TOP BOY

Top Boy

Top Boy

Introduction

Top Boy is about young people in a deprived state struggling to survive, dealing with the temptations of violence, gangs and drugs, and touching on themes of mental health, single-parent families, neglected children and loyalty. Top Boy exists exclusively in its own sealed environment of violence, fear and dog-eat-dog ambition, where being sucked into gangland drug-dealing is the only option that bears any resemblance to a career ladder.

Top Boy, written by Ronan Bennett after extensive research into Hackney's underclasses, undoubtedly has authenticity. “It's true and it's not,” said Michael Brown. “It's like they're living in some kind of police-free heaven. They'd be busy, the police. Why it's got to be about drugs, I don't know. Yes, there is some drugs, cannabis mostly. Not much of the gang violence round here is about drugs” (Valdivia, 2011, 39)

Discussion

In our consumption-oriented, mediated society, much of what comes to pass as important is based often on the stories produced and disseminated by media institutions. Much of what audiences know and care about is based on the images, symbols, and narratives in radio, television, film, music, and other media. How individuals construct their social identities, how they come to understand what it means to be male, female, black, white, Asian, Latino, Native American—even rural or urban—is shaped by commodified texts produced by media for audiences that are increasingly segmented by the social constructions of race and gender. Media, in short, are central to what ultimately come to represent our social realities.

If we analyze the film Top Boy, we will come to know that masterly series about gangs and police in Baltimore has become the lazy reference point for any programme showing more than two minutes of conversation between black people. Often the similarities are more notable by their absence.

According to the experts, Top Boy has its roots firmly in reality. Dushane (Ashley Walters), who has lived his whole life on the fictional Summerhouse estate in Hackney, wants to get on with making something of himself, which means drugs. Against him and his accomplices, chiefly friend Sully (Kano), are the rival London Fields gang. There is a very real London Fields gang, responsible for the murder of 16-year-old Agnes Sina-Inakoju in May last year, which gives the programme a grim frisson.

Although research on race, gender, and media traditionally has focused on under-represented, subordinate groups such as women and minorities. Therefore, we examine Top Boy constructions of masculinity, femininity, so-called people of colour, and even white people.

Research on gender and media traditionally has focused on questions about women (and has been conducted primarily by women). In fact, as noted in Top Boy, the focus on gender is mainly on feminists. However, in recent decades the study of gender has expanded to include studies on men and masculinities. Feminist scholarship also has produced a proliferation of whiteness studies that include increased research on white masculinity and, to a lesser extent, white womanhood. This work interrogates gender identities and performances while exploring how ...