Skins

Skins Intro

Status

Social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society.Status is usually falls upon sex, age, race ethnic group and family background. For example, a person born into a wealthy family is expected to carry on the wealth of the family, and is put under pressure. "Social status and class is often represented in untrue forms and is often exaggerated within the media in stereotypes of people who are within these categories".

All of the characters have their own status,but the reason why they are so different brings them so close together to create a unique friendship.

Franky

Franky is described as a smart, creative girl, her mother is in a mental home, which shows that the family are struggling for money, and they are not stable with money, or relationships, she is now adopted by a homosexual couple.

Franky is not very popular as she moved schools, from Oxford to Roundview, we see all of her pictures from her social networking site, of her with other girls, and we see her struggling to fit in, as she is not used to a mixed school. She becomes best friends with Mini, making her known to the school, which makes her higher in the social status at school, everyone accepts who she is.

Franky feels she needs to change her identity, as we see in this clip, we see her out of her comfort zone, in clothes that would be ‘on trend’ at the school, but she soon reverts back to her normal self, which brings back down her social class and status to a 'freak'.

Skins

Class + Status

Class

"The groups into which people are divided as a result of social-economic inequality. People in class strata share a similar economic situation such as occupation, income and ownership of wealth.

The divisions between the social classes however are quite vague e.g. where the working class end and the middle class begin.

Class is also closely related to status and lifestyle."

In this case most of the characters within Skins are associated with different classes, I will be going into more depth on each character, and how they differ from each other.

Grace was originally from an all girl’s school, and enjoys ballet and acting. Grace is very bright and talented, getting A* in every subject, she is very well spoken, and really contrasts with the other characters. It seems like she has stumbled across the wrong group of people.

Later on in the series it is revealed that Grace’s father is the head teacher of the school. Grace lives in a huge house, and seems like she is living in a fairy tale. Unlike the other characters her parents have not split up, and are very happy, there are no drams in her life until she goes away on holiday with her friends, and dies tragically in a car crash.

Grace

By

Jess Greenfield

Liv

Liv is introduced along with Mini and Grace as a clique of three, and is described in the show's publicity as a "party animal". She is considerably more impulsive than Grace or Mini, twice drinking a whole bottle of vodka just as a means of apology. In her centric episode we discover that she has a sci-fi obsessed younger sister, a sister in jail and a new-age mother who often neglects her children.

She lives in a derelict tower block, and the family struggle to afford basic necessities. With the neglect in the past it reflects back on her attitude now to abusing her body, with drugs. She can’t afford her addiction so results in stealing. Although she is classed as popular she tries to hide her troubles and leaves her drinking away her sorrows, in all honesty making her matters worst.

Liv

Alo is a teenager who spends most of his time hanging out with Rich Hardbeck in his van.

He lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere, which immediately places him and his family in the working class status. The family are not very well off and struggle to provide Alo with designer clothes, instead he wears dirty clothes, and cheap, mix match clothes. His mother and father are disappointed with his party lifestyle and constant low grades. He isn’t very lucky with popularity so hangs round with his friend Rich, but in the late episodes of series 6, he has a no-strings attached relationship, with Mini, and becomes in with her crowd, in order to be in with the ‘popular’ bunch.

Mini is an extremely outgoing character, and is the ‘queen bee’ of her group of friends. She wears fashionable clothes, and looks down on people who are not wearing the latest trends. Although she is very fashion-orientated, she has a very ‘materialistic outlook on life’.

Her mum and dad have split up, we see her dad as a very rich, career orientated outlook, and we see his apartment, and that he has a very well paid job. Whereas her mother is living off the leftovers from the split. Mini has the nicest and biggest house of the group, and her mother likes to keep it in pristine condition. She then starts dating the most popular boy in school, the captain of the school team, which brings her school status up even higher. She then has a fling with Alo, and falls pregnant with his baby, she loses control over her fashion conscience self, and wears more ‘slobby’ clothes, that she would never have dreamt of wearing.

Alo

Mini