Hi everyone and welcome to your collective identity exam blog. Here I will upload useful resources, past papers, your presentations and any other useful links and documents.
Media and Collective Identity
How do the contemporary media represent nations, regions and ethnic / social / collective groups of people in different ways?
How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?
What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?
To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?
20 marks for Explanation, analysis, argument
20 marks for use of examples
10 marks for terminology (including ‘theory’)
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
Sunday, 2 February 2014
Revision booklet
Revision Booklet
Contents
· Texts that we’ve studied
· With reference to texts how are youth as a collective identity being represented
· Imdb and Wikipedia and articles on them to study
· Glossary of terms and theories
· Identity quotes
· Past exam papers
· Breakdown of mark scheme
· Essay structure advice
· Copy representation theories that may be useful eg Maffesoli, Baudrillard
· Answer questions sheet
G325 revision link – answer four areas
· How to write the exam
There are four areas you need to understand in preparing for the exam:
1. How do the contemporary media represent nations, regions and ethnic / social / collective groups of people in different ways?
a. How are young people/ males/ females/ gay people/ Northerners/ any social group represented? Discuss how the representations use stereotypes; are the representations hegemonic/ reinforcing dominant ideologies; do they challenge hegemony; are they represented as heterogenous/ homogenous; how could terms and phrases like Female solidarity/ teen solidarity/ male solidarity, Constructed certitude, Consciously cultivated (fe)male bond/ teen bond, Socialisation, Binary, Plurality, Femininities/ masculinities be useful in discussing the representations?; Who are these representations aimed at, and how does this affect the way the group are represented?; Who is creating these representations?; How are different social groups represented in the media industry, as well as by the media?; What is the purpose of these representations?; How does the media construct representations of groups of people?; How is collective identity constructed?
2. How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?
a. Compare recent texts (last 4 years) to past texts in terms of the ideas in question 1. What differences/ similarities are there?;
3. What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?
a. What impact does the media have on audiences’ sense of identity?; How do audiences respond to/ use media representations?; To what extent are audiences active in constructing their own sense of identity?; How useful are Uses and Gratification theory/ Hypodermic Needle Theory/ Cultivation theory in understanding audiences’ responses to media representations?; Does the media reflect or shape our sense of who we are?
4. To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?
a. Does the media reflect or shape our sense of who we are?; Is the media increasingly important in how we shape our identity?; How powerful is the media in shaping/ helping us to shape who we are?
Possible Exam Questions or Revision essays
Collective Identity – Possible exam questions
1. Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group of people
you have studied.
2. “The media do not construct collective identity; they merely reflect it”.
Discuss.
3. Discuss the contemporary representation of a nation, region or social group in the media, using specific textual examples from at least two media to support your answer.
4. How far does the representation of a particular social group change
over time?
5. The representation of a particular social group can never be realistic.
Discuss.
6. The representation of a particular social group is always limited. Discuss.
7. The media present what the audience want to see. Discuss.
8. What are the social implications of different media representations of
7. The media present what the audience want to see. Discuss.
8. What are the social implications of different media representations of
groups of people?
9. Different audiences respond differently to different representations. Discuss.
10. Collective identity is formed through the media. Discuss.
11. People use the media to form ideas about collective identity. Discuss.
12. To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?
13. The media controls the formation of a collective identity. Discuss.
14. Audiences use the media to form ideas and opinions about collective identity. Discuss.
15. Audiences use the media to construct their own identities. Discuss.
16. More media means a greater range of representations. Discuss.
10. Collective identity is formed through the media. Discuss.
11. People use the media to form ideas about collective identity. Discuss.
12. To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?
13. The media controls the formation of a collective identity. Discuss.
14. Audiences use the media to form ideas and opinions about collective identity. Discuss.
15. Audiences use the media to construct their own identities. Discuss.
16. More media means a greater range of representations. Discuss.
time magazine 2008 mean streets
Britain's Mean Streets http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725547,00.html
BBC report on misrepresentations
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/31/television-misrepresents-young-old-women
independent hoodies louts scum
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hoodies-louts-scum-how-media-demonises-teenagers-1643964.html
uk tribes
http://uktribes.com/ password is iblametheparents Lots of useful sections on all sorts of youth for you to research and discover. Read and take notes.
The riots
THERE have been some sweeping historical claims made in the wake of last week's unrest, with commentators of left and right decrying an unprecedented collapse in moral standards, parenting and discipline among the young. There have been cultural claims too, with calls to blame African-American rap music from broadcast.
Here is the Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips, giving it both barrels with her assertion that:
The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value.
The married two-parent family, educational meritocracy, punishment of criminals, national identity, enforcement of the drugs laws and many more fundamental conventions were all smashed by a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society.
Those of us who warned over the years that they were playing with fire were sneered at and smeared as Right-wing nutters who wanted to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age.
From the left, here is the Daily Mirror's Paul Routledge, attacking foreign music and British materialism:
The mayhem erupted overnight, but it has been building for years. And putting more police on the streets – while vital to end the threat to life and property – will not solve the crisis.
I blame the pernicious culture of hatred around rap music, which glorifies violence and loathing of authority (especially the police but including parents), exalts trashy materialism and raves about drugs.
The important things in life are the latest smart phone, fashionable trainers and jeans and idiot computer games. No wonder stores selling them were priority looting targets.
On the BBC, there was the bizarre and clunking intervention by David Starkey, the historian of Tudor England, who complained on Newsnight that working class young whites had "become black", or as he put it:
The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion... Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has intruded in England. This is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.
Allison Pearson blames frightened, cowed and unhelpful parents in the Daily Telegraph, writing:
How did we end up with some of the most indisciplined and frighteningly moronic youngsters in Europe? How come our kids are the best at being bad? There’s no use blaming the police; it’s the parents, stupid...A friend who works in an inner-London comprehensive with boys twice her size is not allowed to send them to the headmaster. Faced with full-frontal rudeness or casual violence, Clare must first follow school policy and ask, “Darren, are you ready to receive the discipline message?” ...During my childhood in the Sixties, teachers and parents were still on the same side; today, you would be a fool to take that coalition of adults for granted. Darren’s parents are likely to attend any conference on their son’s behaviour with a snarling attitude, and maybe a pitbull to match
These are bold claims, amounting to a thesis that Britain has been wrecked and transformed from a familiar, law-abiding spot to an alien hell hole in just three or four decades. But here is an odd thing, surely: go back precisely three decades and you get to the summer of 1981, scene of some of the nastiest riots in modern British history, when racially charged violence saw tracts of Brixton in south London and Toxteth in Liverpool burn for days.
Seeking guidance, Bagehot decided to go off-line and read some books. From the shelves of the London Library, a gem: "Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears" a calm and witty history of moral panics that have gripped England over the ages, published in 1982, and written by a Bradford University academic, Geoffrey Pearson (later at Goldsmiths). The book is out of print, so I trust I will be forgiven (not least by Professor Pearson) for quoting from it at length: it is a brilliant survey.
Just what happens if we take a time machine back three decades, to the time before the revolutionary transformation identified by Melanie Phillips?
Well, "Hooligan" records, you find front-page editorials like this one from the Daily Express of July 7th 1981, stating:
Over the past twenty years or so, there has been a revulsion from authority and discipline... There has been a permissive revolution... and now we all reap the whirlwind
You find editorials and columnists seeming to blame the decline on black immigration. Here is the Sunday Telegraph of November 29th 1981:
Brixton is the iceberg tip of a crisis of ethnic criminality which is not Britain's fault—except in the sense that her rulers quite unnecessarily imported it
Thanks to Professor Pearson's painstaking researches, the time machine can be ridden smoothly much further. At each stop, there are voices warning that the golden age of the past has been wrecked, and suddenly Britain is a dreadful place.
Here is Sir Keith Joseph, the Conservative politician, in 1974, declaring:
For the first time in a century and a half, since the great Tory reformer Robert Peel set up the Metropolitan police, areas of our cities are becoming unsafe for peaceful citizens by night, and some even by day
"Hooligan" compares the 1958 and 1978 Conservative Party annual conferences. In 1978, buffetted by calls from the floor for a return to the birch and "Saturday night floggings" for football hooligans, it notes, the future home secretary William Whitelaw pledged a new regime of short-sharp-shock Detention Centres modelled on army discipline.
And in 1958? The agenda included a debate on a "disturbing increase in criminal offences", and speakers asserting that "our wives and mothers, if they are left alone in the house at night, are frightened to open their doors", and that "over the past 25 years we in this country, through misguided sentiment, have cast aside the word "discipline", and now we are suffering from it". Delegates fumed over the "leniency" of modern courts and the way that young people were "no longer frightened of the police". Over calls from the floor for a return to flogging, the home secretary R A Butler pledged a programme of building short-sharp-shock Detention Centres, wherein "there should be a maximum of hard work and a minimum of amusement."
Still, no African-American rap music to corrupt the young, at least. Alas, "Hooligan" notes, the country was in the grip of a moral panic about rock and roll. In a 1956 front page editorial, headlined "Rock 'n Roll Babies" the Daily Mail declared:
It is deplorable. It is tribal. And it is from America. It follows rag-time, blues, dixie, jazz, hot cha-cha and the boogie-woogie, which surely originated in the jungle. We sometimes wonder whether this is the negro's revenge.
What of parents, surely free to smack and belt their way to discipline in those days?
Not according to the Recorder of Bradford, Frank Beverley, recorded in his law court in 1951 inveighing on the crimes that could be traced to poor parenting:
Parents at this time, unfortunately, do not take sufficient care in bringing up their children. They expect someone else to be responsible.
Back to 1932, and a guide to the work of boys' clubs lamented:
The passing of parental authority, defiance of pre-war conventions, the absence of restraint, the wildness of extremes, the confusion of unrelated liberties, the wholesale drift away from churches
Thanks, again, to Geoffrey Pearson's research, here is the Times of 1898, sorrowing that fathers no longer saw fit to save a "scapegrace" son from prison "by loyally and sounding whipping him," and quoting a horrified magistrate's view that:
it is melancholy to find that some parents are not ashamed to confess that children of seven or eight years old are entirely beyond their control
Still, at least no computer games, eh? Alas, here is M.G. Barnett, author of "Young Delinquents" (Methuen, 1913) warning readers that silent films present children with "a direct incentive to crime, demonstrating, for instance, how a theft could be perpetrated". Small wonder that the Times of the same year editorialised:
All who care for the moral well-being and education of the child will set their faces like flint against this new form of excitement
Back to 1900, and the Contemporary Review is fretting about how the "garbage" infecting music hall programmes "glorifies immorality", while in his 1905 work "Manchester Boys", Charles Russell draws a direct link between murders enacted on stage and later "instances of violence on the part of young men, in the back streets of the city."
August has often been a tricky month. There was a moral panic in August 1898, after Bank Holiday disorder that saw 200 involved in a fist-fight in the Old Kent Road, and 88 people hauled before the Marylebone court in a single day. Matters were not helped when, in October 1898, a street mob attacked police officers dealing with a domestic dispute. There were loud cries of "Boot them" as the constables were kicked and assaulted.
In 1883, London police were armed for the first time amid fears of a crimewave by armed burglars, a step seen as "un-English" by the press.
The great "garotting" panic of 1862 centred on lurid reports of a new form of mugging involving strangulation, and led to the restoration of flogging as a punishment, shortly after it had been abolished. The Times sadly concluded that England now resembled a foreign land:
Our streets are actually not as safe as they were in the days of our grandfathers. We have slipped back to a state of affairs that would be intolerable even in Naples
Back to 1840s and the Industrial Revolution. Professor Pearson meticulously notes the widespread moral panic about the collapse of ancient, rural moral codes in the face of rapid urbanisation, the rise of working mothers and the spread of child labour (feared because it put money in the pockets of impressionable youths). "Hooligan" records an 1842 House of Commons debate, which heard how the "morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly".
Civil disorder and looting hits Britain
Still, at least no Jamaican patois, eh? Ah no, the same Commons debate saw an MP denouncing parts of the country suffering a "preposterous epidemic of a hybrid negro song".
In London, 1815 sees the foundation of the Society for Investigating the Causes of the Alarming Increase in Juvenile Delinquency in the Metropolis. 1751 sees Henry Fielding's "Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers" (Fielding fingered "too frequent and expensive diversions among the lower kind of people"). The seventeenth century saw moral panics about violent and rowdy apprentices, as well as about organised fighting among gangs (wearing coloured ribbons to identify their troops). Professor Pearson ends with the sixteenth century and puritan fears about, if not gangsta rap, popular songs that treated criminals as heroes.
Now, none of this is much comfort if you live in one of the areas of England that has just been looted or burned. None of this takes away from the fact that this country has some serious social problems involving young people and children: Britain tops European league tables for teenage pregnancy, and has dropped down international rankings for educational achievement.
But for all its wit, "Hooligan"—written at a time of really horrible racial tension in Britain—had a serious purpose: to urge readers in 1982 to avoid moral panic and a rush to historically-illiterate judgement. Its lessons hold just as true today.
Independent class exclusives
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/class-exclusive-seven-in-10-of-us-belong-to-middle-britain-2247052.html
Past papers
Past Paper Questions
Analyse the ways in which the media represent groups of people.
What is collective identity and how is it mediated?
Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group of people you
have studied.
'The media do no construct identity; they merely reflect it'. Discuss.
With reference to any one group of people that you have studied,
discuss how their identity has been 'mediated'.
'Media representations are complex, not simple and straightforward'.
How far do you agree with this statement in relation to the collective
group that you have studied?
Guardian Article - Vajazzled How Chavs have replaced working class people on tv
A MUST READ
Also very interesting to read the comments following the article.
TV case studies
• Key storylines – social issues dealt with
• Research social issues and how they are reflected in the programme
• Key characters and their representations (age, gender, family relationships, class) Can you tell they're working class by how they look and speak? Quick judgment. What do others think of her character?
How are we supposed to think of them?
•Is this character stereotypical of working class youth? or does it subvert our expectations? If so/not, how?
White BBC series - see link
Rich Kid Poor Kid - Channel 4 Cutting Edge documentary no longer available on youtube so you have to watch clips entitled UK Tribes - Snob/Chav
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2008/nov/10/rich-kid-poor-kid
TV series
Misfits
Eastenders
Coronation street
Shameless
Waterloo Road
Benidorm
or create a video on what teenage representations are like in the media. Interview JJR, Mootoo, RE Fish, Mr Adamson and loads of teenagers to see if they can think of any positive working class representations. Go to the high street and ask what the problem with young people is today. Come up with about five interesting questions and go and film them!
• Research social issues and how they are reflected in the programme
• Key characters and their representations (age, gender, family relationships, class) Can you tell they're working class by how they look and speak? Quick judgment. What do others think of her character?
How are we supposed to think of them?
•Is this character stereotypical of working class youth? or does it subvert our expectations? If so/not, how?
White BBC series - see link
Rich Kid Poor Kid - Channel 4 Cutting Edge documentary no longer available on youtube so you have to watch clips entitled UK Tribes - Snob/Chav
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2008/nov/10/rich-kid-poor-kid
TV series
Misfits
Eastenders
Coronation street
Shameless
Waterloo Road
Benidorm
or create a video on what teenage representations are like in the media. Interview JJR, Mootoo, RE Fish, Mr Adamson and loads of teenagers to see if they can think of any positive working class representations. Go to the high street and ask what the problem with young people is today. Come up with about five interesting questions and go and film them!
White BBC series
White was a series of documentaries shown in March 2008 on BBC 2 dealing with issues of race and the changing nature of the white working class in Britain.The series alleged that some white working class Britons felt marginalized and poses the controversial question, "Is white working class Britain becoming invisible?"
The BBC’s commissioning editor, Richard Klein stated that the commissioning of the series was in response to a report which showed white working class voices rarely made it on to TV and that when they were they were portrayed as "chavs" and "white trash".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_(BBC_series)
From 4.14
To 1.40
The BBC’s commissioning editor, Richard Klein stated that the commissioning of the series was in response to a report which showed white working class voices rarely made it on to TV and that when they were they were portrayed as "chavs" and "white trash".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_(BBC_series)
From 4.14
To 1.40
UK Riots
(often worth looking at readers' comments too)
Verdict on UK riots: people need a 'stake in society', says reportPanel concludes that riots were fuelled by a lack of opportunities for young people, poor parenting and suspicion of the police
Fiona Bawdon
The Guardian, Wednesday 28 March 2012 Article history
Riots panel concluded that the riots were fuelled by a wide range of factors including a lack of opportunities for young people.
An independent panel set up by the government to study the causes of last summer's riots calls for more people to be given "a stake in society" to help prevent a repeat of the disturbances.
The report, by the Riots Communities and Victims Panel, concludes that the riots were fuelled by a range of factors including a lack of opportunities for young people, poor parenting, a failure of the justice system to rehabilitate offenders, materialism and suspicion of the police.
"When people don't feel they have a reason to stay out of trouble, the consequences for communities can be devastating – as we saw last August," said Darra Singh, chair of the panel.
The report, released on Wednesday, says: "The key to avoiding future riots is to have communities that work." Recommendations include fines for schools that fail to teach children to read properly; earlier and better support for troubled families; a "youth job promise" to get more young people into work; and primary and secondary schools to "undertake regular assessments of pupils' strength of character".
"The answers lie in different places: some are about personal or family responsibility and others are about what the state or the private or voluntary sectors should do better or differently," it says. "Public services describe a group of approximately 500,000 'forgotten families' who bump along the bottom of society."
The panel, which visited 21 communities and interviewed thousands of people affected by the riots, says its wide-ranging recommendations "must be enacted together" if the risk of further riots is to be reduced.
Singh said: "We must give everyone a stake in society. There are people 'bumping along the bottom', unable to change their lives. We urge party leaders to consider the importance of all of our recommendations. Should disturbances happen again, victims and communities will ask our leaders why we failed to respond effectively in 2012."
The report suggests the government's Troubled Families Programme, set up after the riots, may be aiming at the wrong target. TFP, led by the former "respect tsar", Louise Casey, identified 120,000 families needing intervention to turn their lives around and prevent reoffending.
However, of the 80 local authorities polled by the panel, only 5% thought there was any crossover between families targeted by TFP and the families of rioters. The report raises concerns that some schools are excluding pupils for the wrong reasons. Children should be excluded only as a last resort, and only ever be moved to quality alternative provision. If children leave school unable to read properly, the school should face a financial penalty covering the cost of the child getting the extra help they need at their new school, the report says.
"Every child should be able to read and write to an age-appropriate standard by the time they leave primary and then secondary school," the report says.
"If they cannot, the school should face a financial penalty equivalent to the cost of funding remedial support to take the child to the appropriate standard."
It also urges schools to help children "build personal resilience" to help them avoid getting involved in future rioting. It claims that what often determines whether someone makes "the right choice in the heat of the moment" is "character", which it defines as "self-discipline, application, the ability to defer gratification and resilience in recovering from setbacks".
Local businesses should get more involved with schools to promote youth employment and the government should provide a job guarantee for all young people out of work for more than two years, it says.
The report points out that half the recorded offences in the riots were for looting, often of high-value products, including designer clothes, trainers, mobile phones and computers. It calls for young people to be "protected from excessive marketing" and for the Advertising Standards Authority to work to increase children's resilience to advertising. It recommends the appointment of an "independent champion to manage a dialogue between government and big brands".
The four-member panel – Singh, Simon Marcus, Heather Rabbatts and Lady Sherlock – was nominated by the three main political parties. The report is one of several pieces of research into the causes of the riots. A study by the Guardian and the London School of Economics, based on interviews with 270 rioters, revealed that frustration at the way police engage with communities was a major cause. It also showed that mMany rioters also conceded that their involvement in looting was simply down to opportunism, giving them an opportunity to acquire desirable consumer goods.
Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of the charity Kids Company, said of Wednesday's report that the 500,000 figure for families in difficulties whose needs were not being picked up was an underestimate. "I'd say it is bigger than half a million, because of the scale of what we are seeing."
She added that the panel had adopted "a middle class model" by suggesting the key to preventing offending lay in working with young people's families. "They are still assuming the young person's family is intact, whereas 84% of the children who come to us are runaways. These children have predominantly been seriously maltreated by their families," she said.
Labour MP Diane Abbott, whose Hackney constituency saw some of the fiercest rioting, said: "I welcome the emphasis the report puts on the social and economic causes of the riots. In the first 48 hours after the riots, it was right to focus on restoring order. But, since then, the prime minister has insisted on putting the riots down to "criminality, pure and simple". This report completely demolishes his kneejerk response ...
"What we have seen really reflects an unspoken crisis in the country's efforts to raise educational standards in some of the inner cities. A number of communities feel they don't have any control over their own lives. They feel harassed by the police and marginalised by their job prospects – and are bombarded with reminders of lives they will, in all likelihood, never have. In the week after we have seen the top rate of tax for millionaires cut and the Conservative party hawking intimate dinners with the prime minister for £250,000 a go, I think communities like mine are absolutely sick of being told 'we're all this together', when it's absolutely clear that we're not all on it together."
Batmanghelidjh said it was "a cheek" to suggest it was character failings on the part of young people that led them to join in the rioting, rather than wider social issues such as deprivation and unemployment.
Shauneen Lambe, executive director at Just for Kids Law, which has acted for numerous young people arrested after the riots, agreed that unemployment and illiteracy played a part. "One of the things that really concerns us is how young people are criminalised in a way that previous generations just weren't – which really blights their job prospects."
The job prospects of the young people convicted following last summer's riots were especially bleak, she said.
Earl Jenkins, a learning support mentor at Calderstones school in Liverpool, who was one of up to 60 youth workers who went on to the streets of Toxteth during the disturbances to persuade youngsters not to get involved, agreed that joblessness was a factor. "If you've got nothing to lose, you'll do what you can to survive, won't you?"
Welcoming the report, the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said: "My department's Troubled Families programme will tackle some of the most entrenched social problems in our country by getting members of 120,000 families off the streets, back into school and on a pathway to work."
Plan B ill Manors
(worth reading readers' comments)
When Plan B debuted the video to his new single Ill Manors over the weekend, shadow health minister Jamie Reed MP tweeted: "The risk of any lefty politician being pilloried for praising the new Plan B track is really pretty high. That said, it's excellent." He was correct on both counts. For lovers of overtly political music Ill Manors is almost too good to be true: a thrilling release from a multi-platinum star that deals unflinchingly with last summer's riots and still lands on the Radio 1 playlist – the first great mainstream protest song in years. What's the catch?
What convinced me there wasn't one was the interview Plan B (born Ben Drew) gave 1Xtra presenter Mistajam. Far from just ringing the doorbell and running away, the rapper is fully prepared to expand on the single's ideas. "I genuinely want to change things," he said. "This is just the first step. Let me make my point first and raise the issue, and then if anybody wants to talk to me about how I think we can change these things I'm ready." An album and film, both called Ill Manors, are set to follow, along with plans for social activism. He's in this for the long haul.
Jamie Reed tweeted that Ill Manors "really does remind of What's Going On", but it's different in two crucial respects. Marvin Gaye was, by 1971, an established soul star observing the Vietnam war and inner-city deprivation from a distance; Drew still sounds like the product of a turbulent environment in north-east London. And Gaye's response to turmoil was transcendent, healing beauty; Ill Manors, which resembles hip-hop produced by the Prodigy, reflects the raging unease of its subject matter. It has more in common with Public Enemy or the Clash: music that addresses a riot and sounds like a riot. "As an artist who's trying to convey a message I need to get under people's skin," he told Mistajam. "The song needs to have that visceral energy … just like those horrible pictures we see on cigarette packets that are designed to shock us into being aware of our actions." (It's based, incidentally, on Peter Fox's 2008 German hit Alles Neu, which in turn samples Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony).
Having got the listener's attention, the song offers a dense and thorny lyric, full of unresolved contradictions and abrupt changes of subject. Solid liberal-left talking points – the closure of community centres, the adverse impact of the Olympics on London's poor – spiral into jokes and threats. Although he briefly mentions Boris Johnson (in reference, oddly, to the congestion charge introduced by Ken Livingstone), Cameron and Clegg appear only in the remarkable video, the work of Top Boy director Yann Demange. It's partly about the riots, and the government is in the background, but mostly it's about the psychology of class. You'd have to go back to the mid-90s, with Common People and A Design for Life (both of which were, in part, reactions to the perceived proto-chav mockery of Blur's Parklife), to find equivalently complex treatments of class in mainstream British pop.
Drew has said of his family: "We weren't working class but we weren't middle class, we were in the void in-between." The critic Simon Reynolds has described this as the socially precarious, creatively fertile "liminal class", which produced many of punk's prime movers. These days most members of that class fall under the dismissive umbrella of "chav". 1Xtra again: "For me that term is no different from similar terms used to be derogatory towards race and sex, the only difference being that the word chav is used very publicly in the press … When you attack someone because of the way they talk, the way they dress, the music they listen to, or their lack of education, and you do it publicly and it's acceptable to do that, you make them feel alienated. They don't feel like a part of society … For every person who uses the word chav there is a less educated person ready to embrace it. They say, well, look, I'm never going to change the way you think of me so actually I'm going to play up to it and fuel the fire. In essence that's what Ill Manors is about."
With less talent, or worse luck, there's a chance that Drew could have been among the rioters last summer, which is what gives Ill Manors both insight and nervous energy. On his stark 2006 debut, Who Needs Actions When You've Got Words, Plan B described his experiences and those of the people who lived around him. After the hugely successful lyrical and stylistic detour of The Defamation of Strickland Banks, he's returned to that terrain with a keener understanding of the political context. The social alienation, the fire-fuelling and the self-destructive lashing out all played a part in his own adolescence. The frustration he has expressed towards his younger self is now directed at the rioters. "I'm not trying to condone what happened during the riots," he told 1Xtra. "It disgusted me. It made me sick. It saddened me more than anything because those kids that was rioting and looting they've just made life 10 times harder for themselves. They've just played into the hands of what certain sectors of Middle England think about them."
Ill Manors says if you stereotype people as socially worthless then they will grow into those stereotypes. "Think you know how life on a council estate is from everything you've ever read about it or heard?" he asks. You expect a rebuttal, but instead: "Well it's all true, so stay where you're safest there's no need to step foot out the 'burbs." Drew writes best about being cornered – even his hit album is about a soul singer in jail – and here, playing a non-famous version of himself, he's cornered by prejudices he finds easier to confirm than overcome. Every rapid-fire verse accelerates with increasing desperation towards the same illicitly exciting chorus: "Oi! I said oi! What you looking at, you little rich boy?" The mingling of despair and defensive pride recalls A Design for Life's chorus: "We don't talk about love, we only want to get drunk."
The inhabitants of Ill Manors are in a lose-lose scenario. They riot: they're trapped. They don't riot: they're trapped. At least one way they get to feel for a moment the illusion of empowerment. Drew doesn't celebrate or even forgive that response but he attempts to explain it. Furthermore, when Demange cuts from a staged car-burning to news footage of the real thing, the viewer gets a disconcerting taste of an aspect of the riots that liberal analyses tend to downplay: the fact that wanton destruction can be briefly cathartic and, whisper it, fun. It reminds me of Greil Marcus's description of the Rolling Stones' Street Fighting Man as "a challenging emotional jigsaw puzzle, not congratulations for being on the right side".
So is Ill Manors really as good as it at first seems? No. It's much better
“Whatchu lookin at rich boy?” Plan B’s new video blasts Cameron
by Newswire
Rapper and singer Benjamin Paul Ballance-Drew – aka Plan B is furious.
He is furious at the government and his new video, which is released today and is already taking the music scene by storm, shows it.
Plan B achieved critical acclaim when his second studio album – The Defamation of Strickland Banks – went straight to number one in 2010.
He told Radio 1 why wrote a song about the August riots:
I feel it has been swept under the carpet and forgotten about and it still needs to be properly addressed. Since the riots happened I haven’t heard enough people within the public sector asking the two most important questions; ‘Why did it happen and how can we prevent it from happening again?’
Society needs to take some responsibility for the cause of these riots.
Why are there so many kids in this country that don’t feel they have a future, or care about having a criminal record?
If you’re born into a family that’s has enough money to educate you properly, you are privileged. You’re not better than anyone else you’re just lucky. Certain sectors of middle England, not all of them, but the ignorant ones need to wake up and realise that …and stop ridiculing the poor and less fortunate. That is what this song is about.
VERSE 1
Let's all go on an urban safari
we might see some illegal migrants
Oi look there's a chav
that means council housed and violent
He's got a hoodie on give him a hug
on second thoughts don't you don't wanna get mugged
Oh shit too late that was kinda dumb
whose idea was that...stupid...
He's got some front, ain't we all
be the joker, play the fool
What's politics, ain't it all
smoke and mirrors, April fools
All year round, all in all
just another brick in the wall
Get away with murder in the schools
use four letter swear words coz we're cool
We're all drinkers we aint drug takers
every single one of us buns the herb
Keep on believing what you read in the papers
council estate kids, scum of the earth
Think you know how life on a council estate is
from everything you've ever read about it or heard
Well it's all true, so stay where you're safest
there's no need to step foot out the 'burbs
Truth is here, we're all disturbed
we cheat and lie its so absurd
Feed the fear that's what we've learned
Fuel the fire
Let it burn.
CHORUS
Oi! I said Oi!
What you looking at you little rich boy!
We're poor 'round here, run home and lock your door
don't come 'round here no more, you could get robbed for
Real (yeah) because my manors ill
My manors ill
For real
Yeah you know my manors ill, my manors ill!
VERSE 2
You could get lost in this concrete jungle
new builds keep springing up outta nowhere
Take the wrong turn down a one way junction
find yourself in the hood nobody goes there
We got an Eco-friendly government
they preserve our natural habitat
Built an entire Olympic village
around where we live without pulling down any flats
[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/ill-manors-lyrics-plan-b.html ]
Give us free money and we don't pay any tax
NHS healthcare, yes please many thanks
People get stabbed round here there's many shanks
nice knowing someone's got our backs when we get attacked
Don't bloody give me that
I'll lose my temper
Who closed down the community centre?
I kill time there used to be a member
what will I do now 'til September?
Schools out, rules out, get your bloody tools out
London's burning, I predict a riot
Fall in fall out
who knows what it's all about
What did that chief say? Something bout the kaisers
Kids on the street no they never miss a beat
never miss a cheap thrill when it comes their way
Let's go looting
no not Luton
the high street's closer cover your face
And if we see any rich kids on the way we'll make 'em wish they stayed inside
there's a charge for congestion, everybody's gotta pay
do what Boris does... rob them blind
CHROUS
Oi! I said Oi!
What you looking at you little rich boy?
We're poor 'round here, run home and lock your door!
Don't come 'round here no more, you could get robbed for
real (yeah) because my manors ill
My manors ill
For real
Yeah you know my manors ill , my manors ill!
MIDDLE 8
We've had it with you politicians
you bloody rich kids never listen
There's no such thing as broken Britain
we're just bloody broke in Britain
What needs fixing is the system
not shop windows down in Brixton
Riots on the television
you can't put us all in prison!
CHORUS
Oi! I said Oi!
What you looking at you little rich boy?
We're poor round here, run home and lock your door!
Don't come round here no more, you could get robbed for
real (yeah) because my manors ill
My manors ill
For real
Yeah you know my manors ill , my manors ill!
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