Age is a portrayed hugely in a stereotypical way in British TV. Children are shown to be annoying and can easily get upset if they don’t get what they want. Teenagers are shown to get up to no good. Middle aged people are more frequently shown to be quite mundane, monotonous people who don’t usually fill their time with exciting things. While the elderly are portrayed as being old and weak. They Television programme I chose to analysis is The Inbetweeners, this programme is based on a teen from private schooling has got moved to a public school. The Inbetweeners is a story of his mission getting new friends and the four of them have adventures, trips and spend all their time going after girls which always ends badly.
In the Inbetweeners aged is shown in the most stereotypical way you would expect, a coming of age drama to show. Children in this programme are defiantly shown as being annoying, one of the main characters Simon has a little brother. His little brother sucks up to his parents, informs them when Simon has done something wrong. When he is out of view of his parents he uses vulgar language and tries to get Simon into trouble. The reason for the media portraying children in this way is that the programme is aimed at teenagers, who most of them can relate to having an annoying little sibling.
Teenagers are never shown to be ‘normal teenagers’, the media tend to exaggerate teens problems for the sake of comedy. Viewing teenagers will such bad fortune will make the viewer feel good about their life and because their teenager will laugh at the others misfortune. In The Inbetweeners the main characters who are teenagers are represented as basically being losers, who are desperate to have sexual intercourse with girls. They go to school, go round each other’s houses and get drunk and go to the rare party. There would normally be not a lot of good viewing in their lives but being very very unfortunate really makes the viewing so much better. Anything that can go wrong will, this is quite different to normal teenagers as not every day is a train wreck of misfortune. If they aired a programme that consisted of four teens sitting around drinking it would be quite boring. Throw in hilarious language, a lot of vomit, urinating on each other, cars in lakes and erection problems then the programme is bound to be hilarious. Not a lot of people can relate to the lives lived in The Inbetweeners that’s what makes it so popular. It shows how unlucky your life could be so you have to laugh at a continuing luckless streak.
Adults who are middle aged are represented in the Television programme as being the opposite of the stereotypical adult. Instead of being boring and workaholics, they are a main source of embarrassment for their children. For instance Simon’s dad tells many a tale about sexual experiences with Simon’s mum, these tales are usually told in front of Simon and his friends. The main character Will has a mum that is known among his friends as being very good looking. But she also reveals many of Wills secrets in front of his friends e.g. crying on rollercoaster’s in the past and having to take suppositories for illnesses. The reason why middle aged adults are represented this way is because of the viewing audience again. Most teenagers is embarrassed about their parents or parent, they can relate to the characters and know that it is quite normal to have embarrassing parents.
Elderly people are portrayed in The Inbetweeners as being weak, boring and ill. In one of the episodes they volunteer at a retirement home for the elderly. All of the old people are just sitting around sleeping or watching rubbish mid-day T.V. The home is smelly and the elderly even need help going to the toilet. This episode is funny because the audience can laugh at how the teenagers have to create their own entertainment. Later on another character Jay brings out the non-stereotypical side of the elderly. He gets caught masturbating by a group of people; little did he know there was an old woman in the room. This old woman blurts of “He did that over me!” we can infer from this that not all elderly people are boring and sapped of all humour. The reason why the elderly are represented in this way is that we don’t really know what old people are like when you’re not around. This goes strongly against the stereotypical view and brings to our attention that we don’t really know the elderly. For all we know they could all be party animals who always get drunk and cause trouble when we’re not around.
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