Not Another Teen Film Analysis

Explore how young people are represented in teen-orientated comedies, how does this representation set a “social norm” for teenagers in the real world?
Teen comedies, such as “Superbad ” and “Not Another Teen Movie ”, present the audience with a stereotypical representation of characters that exist within the “teen world”. The representation of these characters is usually extreme, meaning that the viewer instantly recognises the stereotype before the character is formally introduced. While these stereotypes provide comedic value to a film produced for a mainstream audience, it also makes the audience think about themselves and how their personality fits into the stereotypes presented. Using research from key audience theories and textual analyses
A passive audience are easily manipulated by the media, allowing the media to change their views without the audience realising. In its simplest form, Gerbner’s cultivation theory (1968) states that “the more time people spend "living" in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television" , meaning that those who spend more time using the media, the more likely they are to see the real world as that depicted within the media . The theory relies upon the concept of “mainstreaming”; the process by which different groups of media users form a common outlook on the world through the constant exposure of the same images and labels within the media10. A prime example of this process is the film “Not Another Teen
On the other, through representing the school like this, the film has mainstreamed this extreme stereotypical situation and the audience are more likely to view this new world as “normal”. While it is Uses and Gratifications theory that expects audience to compare themselves with the representations shown in the media, cultivation theory is responsible for defining “normal” within the real world. Audience look towards the media for guidance, passively accepting the society depicted within the texts, then actively apply this version of society to real world scenarios. This has a negative effect upon real world teenagers who would begin to identify themselves and their peers as “outsiders”, “jocks”, “sluts”, etc., due to the effects of mainstreaming. As with “Superbad”, an active audience would apply their own personal context to the film in order to find which stereotype they belong to. Teenagers within the real world aim to become a stereotypical character in order to improve their personal relationships and form a group of people with similar