What Is a Chav

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Essay Question 4- ‘Chavs’ in Popular Culture What is a Chav? Be warned, this essay is a load of old shite I concocted years ago in my first year of university. I'm uploading it to get access to the site. In the following essay I shall be discussing the key themes that are present in how chavs are portrayed in the media of today, why, and overall is it a fair or even logical set of beliefs. I shall do this through looking at their representation in three key media forms, the most important being newspapers, then to a lesser extent television and the internet. This is because I feel these are the main areas in which chavs are negatively shown to the public. Firstly though, we must ask what is a ‘chav’, and from where did the saying originate? Over the years there have been many variations on the word chav which all essentially mean the same thing but vary according to regional differences within the United Kingdom, for example one area’s ‘chav’ maybe another areas ‘kev’ or ‘pikey’. The way the people are perceived however, remains the same. The usual view conveyed in the media and thought of by the public in general is that a typical ‘chav’ is working class, white, listens to certain ‘low brow’ types of music, is on benefits and contributes nothing to society. I find that this is where another key element can be brought in: race. As Imogen Tyler argues: “In a way that bears striking similarities, to US white trash figure, and the Australian figure the Bogan, the chav figure foregrounds a dirty whiteness- a whiteness contaminated with poverty. This borderline whiteness is evidenced through claims that chavs appropriate black American popular culture through their clothing, music, and forms of speech, and have geographical, familial and sexual intimacy with working class blacks and Asians.” (2006. 1) What I find Tyler to be arguing here
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