Social Context Study

For our media coursework. we have to produce a film with a primary theme of moral panics - it must be based on a moral panic currently within the media. Therefore, in this blog post, I am researching current fears within society, and choosing two of these to create my own film ideas. 

Current influences/fear in society:
There are a large amount of fears within society today, but the main ones are:
> Gang Culture - the London riots, Saturday 6 August - Thursday 11 August 2011
    - For example, with the London Riots, which took place from Saturday 6th August to Thursday 11th August 2011. These riots were largely filmed and publicised, mediated to create a moral panic.
> Increase in body image awareness
   - For example, an advert was released in a tube station in Australia, depicting a slim woman wearing a bikini, with the caption 'Is your beach body ready?', and this sparked a lot of outrage and controversy within the media.
> Increasing stress levels and how they affect the immune system
   - For example, scientific journals are being published which present new data which suggests that increasing amounts of stress reduces the effectiveness of the immune system, and within the media there are increasing pressures over schools and education.
> Acceptance of the LGBTQ community
   - For example, the legalisation of gay marriage in all 50 states of the USA occurred in 2015, which caused controversy
> Fear of the growing immunity to medication
   - For example, various scientific journals and articles within the news are now discussing the increasing immunity to antibiotics
>Fear of Rape culture
  - Celebrities such as Jimmy Saville are constantly being discovered as rapists and abusers
> Immigration crisis
   - Thousands of people are migrating over from countries such as Syria to countries such as the UK or Germany, and a lot of oil rich countries are refusing to let them in due to fears that terrorists may be among them.
> Fear of corruption of authority figures (links to racism in America)
   - There was recently a shooting in Boston, where a police officer killed an innocent, unarmed black man, which sparked a lot of outrage globally.
> Fear of terrorism
   - For example, there was recently an ISIS shooting in Tunisia which evoked a lot of fear, and also there was the 11/11 bombing of the twin towers in America.

My Film Ideas
1. My first film idea is based on the fear of rising stress levels and rapid advances in technology.
Specifically, my idea is that in the film there is a virus, which is caused by the chemicals released through the body when stress levels are high. As technology advances, increasing amounts of pressure is put on the younger generations to achieve more, hence correlating to high stress levels.
The film would have links to the idea of increasing immunity against medication, as the disease in the film would be untreatable, and would also be fatal. This would lead to mass global debates, in which world leaders discuss the next course of action. Some people suggest that they need to close down the schools, but others argue the importance of education so that the disease can be defeated. Religious and moral dilemmas are sparked as religious groups such as Catholics argue that the disease is clearly God's will, sent to teach us a lesson.
2. My second film idea is based on the immigration crisis, which is currently gaining a large amount of publicity. This film would be a lot simpler than the previous, and it would document a family's journey as they are forced to flee from a war torn country and enter into a country where they do not speak the language, and they are met with hostility.

My Favourite Film Idea
Of the two mentioned above, I am most interested in is film idea #2.
The immigration crisis
On Wednesday 2nd September, 2015, shocking images of a three year old boy being found drowned on the shores of Turkey were released, sparking widespread debates over how to react to the ongoing immigration crisis. Thousands upon thousands of people are travelling from countries such as Syria, illegally entering countries such as Greece and Hungary in the hopes of seeking refuge.
In Greece it is being said that this is the 'biggest migration crisis in living memory'.
On Wednesday, a reported 2,500 migrants landed on Greece's shores, and roughly 15000 refugees are in Lesbos, awaiting to attempt to travel to Germany.

Shortly after this, David Cameron released a statement, stating that the UK would accept thousands more migrants. However, it appeared in the Sun newspaper as a headline that the oil rich countries in Europe were refusing to take in any migrants. Their argument was that they feared that terrorists may be hiding in with the thousands of people.

Examples of Existing Films/Show
Several films and shows with similar themes as my main idea exist, and one such example is the BBC Three show Glasgow Girls.
"What started as a grassroots petition to save their friend from deportation inspired a powerful human rights movement which would eventually change immigration practices in Scotland."
The above quotation is a synopsis of Glasgow Girls, and so we see how it is a TV drama about immigration within Scotland, whereas our piece would be on immigration for a country such as Afghanistan to Britain.

However, there are very few films which follow the theme of decreasing effectiveness of immunity - most that discuss this topic or something similar to it are dystopian/horror films, looking at the immunity to vaccines which causes a zombie apocalypse, such as I Am Legend or World War Z.

Dystopian films and the mirror of society

During the last decade, dystopian films have become more popular and through these films, problems with society’s ethical and moral values have been highlighted. The most popular and successful films of the dystopian genre were the Hunger Games and the Divergent franchises which have both mirrored society in their own ways. 

The Hunger Games franchise is a very popular young adult dystopian film of this decade. The film depicts a futuristic American society called Panem and how children are set to fight to the death in order to win the title of the ‘Victor’. This is all as revenge for when the thirteen districts of Panem had defied against the capitol and started a rebellion that was later crushed by President Snow and his Peacekeepers. The film had mirrored the continuing problems of the class system in the western world on an exaggerated scale.

The Marxist Theories

•  Capitalism can only thrive on the exploitation of the working class. 
• The classes are a barrier in society that is nearly impossible to break.

Alike the Marxist theory, the films shows that once someone is born in a class/district, they would never be able to break free from it. This is relatable to our society still because if we look into our governments, it is very hard to find a member of government that has not attended one of the best private schools in the country i.e Harrow/ Eton. It is very rare to find a member of parliament or someone with significant power in this country who have not been brought up in a higher class. The film also highlighted theories of governmental corruption that had once seemed a wild accusation, which have now seemed a logical conclusion. Along with the digitalisation of the 21^st century, have come theories that the government can spy on us and see much more than we would have agreed or accepted to share with also some saying that all the information on the internet could easily be censored or edited by the government and so we just see what they want us to see. Which would be relatable to the Moral Panics Theory.

Moral Panics (Cohen)

• "condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests"
• This was a theory by Stanley Cohen which was written in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 1972. 
• The idea of governmental corruption would relate to the Moral Panics theory because it would be a threat the societal idea of the government keeping us safe. 

In addition to this, readers of the Hunger Games books would know that in the descriptions of the characters, they were not said to be white. However, in the making of the film Hollywood made most of the characters in the film white, and hadn’t shown the fact that in the books Peta lost a leg and Katniss suffered from being deaf in parts of the book, which shows that Hollywood chose not to represent disability in the film nor different races as well as the book.

 

Similar ideas were shown through the Divergent series. The film consists of a future Chicago with the inhabitants put into four groups/factions so that the build up to the destruction of their world would not happen again. To be put into these groups, at the age of 16 each teenager is to take the aptitude test and then make their choice of their new faction in the Choosing Ceremony.  However, some people do not conform to one faction and these people are called Divergents. These people are in danger of being hunted by the government and executed. This could mirror society in that people find it dangerous or threatening to be part of more than one of these ‘factions’ and instead, people are grouped in society rather than being seen for who they really are. For example, there are groups in society that are branded the “good guys” or the “rebels”, to a general society, these people are shown to be nothing more than this title given to them-which should not be the case. To dive deeper into the plot of the Divergent franchise, it could also be seen to depict the flawed society in terms of prejudices, which in our society today is still a problem especially in terms of racism.

Utopian Theory (Dyer)

• Both of these film examples would subvert from this theory
• This is the idea that people consume media because it expresses ideals about how human life should be organised and lived, it shows the 'perfect' way to live.
• This would subvert from the ideals shown in Divergent and The Hunger Games as these are known to be Dystopian films because of their exaggerated immoral society. 

 The group who are different and so are seen as threating and dangerous, the Divergents, can have links with people being singled out because of their race in our society, which is still a major problem especially in the US, which has been shared through recent news articles in the last decade. 

Recent News from the last decade

• Michael Brown was an 18 year old African American who was fatally shot by a white American police officer on the 9^th August 2014 after Michael had stolen several packages of tobacco from a local convenience store. This act created an uproar across the globe and showed the treatment of African Americans in the US. 
• Another example of this would be the catalyst for the Baltimore riots of 2015, which was the death of Freddie Gray, a 25 year old African American, after injuries sustained during an arrest by the police. This sparked riots across Baltimore which were reported across the world and highlighted again that problems were still continuing in America in terms of racism. 
• Another case could be linked to ideas covered in divergent. Sandra Band was an African American woman who was found dead in her jail cell in Texas on July 13^th 2015. The police said that she hanged herself, however the cause of death was disputed and sparked riots. This could link to the idea shown in divergent in which the government is corrupt as well as the factions and the idea of prejudice.

In conclusion, in many ways these two films do show fundermental flaws in our society. However, these films aren’t all about to show the negatives and all that is wrong with our world, it also shows that resistance should be shown to what has become the norm in our world and we all should have a voice to ignite a rebellion against these ideas. (Although possibly a rebellion that is less dramatic then depicted in these films).