OUGD403 - Studio Brief 1 - Message & Delivery: Research

The article I chose to study was from the Daily Star. I chose to look at a "trashy" tabloid, as these seem to always be the most opinionated. 

The article is as follows, or can be found here.

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CALL 999! HERE COME THE GIRLS

BOOZED-UP women on violent rampages have been captured on camera.

A shocking documentary laid bare the antics of female thugs who brawl in the street and carry knives in their handbags.

The Channel 4 film revealed binge-drinking girls lashing out at police and yelling foul abuse when it aired last night.

Horrified Esther Rantzen hit out at the wild women’s families after watching 999: What’s Your Emergency?

She said: “Where are the mothers of these loutish, brutalised girls? These extremely young women seem so determined to self-destruct it makes me wonder if they ever had a loving role model.”

The film, shot in Blackpool, also featured scenes of violence perpetrated by women against their boyfriends. Blokes were left with blood running down their faces after being stabbed by girls.

ChildLine president Esther, 72, said: “Things have changed over the past 20 years. Fighting was a man’s world. Now, women are expected to be violent.”

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Having read the article, the response to this Channel 4 documentary was shocking. I decided to delve deeper, and watch it myself (watch it here)

I decided to take down notes, taking quotes from both police officers and the general public. The programme was shocking, and utterly disgusting. Of course I have seen women drunk before, but I did not realise to what extent the Police had to deal with. Many of the officers even confessed they would prefer to be involved with men when an innocent occurs than women.

Below are some screen shots I took whilst watching it:

An opening qute from one of the female police officers. 

 One officer mentioned "more often than not, it's the blokes who have to look after the women. They try and keep up with the drinking, but the fact of the matter is, women can't." 

 A woman arrested, having assaulted a member of the public, then attempting to assault a police officer. 

 An visually interesting set of frames, showing the woman from the previous crime locked up in a  cell. 

 A 17 year old girl being arrested for assault. 

The most gruesome and shocking clip: A woman gets sliced in the cheek with a kitchen knife by a supposing "friend". She later mentions that they have made up. 

Binge Drinking And It's Effects

Crime and Alcohol: 

I researched into the influence of alcohol with crime, and this is what I found:

Alcohol is a factor in:

• One in three (30%) sexual offences.
• One in three (33%) burglaries.
• One in two (50%) street crimes.

(drinkaware.co.uk)


It is also estimated that the government spent roughly £ 7.3 billion a year to combat alcohol related crime. 



 - In 1999 there were an estimated 1.2 million 
incidents of alcohol-related violence - 
approximately 23,000 per week (Richardson, A.
and Budd, T., 2003) 

  -One in five violent crimes takes place in or around
pubs and clubs, 70% of these incidents took
place on weekend evenings (Richardson, A. and
Budd, T., 2003) 

(www.alcoholconcern.org.uk) 

Women and Alcohol:

• Women absorb alcohol into the bloodstream faster and metabolize it slower than men.


• Women who drink regularly are at a much higher risk of liver damage than men even if they drink less or drink for a shorter period of time.


• Women develop alcoholic liver disease after a comparatively shorter period of heavy drinking and at a lower level of daily drinking than men.


• Proportionately more alcoholic women die from cirrhosis than alcoholic men.


• The odds of women experiencing sexual aggression were nine times higher on heavy days of alcohol consumption compared with days of no alcohol consumption.


• There is a greater incidence of alcohol misuse in women with eating disorders, especially bulimia, than in the general population.

(www.brad21.org)

Graphic Design Research:

As most of my research I have found is facts, I wanted to see how these can be interpreted through info graphics, as shown below. 

I really like the style and simplicity of these, and I would love to interpret the facts I have collected visually. 

Binge Drinking Campaign Posters:

I looked at ways binge drinking is campaigned to be stopped in existing adverts. I focussed on images where the audience is that of young women. 

A key theme occurring about the message of the adverts is: When women drink too much, they are likely to be left vulnerable to other dangers. However, having watched "999: What's The Emergency", I noticed that more often than not, the women were causing the trouble, not being the ones affected by a crime. The idea that women are victims and men are the culprits seems to have become dated, and now there is no difference. 

Similarly to the above imagery, I could look at promoting an ad towards women. However the focus could be the dangers of alcohol abuse and violence as oppose to vulnerability. 

Crit:

I had a group crit with my classmates and my tutors, click here to see my post on my PPP blog about how the crit went.