Grimsby is a small town in the North-East of the UK which in recent years has seen its fair share of negative representations in the British media. No one is quite sure why Grimsby out of all places has been getting so much misrepresentation, but unfortunatley most people believe in these representations as most people think its like any other town, when that is further from the truth. So in defence of Grimsby I have found two pieces of Media that portray them and analysing if they are valid or not.
This Newspaper is from the Grimsby Telegraph which has a shocking news article on the front. This represents Grimsbys people as pathetic idiots who dont know right from wrong. However, when I was looking up pictures to use from the Grimsby Telegraph, all the news articles were negative. This proves that newspapers will use negative representations of people to draw others in so they can sell more newspapers. They will not print anything happy about the town because most people these days dont want to read anything positive. Its like the old saying "Would you rather see 2 people hugging, or a car crash?".
The little grey quote at the bottom which reads "she claimed she couldnt shop or lift her grandchildren" has one small problem with it; it uses the word 'claimed'. This shows that it is not entirerly factual and could've ben twisted words thrown together to get a few extra sales.
The news articles on the side, like the main story, are also negative. Even when there is a brief happy moment like in the article "Spectacular Lights honour tragic dad" it is unfortunatley ruined by a tragic reminder. If someone not from Grimsby were to read this and see the awful articles their own newspaper prints, they make think that the town as a whole is negative, which could hurt its reputation and its people. What also could be happening in the town is that not much stuff may be going on, which is great because there is nothing tragic like a stabbing or a terrorist attack. Unfortunately in the end all they do is pick a small news story to put on the front, which increases the negative representation of the people and ignoring the happy moments.
Probably Grimsby's biggest representation in the 21st century so far is the action comedy The Brothers Grimsby. As a whole this movie gives a positive and negative representation of Grimsby, so I'll start with the positives. One huge positive is that Grimsby itself is getting recognised in this movie alone. For example have you heard of the town of Looe in Cornwall? Exactly, but on the other hand if you mention Grimsby there is a good chance that someone will mention this movie. Another positve this movie brought was that it allowed extras and actors to be involved in the film-making business which is something young people in Grimsby may never have had experience in up until that point. For the negatives one of the major complaints this film gets is that it portrays Grimsby as a "Shithole". Even though the movie does do this, I would argue that it gives the movie a sense of realism, as Grimsby is not as financially well off with places like London and Manchester (I am not calling Grimsby a "shithole"). The other negative this movie has is the representation of Sacha Baron Cohen's character 'Nobby'. The character of Nobby is portrayed as a stereotypical drunk who is also a Liam Gallagher look-alike football hooligan. This isnt just Nobby, as all of the town is portrayed like this, even the children. The only character who isnt portrayed like this who was born in Grimsby is Nobby's brother Sebastian, who is raised in London. This represents that people in Grimsby will have meaningful useless lives while people born in London will have important jobs and high status among others.
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