Blaming Angry Boys
- Written by Emily Doyle
Chris Lilley has got me thinking – about boys. ‘Bad’ ones. Disenchanted ones. His new ABC1 show Angry Boys makes me wondering how I can incorporate some Unit 1 work (representations of teens in the media) into Unit 4 - Social Values.
The media has a habit of blaming social issues on those in society who don’t conform to dominant social values (a la any Today Tonight episode about Dole Street/graffiti/drag racing…). So, as I start to plan Unit 4 I will take a look back at how reparesentations of ‘bad boys’ have differed over the years. I hope by using representations of teens, students will be engaged by seeing ‘themselves’ in texts, and then be able to understand that these representations have been influenced by the cultural and historical context in which they were produced.
To start - two great texts - Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955) and Blackboard Jungle (Brooks, 1955). In Rebel Without a Cause – James Dean (the poster boy for 1950s rebellion) plays Jim Stark, a kid wandering about in a suburban malaise. In Blackboard Jungle a teacher is sent into a school on the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ to restore order amongst unruly kids. ‘Bad boys’ in these films had to be ‘punished’ for their subversiveness and they restored the social order in the end by either ‘coming together’ with their parents or leaving, ‘out of sight out of mind’. This can be seen when Jim’s friend Plato dies in the final climatic scene at the planetarium in Rebel Without A Cause; and Arty West a trouble-making student is ‘sent away’ to the principal’s office after questioning teacher Mr Dadier’s plan for him to join the army in Blackboard Jungle.
The representation of the boys in these two films is a great example of how social values of a production period can influence media texts. Post WWII America was a very rich but also very anxious about dissent amongst society. According to Margot Henriksen this anxiety was caused largely by revolutionary changes represented by the atomic bomb. Henriksen’s Dr Strangelove’s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (University of California Press, 1997) is a brilliant resource that goes into great detail about how living with ‘the bomb’ became a symbol of American safety and security - where a prosperous cold war economy helped build optimism but also a culture of consensus. Anything that deviated from this consensus was open to great criticism – thus rock n roll, Elvis, and rebellious teenagers.
In both Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle there is a strong focus on kids coming from either stereotypically ‘good’ or ‘bad’ families which is pivotal in the discussion of dissent because increasing anxieties about the causes of juvenile delinquency centre on the breakdown of social order, beginning with the family. But this isn’t just an old fashioned idea. The representation of family values and social order is everywhere in the media. These traditional dominant social values are challenged in many ways in media texts, but more so today than back in the days when ‘Beaver’ also learnt his lesson because ‘father knew best’. This is because over the past sixty years the structure of society has changed (gender roles, liberalism…) and our social values with it - our notions of what constitutes a ‘happy’ family and notions of justice have becoming increasingly ambivalent. This is where, for me, Chris Lilley comes into play.
Youthful rebellion is generally represented by the media as disobedience, as is the case in Angry Boys – eg twins Daniel and Nathan Sims constantly evade getting into trouble with their mother and local police and wannabe rapper S.mouse is put under house arrest. Also, most significantly, Ruth “Gran” Simms works at Garingal Juvenile Justice Centre – a place for the most deviant of all. Lilley’s middle-aged prison guard Gran is symbolic of the reaffirmation of the rebellion-equals-disobedience ideology. The dichotomous relationship between moral and deviant behaviour, between order and chaos, are symbolised by the hierarchies that exist between Gran and her ‘boys’. “These are the bad boys,” explains Gran in the opening minutes of Episode One, “the worst boys in the state”. But, as with all of Lilley’s work, it’s never this clear cut and we’re encouraged to challenge these views through the morally ambiguous representation of all of his characters. The representation of Gran as both racist/patronising (she divides the boys’ soccer teams by darkness of skin colour) and also loving/caring (tucking her superhero-pyjama-inmates into bed – but we had to wait for the final minutes of Episode One to see this…) towards the young men in her care make it all the more difficult to discern where our sympathies should lie. But this is the creative brilliance of Lilley. All his characters represent shades of black, white and grey, and we’re not sure if we should laugh or cry - at them or with them.
Angry Boys challenges dominant social values that uphold justice and revere punishment by demonstrating that ‘the system’ values success at any cost - “Gran does have the habit of crossing the line,” Julie Hennessy, CEO of the centre, tells us, “but we turn a blind eye to the way she operates at times because the bottom line is that she does deliver results.” Lilley juxtaposes this judging voice of authority with images of what Gran describes as “bad cookies”, smiling, laughing teenage boys in the prison yard. It’s quite a contrast. We also learn that “security is pretty tight because a lot of these boys are considered a genuine threat to society”. It then cuts to a high angled security camera shot of boy curled up on his prison cell bed. Images such as this make the ‘bad boys’ look like victims of a policy and a ‘system’ that wants to be seen to be doing the right thing. “I feel I know how to treat bad boys…” says Gran, encouraging the audience to question those well-meaning but often ignorant attitudes that mainstream society sometimes possess. It’s quite evident that Lilley is provoking the audience to see that these boys are products of a culture that has encouraged and caused them to behave this way.
This image of ‘boys being bad boys’, of what it means to be a ‘boy’, of what it means to be masculine, is challenged by Lilley in many of his male characters. Although he represents a wide range of boys from different backgrounds and cultures, they all feel socially isolated, have patronising adults in their life who cannot communicate effectively with them, and are all trying to live up to an image of success that is inevitably unfulfilled. Blake Oakfield, Lilley’s 38-going-on-17-year-old ex-champion surfer from Narmucca Bay is an interesting example of this. He strives to be the ultimate ‘Mucca Mad Boy’ but he is constantly denied his masculinity – literally shot in the crotch by opposing gang members, then, stripped of his manhood ‘chose’ to quit a lucrative surf career after a scare in the water…by a dolphin. He’s now forced to take hormones. Blake resists the urge to leave his rebellious teenager phase behind him by making pilgrimages to the bluff to do The Mucca Mad Boy salute. “He’s not 15 anymore”, stresses his wife, the voice of reason and responsibility. As Blake leads his crew over the rocks to salute their stomping ground, the audience is encouraged, through the swelling theme song, to feel a great sense of nostalgia. Blake obviously longs for a time when he felt free from his responsibilities and social pressures, felt important, and ‘manly’. This final scene is both ridiculous and hugely sentimental, and this is the genius of Chris Lilley.
Even though every second word refers to genitalia, Angry Boys encourages me to question contemporary Australian values and attitudes towards youth and rebellion, which is why I can see myself using it for Social Values in the years to come. Now, I better go and check my school’s policy on the use of offensive language in the classroom.