Lesson Notes: The Teenager

1900-1940

• 400% rise in high school enrolment in the USA. 
• Lead to the creation of 'peer culture'. 
• Magazine (fashion and beauty) industries targeted the insecurities of adolescent girls. 
• Post WW2 created demand for labour which in turn created young people with a disposable income. 
• In the early post-war period, in both USA and Britain, the term youth culture was used primarily to refer to the mass culture of certain groups of working class men (Abrahams 1959).
• In particular, growth of consumer society, rising living standards and forms of mass entertainment became equated with with specific modes of negotiating the transition from working class male child to adult. 

1945-1960: Birth of the Teen

• Economic potential is obvious - 'market of the future'. 
• However, negative stereotypes began.
• Youth simultaneously represented as 'a prosperous and liberated future' and 'a culture of moral decline'. 
• This was the first sign of adult culture's dichotomous image of teens. 
• However they are still a lucrative teenage market. 

Negative stereotyping to protect power structures

• Antonio Gramsci (1931) defined cultural hedemony as when a ruling class dominates a culturally diverse society.
• Ruling classes wanted to stay in control. Therefore, any culture that threatens the status quo is a problem for them and is seen as deviant.
• Therefore by branding this behaviour as moral decline, the ruling class maintains a cultural hegemony as society turns against it. Stanelet Cohen (1987) said that the media helps exaggerate this power while Eldridge (1997) thinks that the media reproduce definitions of the powerful.

Teddy Boys (1950s)

• Fashion based on Edwardian dress, hence 'Teddy'.
• Sought to experiment with 'dandy' fashion, appearences and practises as an antidote to poverty and poor life chances (Fyvel 1963).
• Enjoyed American Rock n' Roll music. Idolised James Dean, Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando (Blake 1985).
• Believed in narcissism and dandyism, which sought to protect working class masculinity.
• Compared to flies. 'Those Teddy Boys'. 'Can they be cured?' 'Teenage Terrorists - Absurd but Deadly'.