Saturday 7 February 2015

Representation of South London through 'Attack The Block' (2011)


Attack the Block is a film written and directed by Joe Cornish, the film follows a gang of teenagers from a council estate in south London, that mug a women on her way home from work on fireworks night. The gang soon has to become the heroes and team up with he women they mugged to save their tower block from an alien invasion.

South London is represented in a very negative light in this particular film, if you ignore the alien invasion and look solely at the characters and their surrounding locations you are able to see these representations. The characters in this film are shown to be underprivileged youths that result to gang related behaviour, race is a big matter in this film as the gang are mostly all from ethnic minorities which is cements stereotypes a lot of these minorities are faced with on a daily basis e.g. being violent. The women that is mugged is white and walking home alone at night, which gives the impression that if you are a young white female and alone you are likely to be mugged/harassed by a gang. The characters in the gang show illegal behaviour such as marijuana smoking/growing, vandalism and violence. They are dressed as stereotypical street thugs with jogging bottoms and a hoodies on and they used slang to back up these stereotypes such as blud and tings. The locations around London this film was shoot in makes south London look like it is full of council estates and tower blocks which connotes the area to be poor and dirty.

Attack the Block was released in 2011 the same year as the London riots, with the gang related behaviour this film shows, it gives viewers the assumption that London is full of gang related violence and is not a very safe place to be.

Tylar Gilbert
Student Number: 1310195
Word Count: 308

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