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The development of the
             ‘teenager’

     Looking at wider contexts


Case Study : Rebel Without A
    Cause (1955, Ray)
Origins of youth culture
Some critics would argue that because all youth cultures are
constructed around patterns of consumption, including music, its
                                  consumption
proponents are in fact just manufactured and manipulated audiences
and, like any other media audience, delivered to advertisers.


However, media representations of contemporary youth cultures are
usually content with broad generalisations and stereotyping rather
than acknowledging the subtle differences between groups.


It is a feature of group identity that recognition of subtle signs of similarity
and difference creates a restricted code where only those closely
engaged can recognise the meanings.
Origins of youth culture
Classic film representations of youth and
youth culture include :


The Wild One (Lazlo Benedek, 1953)

Marlon Brando’s classic outlaw biker film
was blamed for the destruction of
cinemas and teenage violence.
It was frequently banned in its day.
Origins of youth culture
   Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include :


     Rebel Without A Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) –

James Dean’s famous film about a rebellious teenager. This
 film, together with East of Eden (Eila Kazan, 1956) and his
early death in a road crash, led to Dean becoming a mythic
                       figure for youth.
Origins of youth culture
            Classic film representations of youth and
                      youth culture include :


            Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper,
            1969) – featured the strapline ‘A
            man went looking for America
            and couldn’t find it anywhere…’
            probably because most of this
            classic hippy road movie is seen
            through a cannabis-induced
            fog.
Origins of youth culture
    Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include :


A Clockwork  Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) – a futuristic
urban dystopia featuring violence, violent sex and cult
gangs dominating the streets. It was withdrawn in the UK
                        streets
by Kubrick himself, who was shocked by so-called ‘copycat
violence’ involving scenes from the film.
                                      film
Origins of youth culture
Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include :


Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992) – a classic
                skinhead film.
Origins of youth culture
    Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include :


Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001) – a strange and moody
 film, principally about the alienation of youth in a world of
                     moral contradictions.
Origins of youth culture
   Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include :


 Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach, 2002) – the title of this film is
 ironic, as it follows the tragic life of a Scottish boy who, in
spite his best efforts to improve his life, is drawn into crime
   and ultimately murder just as he reaches the age of 16.
Origins of youth culture
Classic film representations of youth and youth culture
                       include :


This Is England (Shane Meadows, 2006) – a
    representation of 1980s skinhead gang
     culture. Set in 1983 in a world of New
  Romantics, mods and skinheads, the film
 centres on 12-year-old Shaun (based on the
  director himself). It deals with masculinity,
   race and violence, with a background of
 working-class life, mass unemployment and
                  xenophobia.
Origins of youth culture

It would be useful for your case studies to
 look at some of these films from different
 decades, and analyse how and why the
     representations of teenagers has
          changed and developed.
Origins of Youth Culture
         Film               How has the           Why has the
                           representation of     representation of
                         teenagers changed?    teenagers changed?

The Wild One (1953)



Easy Rider (1969)



A clockwork Orange
     (1971)


Romper Stomper (1992)



This is England (2006)
The development of the ‘teenager’

      Growing up prior to World War II, teenagers were
      expected to take life seriously.

      Males were expected to join the military or go out and
      get a job in order to help bring in money for their
      family or to take care of their future family.

      Females were taught how to take care of the
      household and prepare themselves to be a dutiful wife
      and take care of children.

      Marriage and preparing for a family, more than
      education or a career, was seen as a definite in the
      lives of teenagers. Also, teens had very little
      economic freedom, independence, and input into
      decision making prior to WWII.
The development of the ‘teenager’

         However, in the 1950’s, expectations changed for
         the teenager. The economy started booming and
         families experienced a great deal of economic power,
         freedom and independence. This was the era that
         ‘created’ the teenager.
                       teenager

         Until the 1950s people moved from childhood to
         adulthood, but the introduction of mass public
         education and greater general prosperity delayed
         the necessity for children to work and many enjoyed
         a longer leisured period into adolescence.

         Teenagers where more inclined and encouraged to
         attend college, find a skill, and seek a successful
         career. Their parents had more than likely gone
         through the depression and a number of wars, and
         now wanted something more for their children.
The development of the ‘teenager’

 The newly found independence of teenagers would often result in conflict
with parents. Before the 1950’s, teenagers listened to the music of their parents,
  but when rock and roll came on the scene teens swarmed to it. This clash
    between parents and teens became known as the       generation gap.

  The rise of rock n’ roll only served to widen this gap between the old and young,
                                                                             young
 dividing those who looked back to pre-war values, and those who wished to look
forward to a new American world. Americans had a newfound optimism about their
future – a world in which automated technology and the good old American values
 of ‘enterprise’ and ‘risk-taking’ helped them achieve unheard levels of wealth and
                                         luxury.
The development of the ‘teenager’


              Media attention on teenage
           behaviour became an early moral
                        panic.
          Rock and roll music was seen as encouraging
          sexual promiscuity and therefore threatening
                      mainstream society.

             Protecting and controlling the young has
            always been an obsession of adult society,
           and the media found easy targets and plenty
              of material for sensational journalism
           concerning the growth of the ‘sex, drugs
          and rock and roll’ culture and the many stars
                   and celebrities it produced.
The development of the ‘teenager’

The media played on these emotions and often
 portrayed teenagers as juvenile delinquents.


 Look at the following educational films made in the 1950s, to educate
                  young people about their lifestyles.
The ‘teenager’ and the media – 1950s


  Developments in British radio were faltering. Restricted
by limits on ‘needle time’ (time permitted for the broadcast
        of recorded music) and official distrust of the
 ‘Americanizing’ influences of rock n’ roll, it was only with
   the launch of ‘pirate’ stations in the early 1960s that
British radio began broadcasting programmes specifically
                geared to a ‘teen’ audience.”

(Extract from ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’ : post-war media representations of youth.’ Osgerby Cited in ‘The
                             Media:An Introduction. Brigss&Cobley. 2002. Pearson)
Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

         Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 film directed by
           Nicholas Ray that tells the story of a rebellious
         teenager played by James Dean, who comes to a
            town, meets a girl, disobeys his parents, and
                defies the local high school bullies.

         It was an attempt to portray the moral decay of
           American youth, critique parental style, and
          exploit the differences between generations.

         In 1990, Rebel Without a Cause was added to the
           preserved films of the United States Library of
             Congress's National Film Registry as being
               deemed "culturally, historically, or
                   aesthetically significant."

           The film had its opening on 27 October 1955,
          almost one month after James Dean's fatal car
                               crash.
Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Carry out an analysis into the representations of youth in this film, paying
particular attention to the contextual background to the film. Think about
                             the following areas:

   •How are teenagers represented in this film? Look at the issues
 explored through each of the main characters : Jim Stark / Judy / Plato

 •From whose point of view is the film told and how does this affect the
   representations in the film and the value message underpinning it?

•How has this film been affected by the historical and social context of
                       the time it was created?
Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

    •In what ways are the fears about the ‘teenager’ explored in the film?

         •How is the idea of the ‘generation gap’ explored in the film?

•How are parents represented in this film? How might this be affected by social
                      and cultural contexts of the time?

•Do you think there are any similarities in the representation of teens in this film
              to more contemporary texts that you have studied?

•"Stewart had condensed all the action of the film into a twenty-four-hour time
frame because he believed that one day is an eternity to teenagers. It was his
 intention to tell the story of a generation coming of age in one night" (Hyams
                             and Hyams 192). Discuss.
Rebel Without A Cause (1955)-
               Discussion
Character Analysis :

Jim: The angry victim and the result. At 17 he is filled with confusion about
his role in life. Because of his "nowhere" father, he does not know how to
be a man. Because of his wounding mother, he anticipates destruction in
all women. And yet he wants to find a girl who will be willing to receive his
tenderness.

Jim's Father: Frank is an uptight man who has never been able to have
fun.

Jim's Mother: Tense and immature, she has never found the husband she
married. Upset by the presence of her mother-in-law, mated with an
ineffectual and joyless man, she takes out her disappointment on him and
on her son.
Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Character Analysis :

Judy: The victim and the result. At 16, she is in a panic of frustration
regarding her father--needing his love and suffering when it is denied. This
forces her to invite the attention of other men in order to punish him.

Judy's Father: A junior partner in a law firm. Boyish, attractive and
debonair. Because he is frightened by the adolescence of his daughter,
Judy, his only recourse is to criticize her.

Judy's Mother: Self-centered and frightened by the coming of middle-age.
She feels that Judy's blossoming youth is threatening her wifely position as
the desirable object of the husband's attentions.
Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Character Analysis :

Plato: Son of a divided family--an absent father and a travelling mother--he
feels himself the target of desertion. At 15 he wants to find a substitute
family for himself so that he need no longer feel cold, and especially a
friend who will supply the fatherly protection and warmth he needs and
cannot find.

Buzz: A sado-masochistic boy of 17 who acts out aggressively his idea of
what a man should be in order to hide his real sensitivities and needs. He
was probably rejected by both parents and must constantly court danger in
order to achieve any sense of prestige or personal worth.

The Kids: All searching for recognition in the only way available to them;
all suffering from unfulfilled hungers at home; all creating an outside world
of chaos in order to bear the chaos they feel inside. They are soldiers in
search of an enemy.
Cross Cultural Comparisons –50/60s

       Youth as fun’ was a central motif within British youth texts.

         Cliff Richard’s films of the early 1960s are exemplary.
         Sprightly musicals The Young Ones (dir. Sidney Furie,
        1961) and Summer Holiday (dir. Peter Yates, 1963) are
       both tales of cheery youngsters liberating themselves from
               the dull conformity of their work-a-day lives.

       The young people here are not rebels but responsible and
        enterprising citizens, the films’ unquestioning sense of
           freedom and optimism epitomizing the notions of
         prosperity and dawning social harmony that lay at the
         heart of dominant political ideologies during the early
                                 1960s.
Cross Cultural Comparisons – 50/60s

               Related to this critique of youngsters’ cultural
             preferences has been the stereotyping of young
           people as a uniquely delinquent generation. This line
           of argument has often taken sub cultural style as its
                                    target.

            During the early 1950s, for example, these anxieties
              cohered around the figure of the Teddy Boy.

             First identified by the media in the working-class
            neighbourhoods of south London in 1954, the Ted
             was soon presented as a shockingly new spectre
              haunting street corners all over the country, his
           negative image compounded in the sensational press
           coverage of cinema ‘riots’ that followed screenings of
                 the film Rock Around The Clock in 1956.
Teenagers in the 60’s - Mods

 By the end of the decade the Ted’s drape suit had been superseded by the
                  chic, Italian-inspired styles of the mods.

   However, like the Teds before them, the mods’ appearance was often
presented by the media as not simply a mode of dress but as a symbol of
                             national decline.

This approach reached fever-pitch in press responses to the mod ‘invasions’ of
  several seaside resorts in 1964, events given front-page prominence by
 national newspapers who spoke of a ‘day of terror’ in which whole towns
      had been overrun by a marauding mob ‘hell-bent on destruction’.
Look at these newspaper articles.
  What do you think might have
         happened? Why?
Related pieces of crime and
Media presents a distorted         Distorted view creates      deviance are over reported &
view of the level of crime             public concern           given more prominence than
                                                                   otherwise would have




                                                                         This keeps
                                                                          the issue
                                                                         high on the
                             MORAL PANIC                                    public
                                                                           agenda




 Police records reinforce      The police are more aware      The police want something
  the idea there’s more      or sensitive to the problem so    done about the problem
     crime & deviance           they discover more crime
My name is Stan
Cohen…whenever
 you talk about
moral panics you
must refer to me
 and mods and
    rockers.
Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics

Stanley Cohen has termed such occasions of sensationalized media
alarm ‘moral panics’, a situation in which :

“A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to
become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its
nature presented in a stereotypical fashion by the mass
media.

The moral barricades are manned by the editors, bishops, politicians
and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce
their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more
often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or
deteriorates and becomes more visible (Cohen 1980:9).
Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics

  In these terms distorted media coverage plays an active role in
shaping events. Media attention fans the sparks of an initially trivial incident,
     creating a self-perpetuating ‘amplification spiral’ which generates
       phenomena of much greater magnitude and social significance.
Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics

              Cohen’s case study focused on media
              representations of the 1960s ‘battles’
           between mods and rockers, charting how
             media intervention gave shape to
            these groups and crafted them into
                 threatening ‘folk devils’.

            Moral panic representations often focus
           on conflict and fighting between different
             youth groups degenerate behaviour,
            antisocial practices such as drug taking
           and sexual promiscuity, and even fashion.
Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics

Hippies, Punks, Goths and New Romantics
have all been called degenerate and
criticised by the media in this way. In this
kind of representation, the young are seen
as illustrating the moral decline of
society as a whole.

According to Cohen, youth
subcultures have been subject to
processes of stigmatization and
stereotyping.

Ironically, Media intervention gives youth
subcultures not only national exposure but
also a degree of uniformity and definition.
Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics

    Analysis Task : Look at Cohen’s criteria for creating a moral panic within a
  newspaper article. Use these points to analyse the newspaper article from 1964.

•Title for the article (short, snappy, sensational, lots of alliteration, maybe
even rhymes or play on words).

•Focus on acts that are often seen as deviant e.g. sex, drugs, rock and roll

•Convey such problem groups as being villains who are possibly trying to
threaten social order

•EXAGGERATION – over estimating such features as numbers of people
and the scale of the damage.

•PREDICATION – an inflated account that may give reference to future
events.

•SYMBOLISATION – makes remarks about the dress and style of the
deviants. Visual signs of delinquency e.g. lifestyle, habits etc.
Rep of Teenagers Media contexts
How were young people portrayed during
     London riots in the summer?
After watching the
 riots on the TV,
 what may I think
about young people
     and why?

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Rep of Teenagers Media contexts

  • 1. The development of the ‘teenager’ Looking at wider contexts Case Study : Rebel Without A Cause (1955, Ray)
  • 2. Origins of youth culture Some critics would argue that because all youth cultures are constructed around patterns of consumption, including music, its consumption proponents are in fact just manufactured and manipulated audiences and, like any other media audience, delivered to advertisers. However, media representations of contemporary youth cultures are usually content with broad generalisations and stereotyping rather than acknowledging the subtle differences between groups. It is a feature of group identity that recognition of subtle signs of similarity and difference creates a restricted code where only those closely engaged can recognise the meanings.
  • 3. Origins of youth culture Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include : The Wild One (Lazlo Benedek, 1953) Marlon Brando’s classic outlaw biker film was blamed for the destruction of cinemas and teenage violence. It was frequently banned in its day.
  • 4. Origins of youth culture Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include : Rebel Without A Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) – James Dean’s famous film about a rebellious teenager. This film, together with East of Eden (Eila Kazan, 1956) and his early death in a road crash, led to Dean becoming a mythic figure for youth.
  • 5. Origins of youth culture Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include : Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) – featured the strapline ‘A man went looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere…’ probably because most of this classic hippy road movie is seen through a cannabis-induced fog.
  • 6. Origins of youth culture Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include : A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) – a futuristic urban dystopia featuring violence, violent sex and cult gangs dominating the streets. It was withdrawn in the UK streets by Kubrick himself, who was shocked by so-called ‘copycat violence’ involving scenes from the film. film
  • 7. Origins of youth culture Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include : Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992) – a classic skinhead film.
  • 8. Origins of youth culture Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include : Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001) – a strange and moody film, principally about the alienation of youth in a world of moral contradictions.
  • 9. Origins of youth culture Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include : Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach, 2002) – the title of this film is ironic, as it follows the tragic life of a Scottish boy who, in spite his best efforts to improve his life, is drawn into crime and ultimately murder just as he reaches the age of 16.
  • 10. Origins of youth culture Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include : This Is England (Shane Meadows, 2006) – a representation of 1980s skinhead gang culture. Set in 1983 in a world of New Romantics, mods and skinheads, the film centres on 12-year-old Shaun (based on the director himself). It deals with masculinity, race and violence, with a background of working-class life, mass unemployment and xenophobia.
  • 11. Origins of youth culture It would be useful for your case studies to look at some of these films from different decades, and analyse how and why the representations of teenagers has changed and developed.
  • 12. Origins of Youth Culture Film How has the Why has the representation of representation of teenagers changed? teenagers changed? The Wild One (1953) Easy Rider (1969) A clockwork Orange (1971) Romper Stomper (1992) This is England (2006)
  • 13. The development of the ‘teenager’ Growing up prior to World War II, teenagers were expected to take life seriously. Males were expected to join the military or go out and get a job in order to help bring in money for their family or to take care of their future family. Females were taught how to take care of the household and prepare themselves to be a dutiful wife and take care of children. Marriage and preparing for a family, more than education or a career, was seen as a definite in the lives of teenagers. Also, teens had very little economic freedom, independence, and input into decision making prior to WWII.
  • 14. The development of the ‘teenager’ However, in the 1950’s, expectations changed for the teenager. The economy started booming and families experienced a great deal of economic power, freedom and independence. This was the era that ‘created’ the teenager. teenager Until the 1950s people moved from childhood to adulthood, but the introduction of mass public education and greater general prosperity delayed the necessity for children to work and many enjoyed a longer leisured period into adolescence. Teenagers where more inclined and encouraged to attend college, find a skill, and seek a successful career. Their parents had more than likely gone through the depression and a number of wars, and now wanted something more for their children.
  • 15. The development of the ‘teenager’ The newly found independence of teenagers would often result in conflict with parents. Before the 1950’s, teenagers listened to the music of their parents, but when rock and roll came on the scene teens swarmed to it. This clash between parents and teens became known as the generation gap. The rise of rock n’ roll only served to widen this gap between the old and young, young dividing those who looked back to pre-war values, and those who wished to look forward to a new American world. Americans had a newfound optimism about their future – a world in which automated technology and the good old American values of ‘enterprise’ and ‘risk-taking’ helped them achieve unheard levels of wealth and luxury.
  • 16. The development of the ‘teenager’ Media attention on teenage behaviour became an early moral panic. Rock and roll music was seen as encouraging sexual promiscuity and therefore threatening mainstream society. Protecting and controlling the young has always been an obsession of adult society, and the media found easy targets and plenty of material for sensational journalism concerning the growth of the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ culture and the many stars and celebrities it produced.
  • 17. The development of the ‘teenager’ The media played on these emotions and often portrayed teenagers as juvenile delinquents. Look at the following educational films made in the 1950s, to educate young people about their lifestyles.
  • 18. The ‘teenager’ and the media – 1950s Developments in British radio were faltering. Restricted by limits on ‘needle time’ (time permitted for the broadcast of recorded music) and official distrust of the ‘Americanizing’ influences of rock n’ roll, it was only with the launch of ‘pirate’ stations in the early 1960s that British radio began broadcasting programmes specifically geared to a ‘teen’ audience.” (Extract from ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’ : post-war media representations of youth.’ Osgerby Cited in ‘The Media:An Introduction. Brigss&Cobley. 2002. Pearson)
  • 19. Rebel Without A Cause (1955) Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 film directed by Nicholas Ray that tells the story of a rebellious teenager played by James Dean, who comes to a town, meets a girl, disobeys his parents, and defies the local high school bullies. It was an attempt to portray the moral decay of American youth, critique parental style, and exploit the differences between generations. In 1990, Rebel Without a Cause was added to the preserved films of the United States Library of Congress's National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The film had its opening on 27 October 1955, almost one month after James Dean's fatal car crash.
  • 20. Rebel Without A Cause (1955) Carry out an analysis into the representations of youth in this film, paying particular attention to the contextual background to the film. Think about the following areas: •How are teenagers represented in this film? Look at the issues explored through each of the main characters : Jim Stark / Judy / Plato •From whose point of view is the film told and how does this affect the representations in the film and the value message underpinning it? •How has this film been affected by the historical and social context of the time it was created?
  • 21. Rebel Without A Cause (1955) •In what ways are the fears about the ‘teenager’ explored in the film? •How is the idea of the ‘generation gap’ explored in the film? •How are parents represented in this film? How might this be affected by social and cultural contexts of the time? •Do you think there are any similarities in the representation of teens in this film to more contemporary texts that you have studied? •"Stewart had condensed all the action of the film into a twenty-four-hour time frame because he believed that one day is an eternity to teenagers. It was his intention to tell the story of a generation coming of age in one night" (Hyams and Hyams 192). Discuss.
  • 22. Rebel Without A Cause (1955)- Discussion Character Analysis : Jim: The angry victim and the result. At 17 he is filled with confusion about his role in life. Because of his "nowhere" father, he does not know how to be a man. Because of his wounding mother, he anticipates destruction in all women. And yet he wants to find a girl who will be willing to receive his tenderness. Jim's Father: Frank is an uptight man who has never been able to have fun. Jim's Mother: Tense and immature, she has never found the husband she married. Upset by the presence of her mother-in-law, mated with an ineffectual and joyless man, she takes out her disappointment on him and on her son.
  • 23. Rebel Without A Cause (1955) Character Analysis : Judy: The victim and the result. At 16, she is in a panic of frustration regarding her father--needing his love and suffering when it is denied. This forces her to invite the attention of other men in order to punish him. Judy's Father: A junior partner in a law firm. Boyish, attractive and debonair. Because he is frightened by the adolescence of his daughter, Judy, his only recourse is to criticize her. Judy's Mother: Self-centered and frightened by the coming of middle-age. She feels that Judy's blossoming youth is threatening her wifely position as the desirable object of the husband's attentions.
  • 24. Rebel Without A Cause (1955) Character Analysis : Plato: Son of a divided family--an absent father and a travelling mother--he feels himself the target of desertion. At 15 he wants to find a substitute family for himself so that he need no longer feel cold, and especially a friend who will supply the fatherly protection and warmth he needs and cannot find. Buzz: A sado-masochistic boy of 17 who acts out aggressively his idea of what a man should be in order to hide his real sensitivities and needs. He was probably rejected by both parents and must constantly court danger in order to achieve any sense of prestige or personal worth. The Kids: All searching for recognition in the only way available to them; all suffering from unfulfilled hungers at home; all creating an outside world of chaos in order to bear the chaos they feel inside. They are soldiers in search of an enemy.
  • 25. Cross Cultural Comparisons –50/60s Youth as fun’ was a central motif within British youth texts. Cliff Richard’s films of the early 1960s are exemplary. Sprightly musicals The Young Ones (dir. Sidney Furie, 1961) and Summer Holiday (dir. Peter Yates, 1963) are both tales of cheery youngsters liberating themselves from the dull conformity of their work-a-day lives. The young people here are not rebels but responsible and enterprising citizens, the films’ unquestioning sense of freedom and optimism epitomizing the notions of prosperity and dawning social harmony that lay at the heart of dominant political ideologies during the early 1960s.
  • 26. Cross Cultural Comparisons – 50/60s Related to this critique of youngsters’ cultural preferences has been the stereotyping of young people as a uniquely delinquent generation. This line of argument has often taken sub cultural style as its target. During the early 1950s, for example, these anxieties cohered around the figure of the Teddy Boy. First identified by the media in the working-class neighbourhoods of south London in 1954, the Ted was soon presented as a shockingly new spectre haunting street corners all over the country, his negative image compounded in the sensational press coverage of cinema ‘riots’ that followed screenings of the film Rock Around The Clock in 1956.
  • 27. Teenagers in the 60’s - Mods By the end of the decade the Ted’s drape suit had been superseded by the chic, Italian-inspired styles of the mods. However, like the Teds before them, the mods’ appearance was often presented by the media as not simply a mode of dress but as a symbol of national decline. This approach reached fever-pitch in press responses to the mod ‘invasions’ of several seaside resorts in 1964, events given front-page prominence by national newspapers who spoke of a ‘day of terror’ in which whole towns had been overrun by a marauding mob ‘hell-bent on destruction’.
  • 28. Look at these newspaper articles. What do you think might have happened? Why?
  • 29. Related pieces of crime and Media presents a distorted Distorted view creates deviance are over reported & view of the level of crime public concern given more prominence than otherwise would have This keeps the issue high on the MORAL PANIC public agenda Police records reinforce The police are more aware The police want something the idea there’s more or sensitive to the problem so done about the problem crime & deviance they discover more crime
  • 30. My name is Stan Cohen…whenever you talk about moral panics you must refer to me and mods and rockers.
  • 31. Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics Stanley Cohen has termed such occasions of sensationalized media alarm ‘moral panics’, a situation in which : “A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature presented in a stereotypical fashion by the mass media. The moral barricades are manned by the editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible (Cohen 1980:9).
  • 32. Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics In these terms distorted media coverage plays an active role in shaping events. Media attention fans the sparks of an initially trivial incident, creating a self-perpetuating ‘amplification spiral’ which generates phenomena of much greater magnitude and social significance.
  • 33. Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics Cohen’s case study focused on media representations of the 1960s ‘battles’ between mods and rockers, charting how media intervention gave shape to these groups and crafted them into threatening ‘folk devils’. Moral panic representations often focus on conflict and fighting between different youth groups degenerate behaviour, antisocial practices such as drug taking and sexual promiscuity, and even fashion.
  • 34. Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics Hippies, Punks, Goths and New Romantics have all been called degenerate and criticised by the media in this way. In this kind of representation, the young are seen as illustrating the moral decline of society as a whole. According to Cohen, youth subcultures have been subject to processes of stigmatization and stereotyping. Ironically, Media intervention gives youth subcultures not only national exposure but also a degree of uniformity and definition.
  • 35. Stanley Cohen – Moral Panics Analysis Task : Look at Cohen’s criteria for creating a moral panic within a newspaper article. Use these points to analyse the newspaper article from 1964. •Title for the article (short, snappy, sensational, lots of alliteration, maybe even rhymes or play on words). •Focus on acts that are often seen as deviant e.g. sex, drugs, rock and roll •Convey such problem groups as being villains who are possibly trying to threaten social order •EXAGGERATION – over estimating such features as numbers of people and the scale of the damage. •PREDICATION – an inflated account that may give reference to future events. •SYMBOLISATION – makes remarks about the dress and style of the deviants. Visual signs of delinquency e.g. lifestyle, habits etc.
  • 37. How were young people portrayed during London riots in the summer?
  • 38. After watching the riots on the TV, what may I think about young people and why?