Theories

Theorist	Year	Concepts	Your explanation
Giroux	1997	Youth as empty category	Giroux believes that youths are an ‘empty category’ because youths want to become more like adults and have their freedom but media representations of youths are created by adults. Therefore the representation of youths reflects the concerns, anxiety, and needs of adults. The representation does not reflect the reality of youth identity. This is seen in ‘Eden Lake’, ‘Harry Brown’ and ‘Attack the Block’ where a number of scenes are showing the anxiety of the adults and the violence of the youths.
Acland	1995	Ideology of protection; deviant youth and reproduction of social order	There are bad youths and good youths, good youths are being protected by the bad youths.
Gramsci	1971 (1929-1935)	Cultural hegemony	Gramsci believes that our diverse culture can be ruled or dominated by one group or class. Films that show youths in a negative way are there to try and make youths see what is right and what is wrong. Youths in Harry Brown Eden Lake and Attack the Block are all seen to dominate over any other class or group of people; however Harry Brown is the anti-hero and manages to gain control in a ruthless way.
Cohen	1972	Moral panic	Cohen believes a moral panic is kind of attitude or reaction of the society towards certain social groups or sub-cultures, which is based on ideas and beliefs that the given groups are very dangerous to the society. Therefore, such groups are perceived as the major threat to the culture and social values, health and well-being of the people. In Harry Brown, Eden Lake and Attack youths are shown as a big threat to society.
McRobbie	2004	Symbolic Violence	McRobbie suggests that British TV contains representations that emphasis middle class dominance and show working class in a very negative way, this is called ‘symbolic violence’ (against working class) like in ‘Eden Lake’, ‘Harry Brown’ and ‘Attack the Block’.
Gerbner	1986	Cultivation Theory	Gerbner studied the effect of television on people’s perception of crime. He found that people who watched lots of television tended to over estimate the levels of crime, he called this ‘mean world syndrome’. News reports, TV dramas, films contain lots of crime which has influenced people’s perceptions of the world (youths), this is called ‘cultivation theory’. ‘Eden Lake’, ‘Harry Brown’ and ‘Attack the Block’ all have negative perceptions of youths and the amount of crime that actually goes on is exaggerated this could be because of ‘mean world syndrome’.