Waterloo Road - Textual Analysis

In this extract, age is represented with the presentations of the elderly teachers and the youthful students. The older characters are stereotyped as important, authoritative and respectable, with the sole exception as the Maths Teacher, who is shown to be going through some form of mid-life crisis, with very little understanding of the kids. Contrastingly, the children are shown to be emotional, noisy, dangerous, cool, rebellious and powerless, whilst also in the majority at the school.



In the beginning of the clip, the senior teacher is positioned in the centre of the frame, showing his importance and authority, mirroring the older stereotype presented. Following this, a tracking shot of Miss Chowdrey's entrance infers her stereotyped importance and authority, showing that, despite how she is belittled by the senior teacher, she is still older than the students ands thus has power an authority. In the next segment, the opening shot is a panning shot that moves from the teacher's sign on the door to the student waiting outside of it, thus showing the hierarchy of the school and how the teachers have a lot more power than the students under them. After this, the action moves to the character of Amy. During this segment, whenever she gets angry, the score starts. The cue of the score highlights her emotional and dangerous behaviour, which is stereotyped to teenagers. The style of the score, which is a techno funk-like genre, shows a stereotyped genre of music that teenagers listen to. It then uses a cut-away scene to the English class room, where, several reaction shots are used after any character speaks, showing the emotional behaviours of the teens. It then cuts back to the character of Amy, where the previous musical cue is being played constantly over the action. This segment uses close-up shots of both Amy and Stuart, edited together in a shot-reverse shot method, to show the tension of the situation due to their stereotyped emotional and dangerous behaviour. The action then moves over to the Maths Teacher, who's costume is that of an outdated stereotype of teenagers, showing a mid-life crisis-like behaviour, whilst also showing his lack of understanding for the youth. This behaviour is further exaggerated by the rap music played during the segment, used almost ironically to show his complete misunderstanding.


Throughout the whole clip, a background sound of teenagers' muffled chattering is used to create the effect of the children being in the majority and their noisy behaviour. Also, in all scenes in corridors, children are placed in the background of the frame, to further demonsrate this effect, whilst also being out-of-focus compared to the main action being followed, using a form of shallow focus, which is used to demonstrate the powerlessness of the students. The costumes of the students show them all in uniform, however, each student has a slight variation of this, showing an attempt to be cool, whilst also, in turn, being rebellious. In binary opposition, the teachers all dress smarter, either wearing shirts, full suits or smart dresses, showing their respectability and authority. As well as this, the editing used throughout the clip is basic, as to show the naivety of the children in the school.