Textual Analysis - Adulthood

Textual Analysis – Adulthood

The film I am going to analyse is Adulthood which was released on the 20^th of June, 2008 and directed by Noel Clarke. The genre of the film is teen drama and social realism.

The equilibrium of Adulthood is when Sam, who was imprisoned for six years for murdering a boy called “Trife” in the prequel (Kidulthood)  is released and when it shows most characters in Kidulthood getting on with their normal lives after six years. The disruption is when Jay (Trife’s friend) finds out that Sam has been released and wants to take revenge on him, he pays a group of teenagers to find him and then kill him. The new equilibrium is when Sam walks away from his fight with Jay and reunites with a girl that he promised to go to the cinema with.

Adulthood’s narrative is linear however the chronology is interrupted by the use of flashbacks. The flashbacks occurred of Sam when he was in prison; this clarifies some of the misunderstood factors in the film and shows the viewer’s why Sam acts in certain ways in some points of the film. The film has a closed narrative as the film ends when Sam walks away from his fight and Jay doesn’t follow him up to carry on the conflict but shouts “this aint over” where Sam replies “yeah it is”. This reply made it a closed narrative as he ends all conflict with that claim.

 

All the characters in the film are typical of the genre as they all represent everyday life in urban areas of London. Most characters are aggressive and would use any reason to fight, for example at the start of the film two youths shoot a man just because he was in their area with a good car, this reflects real events that occur in London and the characters also show real behaviour of youth in London.

 

There is a variety of negative behaviours displayed in the film such as drug intake and dealing, exposure to firearm use, theft and anti-social actions this is all typical of social realism as is shows how youths live their lives, in addition all the characters speak “slang” which adds to the fact of showing accurately how teenagers in London are. All key characters are wearing clothing such as hoodies, hats and jackets, these clothes are worn by mainly urban and inner city youths and the people who wear them are stereotyped as trouble makers and anti-social.   

The characters speak using bad language and “slang” which represents their age, if they were older they might speak more sensibly and appropriate. It also represents their social class being low as upper classed youths speak normal English without made-up words.

The costumes in the film, such as hoodies and jackets are worn to cover their identities and create a negative and “hard” look about them. This too represents age and social class, as teenagers wear these clothes as it is the fashion for their age even though it makes them look anti-social and troublesome, it represents their social class as low being the fact that deprived youths of London all wear this type of clothing. Props in the film such as drugs, guns and knives represents age group for crimes has lowered and there are people young as thirteen adapting to “street life”. Facial expressions and body language are also a key part of the mise-on-scene, as you can see in the picture below, the boy with the knife is showing aggressive facial expressions while he threatens another youth.

The storyline is typical to the genre as it shows a person who is a target after being released from prison, in his first day out he is hunted for and struggles to survive before night. It reflects the social realism as it shows that after committing a crime there is a consequence and that people always want revenge. Also by looking at the storyline it is clear that the genre of drama involved.

There is a lot of non-diegetic sound which is mostly the grime music in the background, all the diegetic sound would be speech, gun shots, sounds from TV and background sounds (police sirens, busses, etc.).

A low angle shot is used to show Sam’s brother looking down on him holding a knife as he was about to kill him before he knew it was his brother, this shot angle shows that everyone is superior to Sam and at this moment in time he his weak helpless. At the beginning of the film we see a kind of establishing shot which swoops down to show an ‘underground rave’ is this party we see many types of shots such as low angles, mid shots, close ups etc. This has been done to show many events happening at one time such as sexual activity and usage of drugs.  

                                             Low angle                           Underground rave, camera shot

The film uses a lot of editing, for example straight cuts have been used mostly, and also there is the use of a jump cut to show Sam walking away from a crime scene happy that he didn’t get caught. In the ‘underground rave’ scene most of the dancing and activity is fastened up to create an effect of a wild and exciting environment, also throughout the scene it is edited in a way in which it shows different parts of the party in one frame, as seen in the picture below.

                         

A flashback is shown at the beginning to remind everyone what happened in the previous film, it consists of fast clips fading into other fast clips which make the whole murder seem quick, this also corresponds with the time Sam spent in jail.  

Asif Bacchus