Comparing Grange Hill and Skins

Grange Hill, a television drama series which was published by the BBC and its opening sequence is a 'comic like' montage that has the function of persuading and appealing to its target audience. The target audience for Grange Hill would most likely be teenage school-kids as the characters that are introduced in Grange Hills opening sequence are all school-kids representing the busy lives of teenagers in the late 1970s and referring to the uses and gratification theory by Bloomer and Katz, teenagers would would appeal to this series as they can identify and relate with the characters that are being portrayed. Even though Skins opening sequence is also aimed at teenagers and school-kids, the representation of the teenagers are completely different as today's society has changed largely since the 1970s. Skins is published by channel 4 which identifies their target audience as channel 4 are known to appeal for young trendy teenage audience. The opening sequence of Skins also has a function of introducing the film and persuading its target audience to watch the rest of the series in fact, Skins uses similar techniques and conventions to the opening sequence of Grange Hill and this is expected as both drama series portray teenage school0kids and their daily lives.

Firstly, the non digect sound in Grange Hill can be described as happy witch is parallel to the video and the lives of the teenagers as they seem to be enjoying life and being young. This is the complete opposite in Skins as the music starts off very innocent and childlike which contrasts with whats happening in the video as you see references to drugs and sex. Drugs are highlighted in the title of the drama series 'Skins' as it is another word meaning 'rizzler' which is what is used for smoking marijuana. The title also has sexual reference to sexual intercourse which raises very important social issues in today's society such as underage pregnancies. However, near the end the music starts to change from being innocent to a more upbeat rhythm which has a narrative to tell such as the loss of childhood in the 21st society and the fact that the teenagers that are portrayed are growing up too fast. Instead of the music, the comic effect told the story for Grange Hill as is it told a story and represented the teenagers hectic lifestyle as well as the fact that comics were very popular in the 1970s and more people would have read them than in today's society.

Moreover, The representation of males and females in the Grange Hill opening sequence is significant as we can see how women were portrayed in the past compared to today. In the mese en scene, we can see the boys doing all the sporty activities such as playing football and swimming where as the girls are just sitting in the side watching. This implies that women are portrayed as passive where as on the other hand men are active and we can see that in the opening in the sequence where the boy swimming is actually moving his arms while everything around him is still. This connotes the male dominance and power which took over in the 1970s even after the women movements that were meant to bring equality between men and women. According to the Reception theory, an oppositional reading to this opening sequence would be the fact that women are being degraded and treated as sexual objects as we see a girl sitting in the side of the pool in her bikini in a very promiscuous way which implies her sexuality and how sexually active she is.

Furthermore, another similarity that these two texts have is the fact that both opening sequences suggest the multicultural society we are living in as in Grange Hill the photo we see in the mese en scene in the end shows different races and ethnicity's which is identical to Skins where we see an Asian actor in the opening sequence. This is more significant in Grange Hill as it was first made in 1978, an age where racism very much existed and was a major social issue as well as a political issue as the government uses the power of the media to ensure that there are massive improvements in society in order to get elected again in future elections.