Gangs and Gang Culture Essay

Casper Walsh is a journalist and author including the sixties Gangster story. His childhood was surrounded by crime and violence. He has been involved with the British prison system since he was 12 years old, as a visitor when his father was in prison, an inmate and now a rehabilitated drug user and creative writing workshop facilitator. The Guardian is a British national daily Newspaper that identifies with centre liberal nationalism and its readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion. It is and readership is mainly white middle class people and its headquarters are in Manchester. This text portrays the picture about the media perception of gangs in our society. According to the author the term gang is usually associated with crime and violence by the media which has made not only youth male, but also working class individuals victims of media stereotyping. He is trying to point out the fact that the media is actually painting a bad picture and only covers the bad side of the gangs. He is also trying to attack the press and convince the reader that gangs are not all that bad and they are necessary in the process of growing up. The text is meant to show that there is nothing new or that scary about gangs, and that youths in every generation will always risk being bad. As a reader of this text I think that the media likes the idea of talking or writing about things that attract the attention of news readers. This makes it difficult sometimes to have a balanced opinion on this particular issue. Stories of this nature such as the negative side of gangsters attract a lot of attention from the readers so media tend to exaggerate when reporting and in this present day people respond to the media views. In this text the writer makes use of stylistic features such as â€Å"irony and paradox. In paragraph 1 there is of an ironical statement when he refers to â€Å"the non-existent good old days† by this he means that every generation has always had some youth behaving differently. In other words society seems to think that youth behaviour in the present time is worse than the one from the past which is not always the case. The fact of the matter is that every generation has always had its fair share of youth trouble. There is also an example of a paradox as stylistic feature in paragraph 1 where the writer talks about â€Å" rooftop shouting and table banging about the breakdown of teenage society†. He thinks that the media is creating a moral panic by portraying youth behaviour as big crisis out of control. For example the media will talk about dysfunctional families, as the cause of crime and violence in our society. But it is true that not every criminal comes from a dysfunctional family although some do. In my opinion I think the use of figures of speech is necessary for the writer to be able to deliver his message in a way that is not offensive to the reader. The fact that he is writing to particular class of people, it is important that the author communicates to them in a language they will understand. I find the word â€Å"Dim view† used by the writer in paragraph 1 inappropriate since what is dim to one person will not necessarily be dim to another. This text portrays the writer`s personal opinion of the media when covering gang related issues in our society. The writer puts all the blame on the press and doesn’t at any one time show that there are bad gangs who do horrible things. The sense of passage would change if the point of view was varied. I find the writer`s opinion not balanced because it only talks about his side of the story. There is some truth in what the media covers on gang related issues. We live in a free and fair society where most people have a choice about decisions that affect their lives. This applies to youth in our society having a choice of whether to join a gang or not without affecting their livelihood. It is not infact a necessity to join a gang in order for you find your identity as a person. People can choose alternative routes to gangs by joining activities such a social sports club, a church and still find themselves. The author only talks about male and youth yet at present we have female gangs and not everybody in gangs is necessary youth. Gangs have lords who are old mature people who actually run and use the youth to do the dirty work for them. The author is writing based on his own experiences and encounters and another person who had a normal life cannot look at gangs the same way. Looking at the facts of this text it is clearly stated that the writer comes from a gang and criminal back ground. My research about the writer found that not only himself but also his father was in jail for sometimes and as a result of this the author was influenced to work with offenders in and out of prison. In the light of this the author will have biased views on this matter to support his background and the people he stands for. The fact that the author is addressing the media which is made mainly with middle class people such as journalists , he makes use of the Guardian newspaper to conveys his message accordingly. Perhaps the author`s text would have changed in terms of tone and balanced view if he had used a different category of paper. I think he would have done some research and would have been able to find evidence to support his arguments. In addition to this he might have used a simple way of writing his text to put his message across.