Youth, Culture and Collective Identity

Yesterday I was at the 'Youth, Culture and Collective Identity' A-level study day at BFI Southbank. It was a day of lectures dedicated to our exam that we will doing in the Summer, and it was a very beneficial. The first section of lectures was on identity and collective identity.

Jacques Lacan

We learnt about some important people to take note of, one of them being Jacques Lacan, a psychoanalyst who had developed a theory called the 'Mirror Stage', a stage at which child begins to develop their identity. Moving on from this, the lecturer (Matthew Hall) began to talk about psychoanalytic film theory and asked the question: how do we use the cinema and television as a 'mirror' to reinforce our identity? After this, Henry Jenkins was introduced, another theorist who believes that we need to interact in order to form our identity. 

Henry Jenkins

 When we interact, our own identity is influenced by other people, also we may be interact and be heavily influenced by media representations. For example, if we see someone we really like in a film, we may aspire to be like them, and we may shape our identity to be like them. Other theories that exist are that we actively use these representations to reinforce our existing identity and show us how we should aspire to be, or we use media texts as a means to basis for collective identity (e.g Beliebers, TwiHards, Directioners).