoxious, loud, fun, crazy groups of males. There is not "Mook" in nature.
- The media is not longer trying to find ways to help young people they are studying them to find out how to pitch their products to them.
- Some old cliches but packaged in a new way so it sen as empowering. They are known as "midriffs'. "I am midriffs, hear me roar".
- We are now seeing advanced sexualisation of teenagers.
- More than ever we now live in a media climate where American culture has beaten British culture in submission.
- Teenage girls are being represented as women with the aspect of sex even though they are still teenagers.
- "It's one enclosed feedback loop." Rushkoff says. "Kids' culture and media culture are now one of the same, and it becomes impossible to tell which came first--the ager or the marketing of the anger."

Youth Culture Films Notes

Stefan

Richard dyer's theory can be applied to this movie as it plays on the stereotypes of british youth, MBTD, shows stereotypes as working class youth and TIM as middle classed represented as young immature teenagers.

Elliot

Wich Kidulthood and Sket there is a contrast of class and culture. There is a difference between the two. The representations are that they are both less passive and equally deviant.

Mousa

All urban films are very similar, the creators are monopolising a genre. The relationship between the film and music. Music has a big impact on the opening of the film as it could change the whole aspect of the type of film. Such as if you put indie music on the opening of 'Shank' it shows the opening titles different. In terms of media language theses films are pushing the boundaries such as introducing new technology and titles which are unconventional. Lifts these representation out of standard cinema and makes them feel more real. Representation are given a similitude aspect to them. All the posters are very similar due to the similar representation. Outside of the UK, Kidulthood was represented as the 'Streets of London'. In Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, there is a scene that a male is seen as a sexual object rather than the conventional female. Films like Adulthood is seen as voyeuristic.

Culture

"Culture… Is not artifice and manners, the reserve of the sunday best, rainy afternoons and concert halls. It is the very material of our daily lives, the bricks and mortar of our most commonplace understandings."

David Willis 1979

But what if the Bricks and mortar of our most commonplace understanding is mediated to us?

Mr Roberts 2014

iLL Manors vs Anuvahood

Task: 

Create a 5 minute video comparing the representation of youth cultures in two films.

Work should contain at least 2 theorists and how their theories may be applied to the chosen films. Try and focus the work around the key questions on the case study sheet.

They you can begin writing up your comparison as a form of a script that you will then record. Then edit in clips and images to support your work.

Media and collective - Youth Culture Case Study

Anuvahood - parody mocks convention.

What is re-presented?

The youth are represented as immature, very stereotypical and comical. Anuvahood’ dismantles a pantheon of street stereotypes with acid one-liners and energy levels that are off the chart. Deacon plays K, a vain MC whose lack of success leads him to try his luck as a drug dealer. When his money and gear are pinched by vainer, even more deluded lisping meathead Tyrone (Richie Campbell), K must show his community and family what he’s worth. It’s a bit juvenile and some of the racial and sexual stereotypes are spiteful. Although, the way it has been represented in the film makes it hilarious and entertaining.
Whose representation is this this?

Why has this representation been constructed in this way?

How can this representation be decoded? (Audience Reception)

What points or arguments can you make as a result of this analysis?

Which theories and theorists can you reference in support of your comments and arguments?

What is the overall conclusion you come to for this this case study?

Representation Theorists

Richard Dyer
- Argues stereotypes are a way of reinforcing differences between people, and representing these differences as natural.

- For example, stereotypes about man and women reinforce the idea that they are very different.

- Applied to a youth film, in the film 'Kidulthood', the urban society represents youth as rude and mischievous. The stereotypical representation is the way they dress such as they wear hoodies, track suits, trainers and usually carry knifes. To society they are classified as 'Hoods'.


- In Kidulthod, they use all these attributes to reinforce the differences of how these youths are represented in the film and this gives the film an impact on they are represented. This makes the differences feel as it's natural. This representation in the film, according to Dyer is now presumed to be natural, meaning thats how society believes how urban youth are represented. Such as if someone on streets is wearing a hoodie or track suits, they will threatened as they could believe they could be a gang member that may be carrying a knife.

Laura Mulvey

- Developed the theory of the Male Gaze which is the idea that a film is made to be watched through the eyes of a heterosexual male viewer which objectifies women making them an object in the film.

- She argued that female characters were represented as passive objects of male sexual desire.

- In the film, Ill Manors, the female character is represented as a "Escort". And in a scene, you see her in her underwear, showing her body in a sexual manor. But also, later on she was put against her will to perform sexual acts. And according to her this is one of her three different ways of looking in cinema, this one being the look of the audience that views the film using different camera shots. This objectifies her and limits her a sexual object.

Jean Baudrillard

Antonio Gramsci

Charles Acland

Postmodernism

The 'basics' of postmodernism

- It is essentially the breakdown of barriers of what is perceived as real and what is real.

- It could be between: 

• High art and low art
• Organic and artificial
• Male and female
• Between texts themselves
• And between what is real and what is not
• Old and new
• Past and present

- The Desert of the Real (The Matrix)
______________

- Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)

- He argues our society has become so reliant on representations that we have  lost contact with the real.

- There is no distinction between reality and representation, only the simulacrum

- Simulacrum - a copy that now has more reality than the object it is a copy of.

Creating the simulacrum

- You start with a real object

- The object then becomes a representation

- The representation then becomes more important and 'real' to us than the original, it is hyperreal

- This fundamentally destroys the original eventually meaning everything is a copy

- Future representations are the copies of a copy and so on

Therefore…

- Baudrillard has a problem with the idea of representation

- Representation implies there was something there originally to represent

- But in his view, how can one represent something that does not exist?
______________

Is it possible to create a generic construction of a pop video that is also original?

In what ways is youth culture in 'Teenager from Outer Space' represented as a simulacrum?

If we accept Little Mix as a girl group rather than 4 individuals that sing, are they post-modernist?

Is something a simulacrum when we know it's a simulacrum?

Semiotics

Semiotics

- Developed by Ferdinand de Saussure who studied how language created meaning.
- Language does nit reflect reality - meaning is constructed through language.
- We make meaning through the creation and interpretation of signs.
- Signs can be words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts, objects.

- Signifier + Signified = Sign.
- The signifier is the form which the sign takes.
- The signified is the concept it represents.
- The sign is the total meaning that results from associating the signified from the signifier.

Little Mix - Cannonball




They are represented as determined through their attitude. Their emotions is key as when they win, they scream and jump in celebration which is stereotypical. They are also represented as passionate subjects and not objects. The element of success is being signified. It can be seen as stereotypes in the way he video is made, it is the same video for all of the previous winners, it looks like a promo for the song. Signifies young people doing good things, such as winning. They are not harming or being sexual. It shows the lack of representation as it shows them as they are being seen.

Little Mix - Wings



They have gone all out to make it a professional video. They style is carefully planned such as each character has their own look for themselves. They have used props, costumes and makeup to signify they're professional artists and belong within the music industry. They are not represented as overtly sexualised. No fragmented body shots makes it slightly unconventional music video for a female group pop video. They're bright and colourful which is a convention. 

Little Mix - Move 




They're attitude is more amplified and a more sexualised. It develops in meeting the expectations of the pop industry. The women show dominance of the men in the video.

Laura Mulvey - Visual Pleasure and the Male Gaze

Visual Pleasure and the Male Gaze

Intro to Mulvey:

- She is a feminist film scholar 
- Wrote 'visual pleasure and narrative cinema' (1975)
- Analysed Hollywood cinema and argued that female characters were represented as passive objects of male sexual desire.
- This is encapsulated in the term 'the Male Gaze'
- A film is watched through the eyes of the male characters

- Scopophilia is the pleasure one can gain from looking
- Cinema offers these pleasures voyeuristically
- Thereby satisfying the male scopophilic desires
- A women connotes something to be looked at
- Simply, men look and women are looked at
- Subject and object

- Her theory specifically related to classical Hollywood cinema
- She wanted more feminist avant-garde filmmaking to battle the patriarchal Hollywood system
- Her theory can still be seen in many other forms of cinema through

The Look:
3 different ways of looking in cinema:

- The look of the camera that records the film (Phallic Camera)
- The look of the audience that views the film
- The look of the characters (male, dominant, subjects) within the film

Criticisms:

- The theory focuses on heterosexual male spectators
- It assumes audiences respond to the text in a uniform way
- Ignores the possibility of males providing visual pleasure
- Kathleen Rowe argues that being the object of the gaze is a position of power
- Richard Dyer questions the association of looking as active ad being looked at as passive

The Gaze in Action

What the male characters looking at?
What is the camera looking at?
What is the audiences expected to be looking at?
What are the purposes of the shots of the male and female characters?
What is the presumed spectator?
Which characters are dominant and which are submissive?

Ill Manors

- 

Theories of Mediation and Representation

What is Mediation?

Mediation is the processes by which messages and values are constructed and communicated to us.

Mediation is a process media companies such as newspaper companies go through to alter information that is within the Newspaper, News Report, Documentry etc. An example of mediation is the alteration of an album released by a popular band.

Single piece of media is medium.

Media is a collective noun.

What is Representation?

Representation is the reinforcement of these messages and values through continuous repetition in the mass media.
________________

We were asked to draw a 'Bank Manager' in 60 seconds and we all drew a man in a suit.

Micro Elements

Film Language:
- Editing
- Mise-en-Scene
- Lighting & Colour
- Sound
- Cinematography

Macro Elements

Film Language:
- Genre
- Representation
- Narrative

Denotations

What you see.

Connotations

What you associate with those things that you see or hear.

Stereotypes

Media representation often use stereotypes asa cultural shorthand.

The two dimensions of the stereotype are physical and behavioural.

Richard Dyer:

- Argues stereotypes are a way of reinforcing differences between people, and representing these differences as natural.
- For example, stereotypes about man and women reinforce the idea that they are very different.

WHO or WHAT is being represented?
HOW is the representation created?
WHO has created the representation?
WHY is the representation created in the way?
What is their intention?
WHAT is the effect of the representation?

WHO has created the representation?

Gatekeeping: A theorist called White (1961) spoke of the 'gatekeepers' - that is the people who are part of the decision making process in the construction of media texts.
________________

The Constructionist Approach

The representation is constructed with a set of ideas.

Time Line

Time Line of Stagnation

___________________________________________________________________________
Made In Britain                                      Kidulthood                                    Harry Brown
     (1982)                                                   (2006)                                            (2009)

Positive & Negative Representations

24 Hour Party People (2002) - Positive to some demographics as it shows taking risks and enjoying life & Negative towards the old generation due to the younger generations behaviour

Kidulthood (2006) - Negative because of the amount of things that happen including murder, drugs and fights. At the end it could be seen as positive from the way the main character wants to change his life and be a better person.

This is England (2006) - Positive of the way they accept a youth into the group and stand up for him, also the need for people to belong. 

Control (2007) - Negative in their behaviour and attitude towards the adults but Positive in the way to feel sorry for the character and make the audience feel sympathetic towards them

Adulthood (2008) - More Positive than Kidulthood in the way one of the main character is trying to be a better person and to ask for for forgiveness. Although some characters have bad intention, the audience are made to feel more sympathetic towards them. But the society is still represented as negative.

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008) - Positive.

Eden Lake (2008) - Negative due to the way youths are represented as killers.

Harry Brown (2009) - Negative.

1950s, 60s, 70s & 80s Youth Films

Teenage Bad Girl (My Teenage Daughter) (1856)

- The youth is the British version of 'Rebel Without a Cause' due to the way the youth is rebellious against the adults.

- It represents the youth as bad and trouble making.


Teenagers from Outer Space (1959)

- Youth is represented as aliens who are killers of adults

- They are also violent which is another way of showing that they are rebellious.



Wild for Kicks [Beat Girl] (1961)

- Youth are represented as "Wild" and mischievous

- Compared to 'Rebel Without a Caused' because of the way the way the youth are acting rebellious against adults.

The Young ones trailer (1961)

- Youth is represented as rebellious against their parent (adults)

- They also shown as "hip" and "cool" due to their behaviour which is also seen to be mischievous

- It's a safe representation in the form of a media of the way youths act rebellious.



Clockwork Orange (1971)

- Youth is represented animalistic, aggressive.

- Aggressive references to the holocaust.

- Youth are dehumanised.

- Dark split between youth and adults.

- Slang references.

- Uses of violence.




Scum (1979)

- Youth is represented as dangerous and rebellious.

- Sum is a prison for youth who try to survive the hell hole.

- There is a lot of violence and have a lot of blood involved.

- Adults are portrayed as physical brutal but not psychologically violent.




Made in Britain (1982)

- Youth are represented as criminals and rebellious.

- They appear to be careless and out of control.

- Youth display a lot of anger and frustration which is shown through their language and in the actions they present.

- They are also violent, have no respect for the law and authority.

- Have a sarcasm behaviour towards the authority.

- Britain is represented is as a low class, rough and dangerous place to be.

- Tim Roth (main character) is a skin head and has a "Nazi" tattoo in the middle of his forehead.

- Upper class adults are quite demeaning towards the youth and are un-amused by their attitudes.

Quadrophenia

Reviews

The Guardian - http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/aug/18/reel-history-quadrophenia-riot

Between 1964 and 1966, teenagers rioted in British seaside towns. Violence flared between mods and rockers, two youth movements that were connected in the press with drug-taking, vandalism and delinquency.

Youth Culture

Jimmy (Phil Daniels), a fictional mod, hangs out in a London dive. Everyone looks about 12; pass round a few splurge guns and you'd be in Bugsy Malone. But this lot are less the adorable moppet sort of gangster and more the sort that takes pills, nicks stuff and smashes other people's faces in. Among the newspaper clippings and pornography on Jimmy's bedroom wall is an article about the 'Battle of Hastings' – not the 1066 one with the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans, but the 1964 one with the mods and the rockers. The film is based on a rock opera by the Who, which it turns into a stealth musical, complete with lavish product placement for the Who's albums. Still, Jimmy's obsession with the band is credible: their hit My Generationbecame the ultimate mod anthem on its release in 1965.

Media

Mod Ace-Face (Sting) is fined £75 by the magistrate. "I'll pay now if you don't mind," drawls Ace-Face, revealing enormous wealth and privilege (£75 in 1965 is equivalent to about £2,700 today, going by average earnings; it was ritzy for a teenager to own a chequebook). This is based on a real trial overseen by Simpson at Margate in which a 17-year-old boy did indeed offer to pay his £75 fine with a cheque. Britain's media were united in their outrage at this new breed of posh-kid rioter, and splashed the story across the front pages. What none of them bothered to report was that, three days later, the boy admitted he had never signed a cheque and did not even have a bank account, let alone £75. Quadrophenia gets slightly closer to the truth: after the verdict, Jimmy's heart is broken when he sees his beloved Ace-Face working as a bellhop at the Grand Hotel, revealing that he's not really a posh kid at all. The fact he's stuck in a lowly job would be bad enough but, even worse, they've made him dress up as a majorette. Poor Sting.

New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF1738A72CA1484CC1B779958C6896

The results of my (highly) informal survey about Quadrophenia have been tabulated. They show that most moviegoers think this is either a concert film or a rock opera, or that the title refers to a quadrophonic soundtrack. Not true. This is a dramatic film, one that's gritty and ragged and sometimes quite beautiful. It happens to incorporate rock songs, and to be saddled with a silly title. Though it's by no means a movie for everyone, Quadrophenia is something very special. It demands—and deserves—some special allowances.
Quadrophenia, which opens today at the Paramount and other theaters, is set in England in 1964, and populated by Mods and Rockers, warring bands of teenagers who speak with such thick accents that American audiences may find their conversation indecipherable. For this and other reasons, the film—which is a hit in England—hasn't traveled well.

But its foreignness has perverse advantages, helping to recast situations that might seem commonplace in an American end-of-adolescence movie, and making them just remote enough to seem fresh. A gifted new director, Franc Roddam, lends the film a clarity of emotion that keeps it from becoming too confusing.

The story is derived very, very loosely from an album by the Who. This album was an ambitious undertaking: it described a teenage boy, Jimmy, who was so acutely sensitive to social pressures that he developed the four-way schizophrenia of the title. Jimmy's condition was illustrated, rather than described, by four separate melodies—one associated with each member of the Who—that eventually merged into one transcendent theme. The specific ending of the album called for Jimmy to swim out to sea and scale an enormous rock. Unfortunately for the current film, which does some floundering at the finale, Ken Russell borrowed that scene for Tommy several years ago.

But Quadrophenia, as directed and cowritten by Mr. Roddam, is perhaps too raw to have culminated with pie-in-the-sky. Jimmy, played by a wonderfully avid-looking actor named Phil Daniels, is a cheerful, unexceptional fellow, by no means the Who's hypersensitive hero. He is seen squabbling with his parents, partying with his Mod friends, working at a mailroom job that's both dead-end and dull. These episodes, which are carried by the boisterous enthusiasm of an excellent cast, combine to form a slice-of-life movie that feels tremendously authentic in its sentiments as well as its details.

The Mods-and-Rockers aspect of the story might seem to date the material. But Mr. Roddam is as concerned with the general experience of adolescence as he is with these particular groups of people. And he is able, in re-creating the seaside riots between these rival gangs, to capture a fierce, dizzying excitement that epitomizes a kind of youthful extreme. Jimmy, who is so electrified by his new identity as a Mod that he makes a quick, thrilling sexual conquest while the fighting is going on, may never again feel so fully at the height of his powers. Quadrophenia fills the moment with equal elements of regret and celebration.

In a barely memorable shot at the beginning of the story, Jimmy is seen to be walking away from a cliff—a cliff from which, at the end of the movie, he appears to jump to his death. This disastrous attempt at a flashback damages the movie, which finally seems to be concerned with nothing more morbid than the end of this boy's flaming youth. The last minutes of the film are further weakened by some last-minute interjections of the Who's music, which has until now figured into the story more delicately.

Images of the group, up until this point, have been ghostly and ubiquitous. Their records play in party scenes; their posters and photographs decorate walls; Jimmy watches the band on television while his parents complain. Jimmy himself looks considerably like the Who's Pete Townshend, and he has the gawkiness that Mr. Townshend has made such memorable use of in the course of his career.

When Jimmy, in one of the film's most stunning set-pieces, dives into a crowd of dancers at a seaside resort, as much to vent his frustration as to attract attention, the spirit resembles that of an early Who concert—the kind that concluded with Mr. Townshend's furiously smashing his guitar.

Among the fine supporting performances in Quadrophenia, on a par with Mr. Daniels's superb Jimmy, is Raymond Winstone's Kevin, an old school friend Jimmy runs into in a public bath. When they put their clothes on, Jimmy realizes that his friend has become a Rocker; later, they share a conversation about how important it is to join the right group so you won't be like everybody else. Leslie Ash is suitably heartbreaking and heartless as the most popular of the female Mods, and the actors playing Jimmy's closest friends are affecting, too. The movie includes a hilarious turn by the Ace, the prettiest and surliest blond Mod, who turns out to be a bellhop on the side. The Ace is played by Sting, who is lead singer of a widely praised new band, the Police.


Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/regional-shows/6161650/Quadrophenia-review.html

Director Franc Roddam transformed Townshend’s typically abstruse and tortured piece about a young Mod with a personality disorder in which he "is torn in different directions by four extreme aspects of his ego” into a rites of passage teen-flick complete with battles between Mods and Rockers on the beach at Brighton and serious girlfriend problems. For his pains the picture received one of the most stinging capsule reviews I have ever read.

“What passed for a successful musical at the end of the Seventies is typified by this violent, screaming, wholly unattractive amalgam of noise, violence, sex and profanity", Leslie Halliwell wrote dismissively in his Film Guide.

One shudders to think what dear old LH would make of this stage version were he still alive. Noise, violence, sex and profanity are still very much on the agenda; what’s gone is anything resembling a comprehensible plot or dialogue. Though Jeff Young is credited as the writer, it’s hard to imagine how he spent his time beyond smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and staring out of the window since barely a line of dialogue is uttered and it is often impossible to follow what’s going on.

Instead Tom Critchley’s turbo-charged production concentrates on vigorous dance and movement, a fine parade of swinging sixties mod fashions, and Townshend’s magnificent score, played at maximum volume and splendidly delivered by a crack band with the four actors who represent Jimmy singing their hearts out in a manner that is almost the equal of the Who’s great vocalist, Roger Daltrey.

With its energy, angst, anger and passion this is Townshend at the top of his considerable game as a composer-lyricist and this highly physical production creates a pill and booze-fuelled trip back to the tempestuous world of adolescence.

It’s a shame that the four aspects of our troubled hero - Jimmy the Romantic, Jimmy the Tough Guy, Jimmy the Lunatic and Jimmy the Hypocrite, described on the album’s original sleeve notes as representing the four different member of the Who, don’t emerge more strongly in performance. And old curmudgeon that I am, I would have welcomed a more coherent narrative, though it is clear that most of Jimmy’s problems emanate from his abusive father.

But it’s the music that matters and such songs as The Real Me, Bell Boy and the show’s superbly stirring leitmotif, Love Reign O’er Me send shivers racing down the spine. For good measure a few of the Who’s greatest pop singles are added to the original album tracks, among them Substitute, I Can’t Explain and the amphetamine stutter of My Generation.

This is that rare thing, a rock musical that really rocks.

Quadrophenia has the authentic tang of teen spirit about it, and if it’s too loud, you’re too old.


Static Mass Emporium - http://staticmass.net/deconstructing-cinema/quadrophenia-movie-1979/

Set against the backdrop of 1964, Quadrophenia is the story of Jimmy the Mod. He’s not just any Mod, he’s THE Mod. Draped in a parka over the top of a fitted suited straddling a Vespa popping ‘blues’ Jimmy (Phil Daniels) sweats, breathes and lives Mod culture. Part of that culture is a vapid hatred for anything ‘Rocker’; as their natural born enemy they inevitably fall into quite a few scrapes throughout the film.

Based on the classic The Who album, it takes us on a journey through these two opposing subcultures all from the perspective of young Jimmy and gives us an insight into what it is to be young and reckless in 1964.

Having seen this film numerous times it’s always struck me as a classic story with, at the time, a very contemporary twist. Focusing on youth and young manhood, there’s a heavy emphasis on how these young Mods and Rockers perceive themselves and everyone around them. Chanting ‘We Are The Mods’ with a militant march is indicative of how they see themselves with specific personas and fluent identities.

Empire - http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?fid=2242

Review

An iconic ode to fallen youth of the Mod variety that has picked up a cult following mainly due to its hip imagery, its so-called grasp of the teen identity, and the fact it was based on an album by The Who, granting Pete Townshend a screenplay credit. There are some fine soap-operatics, and the rough-edged depiction of the period, the mid-‘60s with its fraught air of violence, feels pungently real. And Phil Daniels, in a role he has never quite shaken, is strangely charismatic (given he is supposed to represent the ordinary boy) as the scooter riding anti-hero Jimmy.

Director Franc Roddam is caught between stools, he wants to depict an era he knew well, to give a documentary vibe of headiness and rebellion, building up to a Bank Holiday confrontation with the teddy boys heading for Brighton beach. Yet, he is also having to deal with Townshend’s teen-death-dream thing — a mood piece full of stark symbolism and the much-debated significance of the downer ending. It is not a satisfying fit; the film is youthful and vague, gritty and quite weird.

It’s reputation is better founded on the sharp, compelling recreation of the era, and there are some striking performances to go along with Daniel’s tormented Jimmy: Leslie Ash is frail and beautiful as Steph, the girl who will force Jimmy to re-evaluate for the worse; Gary Shail, Philip Davis and Mark Wingnett froth and bubble with all the bloody-mindedness and energy of bad-youth as his Mod buddies; while Sting looks statuesque and icy without having to do much as Ace Face, a Mod fashion-icon, gang leader and Jimmy’s hero. When he, also, proves to have a humble side to the cool sheen, Jimmy starts to see through the whole mystique of this tribal world. It’s a haunting note, growing up is about losing your ideals.


Verdict

Stunning performances, a streetwise script, great pacing and a superb soundtrack make this not only an anthem of the times but an enduring tale to boot.

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The film tells the story of Jimmy, a mod in ‘60s London clinging to a tribe mentality and living a lifestyle filled with music, sex, violence and pills. As his journey goes on, Jimmy has to come to terms with his place, purpose and identity in life. Disillusionment ultimately sets in– with love, work, family and even what it means to be a mod being called into question.

In one of his earliest roles, Phil Daniels delivers a powerful and memorable leading performance, supported by a young cast including the likes of Mark Wingett, Philip Davies and Lesley Ash. First-time director Franc Roddam delivers a film full of youthful energy, humour, angst and passion, in which it’s difficult not to get swept up. Whilst it attempts to capture the period it is set in, ‘Quadrophenia’ has a look and style all of its own that has become equally iconic. It’s full of memorable and quotable scenes, and the film’s set piece on Brighton Beach (which recreates the legendary bank holiday clash between mods and rockers) provides a perfect point from which the film’s balance hangs.

The music of course, is stunning. The Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie’ rubs shoulders with the likes of ‘Be My Baby’ by The Ronettes, classic 60s tracks underpinning much of the film. However, the real musical highlights are the many songs taken from the 1974 Who album on which the film is based. Whilst ‘Quadrophenia’ is not a musical in the conventional sense, songs such as ‘Love Reign O’er Me’, ‘Bell Boy’ and in the film’s dramatic climax ‘I’ve Had Enough’ – the songs are allowed to drive and powerfully take over the narrative, expressively speaking on the characters’ behalf.

That said, ‘Quadrophenia’ is not just a ‘cult’ movie, or a ‘musical’ – it is one of the true classics of British cinema. Transcending genre and age, this is a must-see for anyone who is, or remembers how it feels to be a young adult.