TASK 1

Close textual analysis
90210 – Naomi and Silver meet Teddy



In this particular scene, there is a common ideology of American teen dramas present, such as the cast being beautiful, and that good looking guys or girls should go out with other good looking people, as well as constructing the ideology that sex is not a taboo.

This scene allows the audience to gain sexual gratification from the characters, through the long shots used, which clearly shows the characters perfect bodies that are in short clothing.
Within the text the female characters Naomi and Silver are objectifying the male character, Teddy so there is a female gaze, however the audience can also ‘gaze’ at the female character s that have good bodies and dressed in short tennis dresses.

There are two distinctive representations of female characters in this clip. The blonde female seems to be represented in the stereotypical ideology that she is good looking and a bit slow for example not understanding Silver’s sarcasm and that she ‘doesn’t go by the numbers’, which shows that she isn’t intellectual . Also, the fact that she is somewhat yearning for the attention of the good looking boy represents her as ‘The Blonde’ since she seems to be boy-driven.
On the hand the other female character doesn’t seem to be that interested in the guy and seems more calm and collective over the good looking boy rather that being all over him, so to speak.

The fact that there is an injection of pop culture within Silver’s dialogue of the film ‘Vicky, Christina, Barcelona, shows that as well as the film, the show is mainstream, with a mainstream audience, who both have a good looking cast. Pop culture is another popular convention apparent in American teen dramas such as Glee and Gossip girl, because this youth generation seems to be very interested in pop culture.

The actual show, 90210 is a comedy-drama, which is a very popular hybrid genre within teen American shows. In this particular clip the characters use sarcasm and innuendo for humour, which are very popular types of humour in youth culture because of the fact they are very sexual and the youth culture are very interested in sex and other sex related things. The ideology presented here is that sex can be a topic that can be discussed, one which is not a taboo.

There can be a sense of escapism and utopia within this scene because of the luxurious and nice location and not forgetting the good looking cast, which seems a bit too good to be true; none of the supposed teenagers seems to possess the odd spot or excess fat. Escapism is yet another popular convention in American teen dramas, which somewhat paints a picture of the audiences and the youth culture. Maybe the young audience of American teen dramas do not have the perfect lives or perfect bodies and shows such as 90210 and Glee allows them to escapism which can explain their popularity.