Teenagers are everywhere and all over our television.
There's no greater champion of wayward teenage life than the Channel 4 phenomenon that is "Skins", which reared its ugly head again last night. Now I must admit that Skins is not generally my cup of tea, but I thought I would give the new series a go, and see whether the new cast of 'crazy' teenagers would change my mind.
Within the first five minutes of Series 5, the similarities to 'Mean Girls' is more than a bit obvious and the parody continues. Franky is the new kid on the block, bullied in her last school and starting again in Bristol. She's soon adopted by the popular girls: Mini: the pretty one, Grace: the less than intelligent one and Liv: the sassy one. Now stop me if this is sounding unrealistic.
Oh wait, that would have been around the opening credits.
Only half way through the first episode and we've seen the girls take drugs, run riot in a shopping mall and do a cheeky bit of shop-lifting. Standard after school antics when I was younger. Oh wait, no it wasn't. By half an hour in, the mean girl has stopped being nice and Franky, the tortured soul, is wielding a replica gun around and has found her 'true' friends.
Now I'm not denying the entertainment value of programmes like this - granted, they're full of energy. But what really is Skins? Is it a social commentary, an aspirational programme for young teenagers or just an overused story-line? As far as i'm concerned, not only is Skins a bad influence but it's a bad representation of teenagers today.
And talking of a bad representation of teenagers, BBC Three's "Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents" must be one of the weirdest programmes on TV. On one hand it glorifies the "lads" and "ladies" booze-filled holidays to destinations such as Zante and Magaluf, and then on the other hand brings along the parents to shock and appal them with scenes of their dearly-beloved daughters and sons getting absolutely wasted. The result of this is not the condemnation of our teenage booze-culture, but a giggle at the overly strict parents and how they need to let go.
If Skins is a representation of teenage life, then i missed out on a lot, but i don't think i'm too bothered about that.
More procrastination I see! But I love it! When Skins first came out my friends and I described it as similar to our lives but we had better dress sense. And then we actually watched it and realised we weren't dicks. There are teenagers like that out there (Goldsmiths Uni students are a PRIME example) but I think that shows like Skins fuels the fire. But (and sorry to make a sweeping statement here) there are horrible people that should keep to their cliques and not integrate into mainstream society where people live normal lives and a "casual" drug habit (drug habits are ridiculously glamorised in programmes like Skins) is not part of their lives. I really despair that there are a bunch of 12 year old's watching programmes like that and are ready to accept their fate as narcissistic, drug addicted middle classes that "party hard" and take Art History. Please someone tell them to read the newspaper and get a life.
ReplyDeleteLondon Girl Up North
PS. I enjoyed reading this and I love your writing style, but then of course I do, why else would I have "hired" you. :)