Both these films portray the British youth in very different ways, Harry Brown makes us feel intimidated by these youths that they are our new feared characters we would usually believe were things like 'zombies' in the horror genre. But these 'hoodies' hit home a lot more and we feel much more frightened by them because they are not made up and infact they are part of our society today. Harry Brown represents these youths as ignorant to the laws and morals of a civil society, as we see with examples from the opening sequence we have the 'thugs' pressuring one boy who wants to be part of their 'gang' into making him smoke weed like a 'real man' they are saying, They then pass him a gun and we can see that every single one of them get excited at the idea of having their own gun. As if it is a privlege to own the power that could end a persons life to becoming a respected 'hoodie', The opening sequence demontrates the nievity and violent youths who think what they know and do is the right actions to go about. We see this taken to the extreme when they are pretending to shot at a woman missing her by inches who is walking in daylight through the park pushing a pram with her baby inside they shot at her twice scaring her and her screaming for her life and by the third shot with the youths laughing as it is some innocent game they shot her and it hits her and we see blood as she falls to the floor, insinuating that she could be infact dead and these horrific actions that these youths think is funny leads to the public society in danger. Just by this opening sequence of Harry Brown us as the audiences feel threatened and scared of these thugish youths who show all the hallmarks of the stereotypical youth of our 'Broken Britain' with the tracksuits,guns and their dead eyes. Director Daniel Barber is also aware of the visual power of the 'hood' itself as an iconic image that has long had sinister connotations; most with the ku klux klan and the Grim Reaper.You have these youths hiding their faces masking their idenities and because we cannot see them scares us as we don't know who we are confronted by. What seperates the hoodies from the youth cults of previous moral panics that we see in 'Quadrophenia' who are the 'teddy boys', 'the mods' and 'rockers' etc. Is that they do not have the pop-cultural weight of the other subcultures, who grouped their members through the bonding of music, art and fashion. These new aged 'youths' are instead defined by their class: percieved as being bottom of the 'heap' and their social standing. That they are the lowest of all our classes. The perceptions of both films show very different examples of youths 'acting out', we have 'harry brown' who demonstrates youths acting like 'thugs' causing fright to people for their sheer enjoyment and looking for trouble and it is just seen as much more of a negative personer of these youths. Whereas even though Quadrophenia's youths take drugs and drink it comes accross in a more hippster innocent way as if they are just looking for a good time and not to cause trouble whilst trying to find their own person. They are more challenged by the adults for instance the parents have more control affecting their feelings than they would in Harry Brown. These youths only really cause harm to the public society when they are rioting against eachother the groups of 'the mods' and 'the rockers' who are the oppsite and hate one another.
It was In the early-mid 1960s when the two conflicting groups of British youths sparked the first case of major nationwide moral panic with their fighting. The 'Rockers' who were the first group, usually rural, manual workers who wore clothes such as black leather jackets and rode big motorcycles in gangs. The other group 'the mods', were mostly city dwellers who wore suits and rode scooters and green jackets, and who saw the rockers as “out of touch” and looking to cause trouble. Conflict usually took place over disputes like the overlapping of territories. Quadrophenia shows the impact of entering the same territorie when the rockers and mods are both in Brighton and cause a huge riot that gets the police involved because it becomes so extreme with them hitting one another with wooden bats. However they of course dont use guns or knifes so we dont feel as threatened once again by these youths as they dont exactly want to 'kill' someone they just want to own their territorie and show them 'who's boss' Where as in Harry Brown the youths are eager to kill and hurt innocent people to make them seem stronger, more intimitating and powerful to one another. In Harry Brown the Adults are percieved as the heros who hunt down and infact sometimes kill these terror antagonists of youths we are in favour throughout this film of the adults suceeding in victory over the uncontrollable teenagers. In Quadrophenia the adults arent seen as the good guys, nor the bad guys they are just the characters who want their teenagers to grow up and become mature rather than take drugs and ride around in their scooters all day and go to parties. The main character's parents in this film only get agressive towards him because of him being late home and not getting up for work or finding drugs in his possession and this is the kind of action any parent would have today(maybe not as violent, of course) but they are only doing this actions because they want whats best for the teenager who is going through the rebellion stage trying to find themselves as a person. So in this film we have an open mind about the adults in contrast to the youths. Applying theorists i would put Acland's (1995) theory of how the adults and youths who are protrayed as 'normal' are now contrasting with the youths that we could describe as 'delinquents' and 'ASBOS' so it shows us a clear break in the differences and these 'ASBOS' are acting in an unexceptable way. This theorist believes that the media plays a big part in youths and that the 'ideology of protection' is aided when we are watching and monitering the youths every move as they need constant survallience with the way they act. This is at the time of a persons life when you are coming into your own person with your own attitudes and thoughts and this is the time to be learning the values and social rules of how we should all be acting, to make sure these youths confrom to the rules and do not stray. These adults in Aclands theory believe the adults have this middle class revenge fantasy in which these working class youths are punished. This theory is shown in Harry Brown with the adults acting as the hero fighting for morality and a unterrifing society. In Quadrophenia, the theory of Cohen's (1972) is used as it was in the 1960's that this theorist looked at the media responses to the mods and rocker riots in these times. He argued that certain topics arised from societies during the time when the topics were the anxieties of the societies of the time. For instance the rocker riots came from the youths rebel to the rock and roll life style they had taken acustomed to. A Moral panic occurs when the media highlights and widens the seriousness of youths. The idea of moral panic is that it allows the society to deside what values it does not accept. But the example of working class youths potrayed today have become this 'horror' and 'scary' image that have become a contempory scare for us today. Maybe perhaps tapping into the economic anxieties, and concerns about benifit cultures and the long list of people unemployed with nothing to live for but their youth 'gangs'. We can see from the different theorists perseptives and form our own watching these two films and the difference portral of these young 'youths' that a lot has changed from the 1960's to todays time and that we would say that the mentality of these youths has got far more aggressive and ignorant as the years go on and there is fear that this will continue and the actions of these youths will get out of hand unless we can instruct some kind of control as these youths are becoming more 'scarier' to our society by the second, and what used to be a rebelling of culture act is turning into terrorism and threat to gain enjoyment: if that is the case then today's middle class youths are infact frightening to us, from the representation of these two media texts and the media publication alone.
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