Power to the Youth: Narratives of Age Ideology in "Degrassi: The Next Generation".

This thesis is a response to the inattention of age ideology in studies of Degrassi: The Next Generation (TNG) episode content. The main question is whether such a study can contribute insights not anticipated by the Degrassi and youth media and Marxist ideology literatures. Using John B. Thompson's conception of ideology, this study applies Porter, Larson, Harthcock, & Nellis' Scene Function Model to identify the function of kernel scenes in TNG's season-three abortion storyline. The aim is to interpret the nature of ideological relations among youth and other age groups. The episodes reveal that TNG resists ideological age relations. However, it raises ideological issues, articulating age ideology, first, to gender and, second, to age. TNG also elucidates a homogeneous notion of youth, but stresses a common culture around sex. This study reduces the above issues to TNG's narrative organization: its introduction of an episode's basic problem in the opening scene.