Media summer project – Anuvahood
For my summer
research project I have been focusing on the film ‘Anuvahood’, I choose to look
at this media production as after watching the film I came to find that the
film had a vast amount of racial stereotypes that are enforced, furthermore
most of the stereotypes that are shown are negative. This can have a range of
different effects on different audiences, thus I feel that this would be an appropriate
medium for me to focus upon.
Actors
Adam
Deacon – Kenneth
The film
stars a range of different actors from different ethnic back grounds, a lot of
the actors are British and aren’t very well known world-wide, but are
significantly popular within the British film and music industry. For example,
Adam Deacon an actor and rapper from Hackney, East London. His father is from
Morocco, and walked out on the family when Adam was just 2 years old. At the
age of 12 Deacon began to act and trained at the Anna Scher Theatre. His early
career included work with Y Touring Theatre Company, with whom he appeared in a
number of tours including Cracked by Nicola Baldwin. He’s stared in movies such
as ‘Kidulthood’, he’s also starred in 'Bones'
in an MTV show called Dubplate Drama. His next role was in 4.3.2.1, a heist
movie, released in June 2010.
Recently Adam co-wrote, co-directed and played the lead role in
Anuvahood, which was released on March 18 2011. The film is described as,
"A pulls-no-punches, coming-of-age story, centering on one directionless
hopeless 'shotter', who finds his true worth in the face of urban adversity."
Adam has featured in various music videos including; Bashy's "Who wants to be a millionaire" and Chipmunk's Chip Diddy Chip. He is also a musician and musical performer most noted for his two tracks on the soundtrack to Adulthood. The tracks are: 'Adamhood' and 'On It 08'
Richie
Campbell – Tyrone
Richie’s
career began at the age of 13 when he attended the famous Anna Scher Stage
School in Islington. It was there where he found his love for acting on
stage and quickly established himself as a great young talent with leading
roles in stage plays Eugene Onegin, Slamdunk, Cutter and Little Sweet
Thing. But it was his standout performance in 93.2 at the Royal Court theatre
as the ‘Bitter but likeable’ Boss man that got the ball rolling. He was singled
out and shortlisted for the what’s on stage theatre choice award for ‘Best
Actor’.
Richie’s film
career has recently gone from strength beginning with in Nick Loves 2009 film
The Firm playing Snowy a cockney firm member becoming brave enough to leave to
most recently he starred in Anuvahood playing Tyrone. It is indeed this film
that has proved that Richie can turn his hand to just about anything stepping
out of his serious acting to conquer the world of comedy which he mastered. Since
then he has starred in Victim, Sket and Top Boy.
News
Articles & Reviews
Triple threat writer/director/actor Adam Deacon stars as K (real name
Kenneth), a wannabe MC who disastrously turns to dealing weed after his family
loses nearly all their possessions to bailiffs. He and his equally hopeless
crew get into all kinds of scrapes with the local criminals. Oh, and it's a comedy.
Hopelessly broad and almost continually annoying, it's a film that it's hard to
imagine even the target audience warming to. It's really just a torrent of
age-old gags and clumsy, pointless situations dressed up with street slang. At
least they didn't appear to have wasted much money on this, which is one of the
few plus points.
The article above was taken from the online version of the Guardian
newspaper. The feedback that was given of the film was very negative and harsh,
this may be due to the fact that the film was targeted at a younger audience,
whereas the person that has written the review, most probably did not fit this
target audience, thus he was not able to relate and understand a lot of the
humerous aspects of the film. However after reading a few of the comments that
were left on the page, it was evident that people that meet the target audience
arte able to enjoy the film, for example “I
have to disagree with this review. I found the film hilarious, well directed
and exciting. If you can't relate to this type of film you will hate it. My
problem with film critics is that it is really just one persons opinion. I
guess that is why I don't really read them. The Black Swan was praised by so
many people this year but I found it to be over hyped, boring, hard to follow
and lacking in a decent plot. Yet everyone was raving about it. My advice would
be to go and watch the movie and decide for yourself. I think that you might
disagree with Philem O'Niell and may like it.”
Utter
dog shite. Sorry for being so blunt and crass.
I
just hated it. I’m not sure if it is actually meant to poke fun at films like
it (Adulthood and Kidulthood) – if it is then i didn’t laugh each way. I
thought it was offensive and racist. I was literally counting down the minutes.
Interesting the ‘Five star reviews’ listed on the front poster are from
publications I’ve never heard of.
Once again the review given on the film was very negative and it also
says, “it was offensive
and racist”, I believe the racist aspect of the film was intentional as the
racial stereotypes that were used in the film were very strong and some people
may of found it offensive, however I believe the main purpose to have such strong
racial stereotypes was simply used for humour, for example having an extremely built
black male, named Tyrone as the villain can be seen as being very racial. However
to a young urban audience this would be seen as being very funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzDWevrtRX4
– You Tube link
In this short
clip we get to hear why Adam Deacon made this film and what his purpose was
behind it, and he clearly states that he wanted to show what life is like on a
estate but in a humorous way, whereas usually council estates are shown as very
bad places to be. This creates a folk devil as through films such as Adulthood
and Kidulthood, society starts to see kids from estates as being very
dangerous, and thus it creates a division between society and people that live
on estates.
Narrative:
The narrative of the film is of a character called Kenneth, he is a
wannabe bad boy that is trying to pursue his career with music, as he wants to
become a rap artist. Once he realises that he is not able to go forward with
that career he vows to become a respected gangster or “cry trying”. He starts
to sell drugs (marijuana) and begins to make some small time money before he is
robbed by the estate bully, Tyrone. Kenneth then decides to rob everything back
from Tyrone, but he makes the mistake of being seen by Tyrones gang. The result
of Kenneth’s slip up leads to an epic fight between Tyrone and Kenneth, where
Kenneth eventually beats Tyrone and becomes the hero of the estate. Kenneth
then becomes a new person and returns to his job at ‘Laimsbury’.
Genre:
British urban comedy – The comedy aspect of the film appeals to a very
niche market and only the target audience of 15 years seem to find the content funny.
This is because the comedy that has been added to film is mainly understood by
this specific market, people that ca relate to the characters are able to enjoy
the film more than a random person that may be selected to see the film.
Crime – There isn’t any major crime that takes place in the film,
however there is drug use and weapons are shown. The amount of crime shown is
controlled because of the age rating, whereas if the film was an 18, there may
have been more horrific scenes shown and much greater use of weapons, violence
and drugs.
Media institutions:
Production – Gunslinger
Distribution – Revolver
Media values and ideology:
From my point of view I believe that there are many different values and
ideologies that are trying to be represented in this film. For example, you should
be more careful before making decisions, as a lot of the decisions ‘Kay’ makes
leads to him getting in to trouble. Another one is that you should think of the
consequences, as Kay does a range of things without thinking of the outcome
e.g. stealing from Tyrone, this situation leads to Key almost being killed. Finally
at the end of the film Kenneth says, “I’m choosing life, it’s all about
enlightenment.” Although this scene was
also added for comedic purposes, I believe it has another meaning, as it shows
a person that came from an estate, who was in a bad environment and he seemed
to change his life, ‘ we should look at the brighter things in life’.
Media Audiences:
The primary audience would be 15 year olds as that is who the film has
been targeted at, however I believe that there is a much larger audience, as
people that are able to relate to the characters and their stories would also
be appealed to the film. Also an older audience would also watch the film as
they may want to watch the film before they let their children watch the film. The
demographic for this film would be C2, D, E 15 – 25 male and female.
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