Find one or two other texts that represent youth in a similar way to White Girl, This Is England and About A Girl - Explain the links.

Contemporary representation of British youth in films usually takes one of two distinctive routes to attract an audience. The first, which is often found in comedies, is a light-hearted, playful middle class youth, such as in St Trinian's. The second is much more common, being used in a variety of shows and film, including White Girl, This Is England and About A Girl. This second type, which can be further split depending on the intentions of the director, usually shows working class youths, who have struggled to find an identity, but eventually discover one that they feel comfortable with, for example, Leah's conversion to Islam in White Girl.

This approach is also taken in the 2006 film, Kidulthood, written by Noel Clarke. However, the antagonists of this film are also from a similar background. This balanced representation of working class British youth, written by someone who has experienced this lifestyle in reality, can be considered a highly accurate representation. In contrast to youths being the main protagonists in This Is England, and the balance in Kidulthood, a 2008 film, Eden Lake, provides a very right-wing view. A horror/thriller film, it portrays youths as a major threat to British society, that plays on, and fuels, the fears of youth caused by various newspaper articles highlighting a supposed increase in violent crimes committed by the British youth. While each of these films represents British youth with a slightly different approach, both represent them similarly to White Girl, This Is England, and About A Girl. For example, This Is England, Kidulthodd, and Eden Lake all feature a tribalistic group of youths that care only for their own, while the disenfranchisement shown in White Girl is also present as an underlying theme in Kidulthood.

Michel Maffesoli on Find Your Tribe

While perusing the internet during a particularly dull presentation by a student during one of my lectures at the Paris Descartes University I discovered a very interesting website, created by a British TV station, known as Channel 4, that allows the people of the UK to discover which tribe they belong to. The premise of this website is quite obviously influenced by my own work, most notably my highly successful 1995 book on the decline of individualism, “The Time of the Tribes”, as evidenced by its reference to the existence of many different tribes within society. The multitude of different tribes available on the website show how fragmented modern society has become, thanks to the variety of different spheres of influence available to the average person. However, all of these tribes share common themes. For example, each and every tribe is based on some form of consumerism, with several being hyped as “alternative” to the “mainstream” tribes. In reality, these tribes are equally as “mainstream” as those they are trying to differentiate themselves from. And the majority of that which is consumed by each of these tribes is often linked by some form of brand name. For example, the tribe known as “Rahs” tend to wear brands that many other tribes can’t afford, such as Jack Wills. This financial advantage over another tribe, “Townies”, is almost the only thing that separates them from each other, evidence at how easy it can be for new tribes to create themselves.