How has the representation of youth has changed over time?

To compare the change in the representations of youth over time, I am going to compare the drama Skins with Blooming youth. Skins show the teenager’s life in the 2000s and the Blooming youth shows the teenager’s life in the 1970s. In the Blooming youth the main character is Jeffery who is a college student who is ambitious. He wants to get the first grade. Jeffery and his friends use good language most of the time. This character is a bit similar to the character Tony in the Skins. He is also a good guy who gets good marks and also well behaved. Both in the Skins and the Blooming youth one of the story lines is sex and virginity. They also talk about sex, smoke and drinks alcohol. In the both dramas they use slang. The settings used are the bedrooms. Jeffery shares a room with his friend. Their room is so messy. Everything is here and there. In the scenes of the bedroom we can see papers here and there in the ground, the unarranged bed etc. this shows that both Jeffery and his friend are muddled and unorganised. Whereas in Skins Tony has his own bedroom which is so clean, neat and tidy. His room even doesn’t look like it’s a teenage boy’s room. There are fewer posters in his room which is unlike from Jeffery’s. His clothes and bed are all well arranged and everything has its own place in his room. The main characters have a close relationship with music. Tony sings in a choir and Jeffery plays guitar. The characters Tony and Syd are similar to the characters Jeffery and his friend. As Tony tell things Syd to do and he does as he says in Blooming youth Jeffery orders to his friend and he does how he says. This shows that Tony and Jeffery have a leader role. One of the female roles in Blooming youth is Gerniea and Effie in Skins. Gerniea is a character who is silent, interested to learn things from her friend whereas Effie is a character who goes to wild night parties and comes back home in the morning. She wears really revealing dress i.e. a V neck top which shows her cleavage and a mini skirt. Gerniea wears a long sleeve red top which is not revealing and a skirt which is up to her knee length. She is not wearing any makeup, wears a blue hat and grey coat. Effie wears a lot of make up and when she came back home after the party her makeups were faded which shows that she had a long night.

Another drama which in am going to compare Skins with is 3 minute heroes, which is a drama from 1982. As the same as Skins and Blooming youths the teenagers in this drama also talk about sex and virginity. They try to attract girls. The characters have entirely different style of dressing and hairstyle from both the dramas in the Blooming youth and in skins, this shows the change in the dressing, hair and the life style of the teenagers over the years. In these 3 dramas there are 2 characters which they are mainly focusing on. In the 3 minute heroes the two main characters are Billy and his friend. They show the close relationship between the characters. One of the female characters in this drama is Debo who is similar to the character Effie. Both of them wears lots of makeups and loves going to night parties. The characters in this drama are fun, loving, caring and immature. They also show their interest to music as they have the ‘New era’ song. The main setting is the streets that they walk through. One of the storylines is also sex and virginity. There is a scene in which one guy smashes a drink can with his feet and some other guy comes and picks it up and puts it in the bin. This shows that not every teenagers are the same. Even though some teenagers do some wrong things there are some teenagers who are not like them. It’s the same case of Tony in Skins in which he is very good guy who respects others, keeps his room neat and tidy, organised etc. In conclusion I think that there are some similarities between the teenage representations over the past but at the same time it shows how the teenagers styles have changed.