The document discusses the development of the concept of the "teenager" in the 1950s and 1960s. It provides historical context on the roles and expectations of youth prior to World War II. It then explains how greater economic prosperity in the postwar period allowed for longer periods of leisure and education for youth. This led to tensions between generations as teenagers gained independence. The media often portrayed teenagers negatively, exacerbating moral panics around new youth cultures and behaviors. Films from this era, like Rebel Without a Cause, dealt with themes of teenage rebellion and nonconformity.

1. The development of the
‘teenager’
Looking at wider contexts
Case Study : Rebel Without A
Cause (1955)
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0048545/

2. 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 (1956) and his early death in
a road crash, led to Dean becoming a mythic figure for
youth.

3. 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.

4. Origins of youth culture
Some critics would argue that because all youth cultures are constructed
around patterns of consumption, including music, its 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.

5. 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.

6. 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 ccaannnnaabbiiss--iinndduucceedd
ffoogg..

7. Origins of youth culture
Classic film representations of youth and youth culture include :
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) – a
futuristic urban dystopia featuring vviioolleennccee,, vviioolleenntt sseexx
aanndd ccuulltt ggaannggss ddoommiinnaattiinngg tthhee ssttrreeeettss. It was withdrawn
in the UK by Kubrick himself, who was shocked by so-called
‘‘ccooppyyccaatt vviioolleennccee’’ iinnvvoollvviinngg sscceenneess ffrroomm tthhee ffiillmm.
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/

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

9. 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.
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/

10. 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 of his best efforts to improve his life, is drawn into
crime and ultimately murder just as he reaches the age of
16.

11. 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.

12. Origins of youth culture
It would be useful for your case studies to
look at some films from different
decades, and analyse how and why the
representations of teenagers has
changed and developed.

13. 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
‘‘ccrreeaatteedd’’ tthhee tteeeennaaggeerr.
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.

14. The development of the ‘teenager’
The newly found independence of teenagers wwoouulldd oofftteenn
rreessuulltt iinn ccoonnfflliicctt wwiitthh ppaarreennttss.. Before the 1950’s, teenagers
listened to the music of their parents, but when rroocckk aanndd rroollll
ccaammee oonn tthhee sscceennee 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, 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.

15. 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 jjoouurrnnaalliissmm ccoonncceerrnniinngg tthhee
ggrroowwtthh ooff tthhee ‘‘sseexx,, ddrruuggss aanndd rroocckk aanndd rroollll’’
ccuullttuurree and the many stars and celebrities it
produced.

16. The development of the ‘teenager’
TThhee mmeeddiiaa ppllaayyeedd oonn tthheessee
eemmoottiioonnss aanndd oofftteenn ppoorrttrraayyeedd
tteeeennaaggeerrss aass jjuuvveenniillee
ddeelliinnqquueennttss..

17. Analysing the
representation of
teenager’s.
How are teenagers represented on
TV?

18. 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.

19. 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
(1961) and Summer Holiday (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.

20. 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.

21. 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’.

22. Look at these newspaper articles.
What do you think might have
happened? Why?

23. Quadrophenia
 Is set in the mid 60s. It follows the story of Jimmy Cooper, a
London Mod. Disillusioned by his parents and a job as a
post room boy in an advertising firm, Jimmy finds an outlet
for his teenage angst with his Mod friends. This film
highlights rebelliousness caused by suburban boredom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E4znu82XhE&feature=endscreen&NR=1

24. How are teenagers represented in
today’s TV programmes?
TASK: - In groups of 3 analyse how the teenagers are
represented in your chosen TV Drama.
• Analyse are the teenagers represented as a fair and
accurate representation of the teenagers you know? - If
not why not?
• What do the representations / stereotypes say about
young people?
• Find some short clips to evidence your points.
• Present your findings in a PPT to present back to the
class for Thursday (max 8 minutes).

25. LO: To understand what is a
moral panic and the effects this
can have in the media.
Using teenagers as an example of one
moral panic in the media.

26. Media presents a distorted
view of the level of crime.
Distorted view creates
public concern.
Related pieces of crime and
deviance are over reported &
given more prominence than
otherwise would have.
This keeps
the issue
high on the
public
agenda.
The police want something
done about the problem.
The police are more aware
or sensitive to the problem so
they discover more crime.
Police records reinforce
the idea there’s more
crime & deviance.
MORAL PANIC

27. My name is Stan
Cohen…whenever
you talk about
moral panics you
must refer to me
and mods and
rockers.

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

33. 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.

34. How were young people portrayed during
London riots in the summer?

35. After watching the
riots on the TV,
what may I think
about young people
and why?

36. Moral Panic - Homework
Pick a modern day media ‘moral panic’.
•Make a collage of pictures / news clippings and
annotate how the event created a moral panic
(using Stanley Cohen’s diagram as the steps).
•Do the media use EXAGGERATION,
PREDICATION and SYMBOLISATION in the
news reports? If so explain how?