Skins Key Concepts Essay
Skins is an award winning teen drama that follows a group of teenagers living in Bristol who are attending a sixth form college. Each episode focuses on a different character from the group. The program is meant to depict the everyday lives of the average teenager.
Representation is the way in which media represents the world to us, media plays with our sense of reality and the fictional so that a program seems more realistic and is therefore perceived as real when it isn’t, this sometimes leads to different readings of the program. Skins, although probably meant to represent reality, generally is represented in a realistic yet fictional way. The program utilises over the top scenarios that could happen in real life but generally don’t happen to the average, everyday teenager living in Britain. Skins becomes more fictional as lots of the characters end up in unlikely situations involving drugs, sex, drinking and violence. These situations however are presented in a very realistic way which makes them more believable and the audience may also consider the program to be a portrayal of real life.
Audiences of media vary as it all depends on who a program is meant for and therefore how the things in the program are presented so that they suit that audience. The events that happen in the program are also meant to interest the target audience so that the program gets more viewers that get hooked on the program. The audience for Skins is teenagers so everything is targeted at them from the fact that the main characters are also teenagers to all the stuff that happens to them. All the events in Skins are meant to interest teenagers so they involve some of the real things teenagers’ face that involve sex, drugs and alcohol. Generally the audience knows that although stuff like what’s shown in skins does happen it isn’t particularly likely and they can clearly distinguish that the program is meant to be more fictional that factual. The...