2. ‘Attack the Block’ – Youth, Stereotypes, Social Class (2011) Director Joe Cornish
Watch the opening sequence of ‘Attack the Block’ – how are the main characters
introduced?
How does this representation change?
3. ‘Attack the Block’ – Youth, Stereotypes, Social Class
• Opening sequence stereotypical hoodie
representation.
• As the film progresses the representation becomes
more positive. Develops a more sympathetic
representation.
• The film initially represents the young people as
‘monsters’, then replaces them with actual
monsters.
• Is this a contrast to other ‘hoodie horror films’?
4. ‘Attack the Block’ – Youth, Stereotypes, Social Class
‘While Attack the Block has moments of hilarity, and evokes the loneliness
of ET – the fantasy, the bizarre things happening in residential streets – this
is definitely a horror film. A political horror film, far less silly than fans may
expect. There are monsters, aliens of the sort we haven't seen in the
cinema for a long time.
"They're all the things that the press and people call those kids, made into
a monster. People call these kids monsters, they call them feral, they call
them animalistic, they say they've got no morals or values and all they care
about is territory and competitiveness. So what if there was a creature that
really was like that, and then you pitted the kids against it?“’
The Observer, interview with director Joe Cornish
5. As one half of the Adam and Joe team from TV and radio, Joe Cornish is a
witty, assured broadcaster. But Attack the Block, his debut feature film,
which he wrote and directed, is an odd confection: a genre mash-up
marked by jarring tonal shifts.
On the one hand, it’s a gritty British urban drama, played for laughs. A gang
of teenage hoodies from a south London tower block are initially seen
mugging a defenceless young woman (Jodie Whittaker) from their
neighbourhood. But when aliens start to threaten their block, all is forgiven
and they join forces with her to fend them off.
Genre-bending may be deeply fashionable these days, and tellingly Edgar
Wright, a master of this dark art with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is an
executive producer here. But Attack the Block’s attempts to straddle horror
and comedy are doomed: it’s neither scary nor funny enough.
Then there’s the vexed question of that mugging: it’s all too quickly swept
aside as Cornish tries to re-cast his young heroes as sweet and mischievous.
Their apologies to Whittaker ring false: they were as scared as she was
(yeah, right); they’d never have targeted her had they known she lived on
their block. Tell it to the judge, kids.
David Gritten – The Telegraph
6. These two articles have very different points of view.
The first looks at how the kids are pitted against actual monsters, this
humanises them and allows them to be seen as more than violent,
destructive characters.
The second challenges this, stating the film glosses over the mugging and
doesn’t really resolve the issues of violence surrounding the group.
Which of the articles do you agree with? Why?
7. Task 1
• Who are the protagonists?
• Who are the antagonists (monsters)?
• What are the main representations of youth?
• What are the key scenes that show these representations?
8. Entertainment and Utopia, Richard
Dyer
• Film theorist Richard Dyer argues that one of
the functions of entertainment is utopianism:
• ‘Entertainment offers the image of “something
better”…the sense that things could be
better…Entertainment does not present models
of utopian worlds…Rather the utopianism is
contained in the feelings it embodies.’
9. Utopian Categories of Entertainment
• Reality: Utopian Solution:
• Exhaustion Energy
• Scarcity Abundance
• Dreariness Intensity
• Manipulation Transparency
• Isolation/Fragmentation Community
• Dyer argues these categories reflect ‘temporary
answers to the inadequacies of the society’.
10. Watch the ending of ‘Attack the Block’. How can you
relate Dyer’s theory of entertainment and utopia?
(1:00:00)
