Age Representation in Media

This representation suggests that this is generally considered the dominant representation of young people in the media, enough to encourage a parody. The main media texts which offer positive representation of young people are usually situations which allow them to represent themselves, within a specific context. For this assignment i will research on how people of both young and old are represented in the media with examples.

Firstly, i will explain how the elderly are represented in media, the example i have uses for this is the dinner table scene from the christmas movie 'National Lampoon's christmas vacation' as seen above.From this scene, there is a christmas family celebration as they gather at the table to say grace before they eat the banquet, and on the table there are the elder family members such as the grandpa, grandma etc. And in this scene they are represented to be senile, this is shown with the older woman who cannot hear so she requires her other elderly partner to shout in her ear in order to hear him, this is the stereotype that older people have poor hearing and this relates to all the stereotypes of older people being slow and too senile to even understand whats going on around them, also the way her husband reacts to her not being able to hear/understand what hes saying he gets frustrated in his many attempts to try make her understand by constantly yelling in her ear, so this could link to the grumpy/bitter old man stereotype. This contrasts against the other view of elders being more wise, smart and knowledgeable.

I will now explain the different ways younger people are represented in the media, the example i have used is the trailer from the 'Inbetweeners movie' shown above. From this trailer young people are shown to be very sexually competitive, as throughout the trailer and the movie itself you see the group of friends all attempting to get the attention of an attractive woman but only to fail each time. This is due to this representation of young people to be the stereotypical 'nerd'. This is why these characters are shown to be sexual failure but obsessed with sex at the same time. The 'Lad' stereotype is also shown in the trailer with all the drinking and stupid and ignorant behaviour of some of the characters during the movie, this is how they code youngsters throughout. However the audience accepts this due to the comic relief of the characters as they are also presented to be the stereotypical 'nerd' which persuades the audience into supporting or sympathising with them in finding a love interest.