I will be investigating how youth is represented in the films A clockwork orange (1972) and If…. (1968) and how the films affected the views of the time and how the films influenced youths.
I have chosen to investigate these films because of how both films were released at the time of the relaxation of violence in cinema.
I also chose these films because the similar themes in both films, as both films focus on youths in society and there place in society, And also how Malcolm McDowell’s character Michael Arnold "Mick" Travis in ‘If….’ served as an inspiration for his character in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A clockwork orange’ Alex Delarge and the similarities between the two characters. In this investigate I hope to show how both films where important in the time they were released in the way youth was represented to audiences and the public.
Looking at the representation of youth will involve seeing how the director and actors portrayed the characters and events how that can be linked to real life views and impression of youth at the time in the 60s and 70s and how each film can be links historical to the time they were released and the reception the films got from the public.
The 60s and 70s saw the rebirth of the “teenager” and the end of post-war limitations; teenagers were being represented in a different light. In the sixties certain pop culture icons like ‘The Beatles’ and ‘the rolling stones’ also helped to create the idea of the teenager, with the fashions changing the introduction the age of the drug and club culture and teenage rebellion, teenagers really were to dominate popular culture for the next three decades, and “If….” Was a piece of film that showed an example of this teenage rebellion.
One of the main representation theorists at that time was Stanley Cohen, his theory on moral panics describes it as a sporadic episode which, as it occurs, subjects’ society to bouts of moral panic,