Critical investigation and linked production

Critical investigation - An investigation into stereotypes of male teens in contemporary urban dramas.

Linked production - To produce a front cover, contents page and features for a teen magazine.


3 articles related to my critical investigation:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2008/feb/24/pressandpublishing.gender

Why the media will hound the girls - but leave the boys alone

The difficult and damaged lives of female celebrities are covered aggressively by the US media - but men in the same situation are treated completely differently

Theresa Rebeck
The Observer, Sunday 24 February 2008

In October 1999 the New Yorker magazine ran a picture of two pretty teenagers. They had way cute jewellery on, and they sort of loosely held onto pillows in which they were not even vaguely interested; they looked at the camera with a sultry teenage confidence as if to say, 'Ah, you've interrupted us in the middle of our girlish pillow fight but we all know this pillow-fight thing is really a sham, a wry set-up cooked up by this photographer to give some sort of narrative to a picture that is actually merely being taken because we're young and pretty and rich.' It is a sensational picture. The two girls are Paris and Nicky Hilton, and they were 18 and 15 years old at the time.

They were also - we are told by the column of copy accompanying the photo - New York's new 'It' Girls. It's kind of a charming little piece about how their great-grandfather was Conrad Hilton, and how they now swan around New York. The issue that presented this fabulous picture of these two at the time completely unknown teenage girls was titled 'The Next Generation'. The premise being that, in the waning months of the 20th century, the New Yorker would tell us which rising stars we should take note of, as they were going to be 'big' in the New Millennium.
Other folk who were featured in this issue were David Howell (an eight-year-old chess champion), Sergio Garcia (the golfer), Zadie Smith (babelicious young novelist), Haley Joel Osment (11-year-old movie star), Vincenzo Sarno (11-year-old football star) and McSweeney's, a literary quarterly begun by ultra-hip lit star David Eggers.

To date, the one from which we've heard the most is Paris Hilton. Those New Yorker editors were definitely right about her. The question does remain, however: why would the New Yorker - the most literary of all literary magazines - run a picture of Paris Hilton in the first place? Why on earth is the New Yorker publishing puff pieces about pretty girls who go to parties? Does the New Yorker ever run photos of cute boys just because they're cute and they come from money and they go to lots of parties? Where are the puff pieces on Paris Hilton's brothers? (You didn't know she had brothers, did you? She does, though: she has two.)

The evidence of the 'Next Generation' issue suggests that boys achieve, and girls are pretty. Zadie Smith is definitely an achiever, but she's also pretty. But I don't want to come down on the New Yorker for a cultural trend that infects every media outlet everywhere, it seems. The New York Times has recently decided that this is news. A piece by Alex Williams in the 17 February Style Section tells us that, 'Boys will be boys, girls will be hounded by the media.'

It's a pretty interesting compilation of facts about how the media basically look the other way when the boys have a problem or two, but when the girls behave in much the same way, it's a free-for-all. For instance, when Owen Wilson attempts suicide, people are pretty sensitive about the fact that the actor and his family maybe need some privacy. When Britney Spears goes into hospital for treatment for mental illness, we don't get quite so much sensitivity from the press.
Even, or maybe especially, when tragedy strikes, the boys get much better treatment. Heath Ledger's recent death, like that of River Phoenix, was handled with great care by the press. Anna Nicole Smith's not so much. When Kiefer Sutherland went to jail for drink-driving, you barely noticed it. When Paris Hilton went to jail - well, everyone on the planet knows what happened.

I was actually staying at a friend's house in LA when that happened and believe it or not, my friend lives on Paris Hilton's street. One day some reporters knocked on the door and asked me what I thought of all the media coverage and did I think that Paris should be asked to move off the block? Apparently another neighbour was trying to get her kicked off her block because it was just too crazy having all those paparazzi and reporters swarming up and down the street all the time; did I think Paris should move?

I wanted to say, 'Oh well, it's a free country and it's not like she's a sex offender - isn't she really just a pretty girl who parties a lot?' But I copped to the fact that I was just visiting my friend Lisa and when they found out I didn't actually live there, the reporters didn't care what I thought. It's just as well. I was about to also say: 'Maybe the people who should be forced to move off the street are you guys.'

But back to the point. The New York Times reports that the reason there's this obsession with pretty girls making big public mistakes is that women really like to read about that, and look at pictures of pretty girls doing self-destructive things while wearing fabulous clothing. Seriously, People and Us and all the magazines that feature these kinds of stories are largely read by women, and women like reading about crazy behaviour when girls do it, but not boys. Like doting mothers, apparently, we believe the boys are really just a little rambunctious or something, and the less said the better. But women readers actually like to see pretty girls screw up, we're positively obsessed by it, to the degree that we want them to do drugs and get into drink-driving accidents and act like total freaks and end up in rehab or worse.

In the interest of full disclosure, allow me to admit that of late I have become somewhat obsessed with the media obsession with these young women. I got it in my head about six years ago that I might write a novel about It Girls. So I started reading all these magazines, and looking at the pictures. Mostly, I conducted my research at the gym, where a lot of people leave these magazines lying around. So I would go through the left-over magazine rack, and find old copies of OK and Star and Life & Style, and try to get a sense of what the appeal was.

My friend Julie calls these magazines 'crack', and she knows of what she speaks. Within no time, I had opinions about a lot of things I know nothing about. I could hold long discussions about whom I liked better, Angelina or Jen. I developed a preference for issues that covered the awards shows because it was so much fun to look at everyone wearing those pretty dresses. I found some It Girls boring (Britney - sorry, couldn't care less) and some fascinating (Lindsay Lohan - seems like a nightmare but what an actress). Before I started conducting my 'research' I spent my time at the gym listening to books on tape, or sometimes I even listened to lectures, say, about the fall of the Roman Empire. But bettering my mind was no longer on the agenda: all I wanted to know was who Cameron Diaz was dating.

My husband, meanwhile, had no interest in these magazines, nor did my son, a 13-year-old who thinks that Jessica Alba is a really good actress, especially when she's wearing her superhero spandex. While both of them seem to be red-blooded heterosexuals they could not be less interested in the It Girl narrative of glamour and destruction. When I bring these magazines home, they couldn't care less. They don't look at the pictures of pretty girls in fabulous clothing; they don't read about Brad and Angelina; they don't even check out Rihanna on the red carpet.
Not so long ago my feminist education taught me to ask the question: 'Is the gaze male?' The answer, apparently, is yes, which is why so many movies and television shows are about men, and not women. Our distorted media culture sees men as subjects and women as objects; in films Woody Allen gets older and older and still dates 20-year-old babes; movies about women are called 'chick flicks' and men make fun of them. Because women's stories are about women and men don't want to understand women; they want to look at women, as long as they're young and beautiful. Because the gaze is male.

But if the gaze is male, then why don't guys want to look at endless pictures of gorgeous It Girls? Trust me, Britney Spears isn't dressing like a slut because she's trying to get the attention of a bunch of ladies at the gym. But it's the ladies at the gym who are buying. Why? Because Us and OK and Star and Life & Style are chick flicks. It Girls, apparently, are the objects of male desire who have found themselves in a chick flick.

So we have created a culture that celebrates girls as sex objects, turned that into a cultural ideal, and moved it to the centre of a bunch of addictive narratives for women. It's not a brilliant equation, frankly; it's like turning athletes into meth heads and sending them out to play the Super Bowl. Whatever. In any case, I'm done with it. All these gorgeous young girls getting drunk and partying and sleeping around and ending up in rehab, or jail, or the morgue? Come on; there's a better equation out there; there has to be. Maybe somebody should buy Lindsay some books on tape. I recommend Our Mutual Friend.

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/feb/26/features.mirandasawyer

The film that speaks to Britain's youth in words they understand

Fighting, stealing, sex and boozing - your average 24 hours for west London teenagers. It will ruffle feathers, but Kidulthood is a refreshing slice of urban life

Miranda Sawyer
The Observer, Sunday 26 February 2006

'It examines every current teenage media cliche you'd care to name, from hoodies to unwanted pregnancy' ... Kidulthood

Corrine Burton, 18, is on the phone to her friend, Mario. 'You have to see this film!' she trumpets. 'Oh my days ... you would love it! You would so relate to it.'

Production year: 2005
Country: UK
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 91 mins
Directors: Menhaj Huda
Cast: Adam Deacon, Aml Ameen, Jaime Winstone, Red Madrell

Corrine and I have just watched Kidulthood, a slick, contemporary, British-made movie set in and around the streets of west London. But there's no Richard Curtis cutesiness in this Notting Hill flick. It's about a group of 15-year-olds given the day off from school due to a suicide in their year. What they get up to in their 24 hours is, frankly, knackering: sex, drugs, booze, fighting, stealing, knifing, gun-toting and an entire Trisha series-worth of arguing.

This is no finger-wagging get-thee-to-a-Jobcentre film, though, but a refreshing, energetic, modern movie that documents urban teenagers' lives with wit and vigour. Slicker and less worthy than last year's acclaimed Bullet Boy, Kidulthood has been described as London's City of God: it's not quite that, but it's a good sight closer to that kinetic portrait of street life than Love Actually. Kidulthood and its talented team of actors showcase what this country is really good at - anti-authoritarianism, music and lust.

The fact that there's a mobile phone or two in there has led some (the Sun) to label Kidulthood the 'happy slapping movie' but, in fact, it examines every current teenage media cliche you'd care to name, from hoodies to unwanted pregnancy. What's different is that it deals with them all from the teenagers' point of view. Adults are on the periphery: either out of reach, out of touch or, as in the open-minded mother who urges her daughter through her bedroom door to 'use a condom, darling', completely on the wrong track. The daughter's boyfriend is actually about to beat her up.

Kidulthood has had some criticism, from those who accuse it of being unbelievably bleak or, weirdly, voyeuristic (as though we're only allowed to watch films that directly depict our own lives). But for Corrine, from Streatham, south London: 'The film definitely felt real to me. I mean, all that stuff wouldn't have happened in one day, they crammed it in. But the way everyone in that film is, that's how everyone I know is. And the talk is perfect, to be honest.'

The talk is the slang-filled youth vernacular that you hear every day on buses across urban Britain. It's exhilarating to hear it on film in all its filthy, furious glory. And it is filthy: the first thing that one female character says is: 'So I told him, brush your teeth after you lick me out.' That's Becky, played by Jaime Winstone, daughter of Ray. Becky leads the main female character Alisa (Red Madrell) into all sorts of dodgy situations involving blowjobs and full sex for drugs and money. In fact, all of the sex in Kidulthood is part of a barter situation, whether for specific items, respect or love. Often, it takes place in front of other people.

'That's normal! I know girls who are like, any boy will do! It's not about boyfriends,' says Corrine. 'And in front of other people? I do know people like that. Sex isn't really a big issue, it's nothing no more. That is common, you don't think nothing of it.' When I talk to Kidulthood's writer, Noel Clarke (Mickey in Doctor Who), who also plays Sam, the film's bullying bad guy, he agrees with Corrine. 'It seems like sex isn't a big deal these days. There's a weird hippy attitude, like all bodies are the same ... and everyone knows a girl like Becky, just dirty.'

Clarke wrote the screenplay three years ago and based the trio of central male characters - Trife, Jay and Moony, played by Aml Ameen, Adam Deacon and Femi Oyeniran - on himself and his schoolfriends. He says that some of the film's action came from his own life (taxis refusing to stop for him, being falsely accused of shoplifting) and some from friends' experience or the media.

Kidulthood has its fair share of violence; there's a particularly nasty torture scene involving Trife, his bad uncle Curtis and some face-carving. This scene was added to Clarke's original screenplay 'to get a real sense of where Trife could end up,' he explains. 'Either as someone like Curtis or someone on the wrong side of Curtis, the person on the table.' There's also a horribly aggressive girl-on-girl bullying scene which takes place in front of a whole class of kids who fail to intervene. Corrine was shocked that no character stopped it: 'I would have said something,' she says. 'I wouldn't have jumped in, but I would have said, "Can't you leave her alone?"' This lack of loyalty leads to Corrine's only criticism of the film: how the characters turned on each other.

'That's not friends! That's junior school stuff to me.' She wonders what young people would gain from watching Kidulthood. 'You can see them being influenced for the worse by it or you can see them going, "I don't want to live that life."' Clarke insists that, though he doesn't want to moralise, he thinks that the film is a cautionary tale: 'It might look cool but you don't want to end up like any of them, not even Alisa [Kidulthood's moral centre]. You shouldn't want to end up like any of them.' And what of older viewers; parents, say? 'Well, how can a parent win?' asks Clarke. 'If you're liberal, you're too liberal; if you're strict, you're too strict. The mother who sanctions her daughter's love life by telling her to use a condom is trying her best. It doesn't matter what's happening on the other side of the door, she's still trying to communicate with her daughter, to reach her. Parents can't win.'

Never mind: even loser parents would be hard-pressed not to enjoy Kidulthood, even as they cringe. This is a rollicking UK youth ride, cinematically filmed, persuasively acted and bumped along by a fantastic all-British soundtrack from the Streets, Audio Bullys, Dizzee Rascal and Roots Manuva. Some youth style publications love it so much that they have offered ad space for free. It's also very funny, laced with a humour of the slapped-in-the-face-with-a-kipper sort: you can't help laughing because it's so outrageous.

It also captures another part of west London, the part the Japanese tourists have missed out on so far. 'Yeah, so far we've only seen one side of the road in films,' says Clarke. 'If you walk out of that nice house and cross that road, there's a council estate bang opposite.'

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/05/noel-clarke-interview-doghouse

'I'm not patient. I just like to get it done'

Writer, director, actor, Doctor Who sidekick, Bafta winner - when chances come Noel Clarke's way, he takes them. And now: zombies. Cath Clarke (no relation) met him

Cath Clarke
The Guardian, Friday 5 June 2009

Noel Clarke wrote and acted in the two films that best captured the public fear of "hoodies" - Kidulthood and Adulthood, directing the latter, too. So when he gives me a hoodie - a sweater, not a teenager - it throws me a bit. Clarke picks up two more (the sports brand in question sent clothes to the set while Kidulthood was being filmed, and still sends Clarke bags of the stuff). Perhaps clocking the unlikelihood of it being worn, he adds: "You could give it to your boyfriend or husband or whoever. Red or brown?"

Production year: 2009
Country: UK
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 88 mins
Directors: Jake West
Cast: Danny Dyer, Emil Marwa, Emily Booth, Keith-Lee Castle, Lee Ingleby, Noel Clarke, Stephen Graham

In February Clarke won the rising star award at the Baftas for his two-film mini franchise. They were a pure word-of-mouth phenomenon - films about kids that kids actually wanted to watch - and Adulthood eventually grossed £3.4m. Which of course means they are packed with the stuff of their parents' nightmares: hand jobs, sex, pregnancy, suicide, stabbings and nasty-sounding slang.

"I'm really not that young any more," says Clarke, protesting at the suggestion that he's at the head of a young British film-making bratpack. At 33, he is not exactly old either - though if you asked the teenagers who watch his films they'd probably say he's well past it. I heard a bit of sniping when he got the Bafta. That he'd put himself about, campaigned too hard to win by doing interviews and television appearances in the run-up (the award is voted for by the public, though a jury decides the shortlist). But working hard is what Clarke does. "Look," he says: "You don't go from gym instructor to Baftas by not being on it."

He has assumed a relaxed position; sitting in a bar, arms stretched out across the back of the sofa. But he keeps his eyed fixed ahead for a lot of the time, concentrating. He got his first break 10 years ago, when the playwright Rikki Beadle-Blair cast him in the TV show Metrosexuality. Beadle-Blair was a regular at the gym that Clarke worked at; he had recently left a media-studies course at university in order to act full-time. "I hustled to get an audition," Clarke says. Beadle-Blair says he's never met anybody as driven. Months before the audition, Clarke was pestering him for a script, practising lines. "His success is not a surprise," says Beadle-Blair. "He made it inevitable. He's got an insatiable desire to learn."

Clarke says his work ethic comes from his mum, a Trinidadian nurse who brought him up in Ladbroke Grove, the area of London in which he set Kidulthood. As a teenager he found his way into a bit of mischief, the occasional scrape, but was never afraid to say no to anything heavier - thanks again to his mum. Did he always want be an actor? "Always," he answers, before the question is even finished.

His career to date feels a bit all over the place. "Diverse, I'd call it," he says. After Metrosexuality he was in the BBC's Auf Wiedersehen, Pet revival, did a couple of plays, won an Olivier for promising newcomer and then, in 2003, he landed the role of Mickey, a slightly hapless Tardis hanger-on, in Doctor Who. One minute he was playing Billie Piper's on-off boyfriend and flirting with Anne Robinson on Celebrity Weakest Link, the next on a film set hearing Jaime Winstone telling her pregnant best mate she ought to sort herself out with a coat hanger.

Still, it all fits. There is a touch of the tea-time charmer about Clarke. When I ask what he does when he's not working he answers: "PlayStation or Wii. Or shenanigans with the missus." Or, describing his time as a trainer: "I could tell you stories. Naughty stories that the lads would find funny."

Clarke says it was the quality of scripts he was getting that started him writing. "I was reading stuff thinking, 'Fuck this, man, I can write better.'" He went out and bought screenplays of his favourite films: Pulp Fiction, Clerks, American Beauty. He always pictured himself playing the lead in Kidulthood: "But by the time it came around the director was like, 'Dude, you're too old to play this part.'" He had to fight his corner to get to play the older bully, Sam. Does that experience explain why he chose to direct the sequel himself? He says not; the suggestion came from the film company after Menhaj Huda (who made the first) turned it down. "At first I was like, I dunno. I thought maybe I want to direct in five years' time. But, you know what, in five years' time I might be working behind a bar." He nods over to, well, the bar. "You never know. It's a weird industry."

He didn't much care about the flak that Kidulthood got - or the praise for that matter. "People can criticise me all day long. It just washes off me. You might as well be talking to a wall." It was accused of everything from pandering to middle-class voyeurism to glamorising violence. Which it wasn't. Like teenagers themselves, it was actually very moralising - and prone to a bit of melodrama. I have no idea if the slang was accurate, but the kids' solipsism was. Look at their reactions to a suicide - "Did she mention me in the note?" "She was really tall and pretty. I'd like to be that tall."

Clarke can be quite moralistic, too. He says he can't stand celebrity car-crash culture or the media that reports it: "So-and-so is drunk again on the floor. Let's buy her album. No, let's not, really. Let's stop giving her income completely and see if she cleans up." He's never taken drugs, he barely drinks. He looks horrified when I ask him if his wife works in the industry. "No, God no. No." They have a one-year-old son, but Clarke says he is still a bit of a workaholic. "Why am I going to waste it? Why am I suddenly going to get up at noon now? I get up at 6.30am, go to the gym and come home and write. Or I'm learning my lines. And I'll do it. I'll learn them backwards. I'm not patient. I just like to get it done."

That level of intensity that can seem cold, even arrogant. "I'd always much rather be second choice on anything because it makes you work harder." But there must be a bit of doubt in there too. I tell him he looked cool as a cucumber sauntering up on stage to get his Bafta. He did a flashy thing with his dinner jacket, making a show of turning the collars up, as he stood up. "Maybe there was a bit of smugness." He looks at me sharply. "Maybe I shouldn't have done that, but that's me. I'm just who I am. I don't try to change myself for other people."

When I tell him I don't think it's one for the ladies, Clarke says that two of the projects he's got "bubbling" will be. What he has in mind for himself now is a kind of producer/writer/fixer role - "like Tarantino in America" - using his name to get films by lesser-known writers and directors made. One of the two he is talking about he says is girl power "reborn and rebranded. Forget those platform heels." The other is about a woman in her late 20s which he has worked on with a female writer, who would direct if it gets the go-ahead: "I think it's important that we have a new batch of British film-makers that aren't doing the same old stuff. And that includes me."