Media A2
iLL Manors Essay
The film iLL Manors was written by Ben Drew, who is also
known as Plan B. The reason for making this film was to spread light about the
young people, ‘youths’, trapped in poverty, the types of things that young
people were going through on a daily basis and try and bring about change to
help these young people’s lives by directing the film towards upper class,
middle aged people. Ben Drew said “I want to get a copy of this film and
deliver it to the prime minister and say: This is another bit of your country
that you don't talk about, you don't see, but nevertheless, large numbers of
children and young people are trapped in this life." This shows Ben’s
passion for the subject and the type of recognition he thinks this matter
should get to change the young people’s lives.
Ben Drew said that he aimed his movie towards ‘middle aged,
middle class’ people, however, because of the story line and the sensitive
topics that were in the movie, many middle aged, middle class people did not go
to see the movie. Instead young people with an interest in his music went to
watch the movie. This meant that the target audience did not get his message he
was trying to get across and the film didn’t bring light about this topic to
the people who could help change the situation of these children shown.
Ben Drew felt that the media put untrue stereotypes on these
young people and people were believing what the media said, and therefore had
misconceptions on what young people are like, especially in deprived areas. He
then goes on to say, “If you'd had no direct contact with the kids that I'm
talking about how the hell can you judge them?". This is an effect of the
Cultivation Theory, which was a theory by Jennings Bryant and Dorina Miron in
2004. Cluthivation Theory is when a more negative representation of the British
Youth is portrayed and the population see in the media, the more likely they are
to believe it is true and stereotype people. I believe that without seeing the
interview about what he was trying to do by making this film, but watch the
film alone, it shows youths negatively and the audience will judge youths just
as much, if not more than before this film was released.
On the other hand, the founder of Kids Company said “These
children are living with such dark secrets. That's why it's so important."
This shows that she felt that the film had made the desired impact and that the
film was bringing light to a topic that not many people knew much about. Also
the British youth would benefit from this publicity as it would bring it to the
attention of many people and emphasise the difference between their lives and
the once which these characters had.
Someone who reviewed this film said "people on different
sides of the political debate and policymakers of all shade will take what they
want from this film.” This is a negative for the British youth and for Ben Drew
as this was not his set out intention and he wanted to shed light upon these
struggles of these people’s lives. This quote shows that it can be taken
wrongly by the wrong people watching the film and not looking into the meaning
behind it.
Overall I feel that the fil does have a deeper meaning
behind it, one which is to trying to explain the reasons behind some peoples
actions a bring light to the daily struggles that some young people have to go through
and are forgotten about by society. However, I feel that this message is not
easily taken from just the film alone. Looking at interviews of Ben and background
reading before watching this movie is vital to be able to take the actual
message behind it.
