Breakfast Club, Donny Darko, Let the Right One in, Redbelt and Election are movies I have seen that engage with the theme of subcultures within their plot and structure. Subcultures exist everywhere and can be seen as small communities within communities. Todays lecture about social software and Social Networking Sights was focused on teenagers and on how teens utilise these applications to generate space for themselves with in our broader culture.

The lecture included references to films in particular Donny Darko and Jenny Weight our lecturer played Nirvana's - Smells Like Teen Spirit in a video clip format which was both great to see and listen to because of the enduring power of the words and the visuals, when I think about Nirvana's continuing relevance or rather the continuing relevance of communicative forms it appears to me that the works reveal, convey succinctly and work in the arena of contradiction - think Andy Warhol's Electric Chair Series the colours and the image or the words in Nirvana songs.

Contradiction and relevance is inherent in social media applications and in the analysis of them, connection and disconnection, community and culture, individual and mass, independence and interdependence are all relevant in the applications and the communities that are connected by the tools. It appears that it is the point of interaction that determines both the use of and assessment of the software. 

Danah Boyd was the theorist that we were introduced to today and she is a specialist in teenagers use of social software - and by extrapolation the development of subcultures from their interests and interaction. She argues that teens use this software and these applications to generate, A. A sense of themselves and B. To generate a space for themselves that is separate from the parental, authorial world.

Delanty is the theorist I have been considering in relation to my Marysville Documentary as he is the social theorist who has defined the Classic Community the community of the like minded and the community that is small enough to assist and be familiar to each other. As such, I was thinking that the teens are no different and that the need to communicate and or the wish to be with like minded people is paramount to the communities whatever form they take.

I am including in this post a link to a documentary that I made on, a small inner city community in Melbourne. The video is on You Tube and to watch it look for redbelticecream. The video is called St Kilda Lives and the subject of the documentary is about identification and knowledge of the St Kilda community. 

I interviewed people from a what I saw was a cross section of the community - a community leader, a property owner, a bar hopper,

a hospitality worker and a renowned homeless alcoholic to try and create an overview of the community from a number of points of view including my own as a resident and filmmaker.

My project with Marysville continues and I am in the process of contacting organisations and planning an effective trip to the area. In the meanwhile I have been collecting articles and references to the Bush fires to add to my film.

www.youtube.com