collective identity

The Inbetweeners movie is about 4 teenage friends who have just finished their A-levels and are about to leave secondary school for good, and Mr Gilbert their sarcastic sixth form tutor. In their final week of Jay’s grandfather dies, Simon is dumped by his girlfriend and Will’s divorced father informs him that he has just married his much younger girlfriend. The 4 boys decide to go on holiday together to get away from the stress of home, Neil books the boys a trip to Malia, Crete.British youth are represented negatively in this film, the boys are represented as irresponsible, sex crazed, childish and shallow.  The characters in the Inbetweeners appeal to a wide audience. Each character of the Inbetweeners has a different personality, the idiot, the geek, the over confident and the normal guy. Most of the Characters use a lot of non-standard English, which the media assumes most teenagers use. They use slang language which mostly have crude meanings. There is a difference in the way the characters in the movie speak, which shows different representations of British youth. Will’s character is smart, confident, well read, quick-witted and outspoken. Will does not speak like the other characters in the movie, there is a clear difference in the way he communicates with the other characters. Jay is the complete opposite to will, Jay constantly uses foul language, he constantly refers to sex and uses a lot of slang words which others do not understand.

The Characters behave differently during the movie, Will is the mature character who tries getting the rest of the group to behave properly whereas jay is the one who gets the group in trouble. Jay is represented as a trouble maker, the one who lies in order for others to think he is cool. Jay is represented as being peer pressured to do things like drugs etc. in order to fit in with his age group. The movie is set in Crete which is a holiday destination for young people to get drunk, party and get away with things they wouldn’t if they were in the U.K.  The movie shows the boys going to clubs, partying getting drunk and aggressive this represents how the British youths are portrayed in society.
The Inbetweeners links with collective identity theory as it follows some of the theorist ideas.Stryker theory argued that people create their identity by interacting with others. This is shown in the movie as the boys start to spend more time together, the audience can see that the characters develop a consistent set of behaviours such as constantly getting drunk, getting in trouble or trying to chat up a girl. This behaviours are expected from the characters as this behaviour is consistent during the movie and is become a ‘social expectation’.The Inbetweeners supports Tafjal and Turner’s theory, their theory says that people don’t just have one “personal self” but several selves. In the movie we see the characters change personalities around different people. When Simon was with his ex-girlfriend his personality changed to suit her needs and diverged away from his friends in order to impress her. This is the same for Will, social identity changed when he meet a girl who he thought was completely out of his league, he started to act differently in other to get the girl to notice him, he tried to be more confident around her which is not we see a lot in the rest of the movie when he is with his friends. Will changes from being the geek to the ‘ladies’ man’.There is evidence of Bakhtin theory in this film, in the beginning of the film Jay is represented as a sex crazed, irresponsible teenager. As the movie continued his identity started to change as he was no longer attracted to the typical skinny, blonde girl he usually goes for. Jay became more caring, kind and thoughtful which was different from the way he behaved in the beginning of the movie.