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 It was withdrawn in the UK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?