Future Representation Of Youths

Has representation of youths changed from the past to the present?

If you compare the way that the youths were seen at the time of Quadrophenia and the way are seen now, you will see both similarities and differences.
The similarities are:

• The youths all want to be part of a gang, in the time of Quadrophenia everyone was either a Mod or a Rocker, and this was decided by the clothes you wore, the music you listened to, the bike you were riding and the places you went to socialise in. In todays society you can see similar trends like this, with people being grouped into Indie, Goth and Chav to name 3, by the clothes they wear, music they listen to and where you socialise. 
• The parents of these youths never seemed to understand about what they were doing, for example in Quadrophenia Jimmy's dad asks him why he's wearing wet jeans, and calls him a freak. This shows the way that people who aren't part of this society, don't understand the things that they are doing. In the modern day riots, people couldn't understand what youths were doing. The parents of those rioting didn't know why they were rioting, and there were high profile celebrities who couldn't work it out. For example David Gilmour, guitarist and vocalist for Pink Floyd, spoke after his son was arrested for violent disorder, after throwing a fire extinguisher from the roof of an office block. He said he couldn't understand why he did this, and blamed the people he was surrounded by for 'influencing' him. 
• The people who were in these fore mentioned gangs wanted to challenge authority. In the 60s they all wanted to be individuals, challenging the authorities and do what they wanted, when they wanted. They wanted to ride around on their bikes, and if they seen someone from a rival gang, they wanted it so that they could beat them up, and smash up their bikes, without consequence. In the modern day, 2012, the young people in the council estates want to run their estates, with the police not coming anywhere near, let them sort out their own problems. There are areas in London where even the Police fear to go, and this is where the youths have successfully challenged authority and won. 

The differences are:

• In the 60s the gangs would organise things using word of mouth, or if they had a home telephone through that, but then would have to stick to their plans, making them reasonably easy to intercept for forces like the police, and this meant that the crime rates were able to be lowered by preventing the crimes before they got out of hand. In 2012 there is BBM, Twitter, MSN and Facebook to organise, all of which can be taken on the move with iPhone and BlackBerry, and can then organise quickly, and crucially, discreetly, if they feel that something needs to be changed or to halt it altogether to avoid an unwelcome confrontation.

Will the Representation of Youths Change?

After the riots a lot of young people have done things to change the way that they are perceived in the media, setting up projects, webpages and peaceful protests to try and get papers like the Daily Mail to stop on printing negative things about them. They have set up websites like Truth About Youth and the 99% Blog. These are websites that people can look at to see what the young people are doing in the communities, and it is a way to see that they are not all the looting, violent thugs that the mass media would like you to believe they were. This is the sort of things that youths can do to change their representation and could help them in the future, with the way the country's economy is. Also they set up things on sites like Facebook and Twitter, which helped to set up clean up operations, and to set up marches against the rioters. 

However as all of the good things are going on there are still bad, which the media are always quick to pick up on. When they are doing things like thieving from injured Malaysian students or beating up old men for small change, this makes their representation even worse than it was before. jCombine this with those who were arrested during the riots, those who go out binge drinking every night and those who are portrayed in TV Shows and in the mass media, and it seems unlikely that they will ever get a better representation in the press, or in the eyes of those looking on.