An Analysis of Age in 'Skins'

By watching the clip of Skins, which is approximately the first 4 minutes of Season 1 Episode 1, and the analysis of sound, we can gain an insight towards these characters and the narrative of the TV drama. One of the main representations of this clip is Age. At the beginning of the clip Tony (the main character) is lying in bed awake whilst a the sound of a Church bell is in the background. From this sound we can tell it is distant sound perspective and that it is obviously diagetic as it is keeping him wide awake. We can also tell that the Church bell is probably foley sound. This sound could have possibly been used to show that Tony is wide awake which can create an morning atmosphere. It is then followed by a diagetic alarm clock sound, which leads to Tony getting out of his bed. This alarm clock can represent that Tony is a teenager because many teenagers including myself wake up in the morning to the alarm clock, which is also a fair and accurate representation of them. As Tony gets out of bed and begins to stretch, a music clip is played throughout the time that he is working out and in his room. This sound is synchronous as it follows the quick pace of editing to create a lively effect. I think that this sound is non-diagetic because the sound clip continues as the pace of the editing slows down and focuses more on other parts of the scene than just his workout, and as he turns on loud music just after this sound clip fades out. This sound clip is heard to be quite fast paced and with a type of hip-hop beat which is representative of a teenage age group. As this sound clip is played during the introduction of Tony and also his sister Effie, it may represent them both to be teenagers due to the appeal of the music towards the 13-19 audiences.

Now as we move onto the introduction of the Dad as a character, he begins with dialogue. One of his first lines being "every f*cking morning", which can be interpreted as colloquial language which is informal and a londoners accent which isn't very recognisable. This line is used to represent the father as a short-tempered, partially uneducated and rude character. Stereotypically from this piece of dialogue we could come to the conclusion straight away that this character is working class and slightly less educated than other people as he swears throughout most of his dialogue during the clip. The dialogue between Tony and his father are swapped so that the father is in terms of stereotyping, to have the more formal and a wider variety of language than Tony to have the more colloquial, informal and uneducated language. This would mix up the representations of Age because from sound alone we would believe that Tony is the older character and the Father is the younger, but along with the clip we can tell that Tony is represented as young in other ways, and that the father is represented more from the visual aspects like his beer-belly etc. Also another interesting piece of dialogue that the father uses is "you take me for a complete James Blunt don't you". This is a use of 'Cockney slang' which is representative of his level of education as he is talking in a colloquial and informal way. This cockney slang can is mainly recognised by an older audience around 18-25, which portrays who the father character is appealing towards.

Through the use of sound in the clip we can conclude that age is represented in many different ways. Evidence of this is that Tony and Effie are both represented using stereotypical views of music which is seen to appeal to a teenagers. I believe that this stereotype is nor positive or negative and cannot be said to be untrue as it is common for a teenager to listen to hip-hop music more than any other age group. Stereotypes have also been gone against as the use of colloquial language and constant swearing from the father when a stereotypical view of them would be to be a loving and calm parent figure that would use a friendly tone instead of a more hostile tone that was used towards Tony in the clip. Therefore in this clip stereotypes of age have been met but some are seen to go with them whereas the others have gone completely against it, conveying that this clip is partially accurate in terms of representation of Age.