hw

• Deviant


  Deviating from the norm, unconventional
• Moral panic

  A feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society
• Moral panic reporting baptizes transgression
• The quest for authenticity makes moral panics relevant to youth culture
• Youth culture has often surprised and alarmed older members of society
• Events on the Brighton seafront in the 1960s helped to bring the term moral panic into the vocabulary of social science
• Mods

  • Scooter riders who covered up their elegant clothing in the rain
  • Cared about their appearance
• Rockers

  • Wore a black uniform for all seasons
  • Rode motorbikes that could do a ton
• The first time the public noticed mods and rockers coming to blows was Easter bank holiday in 1964 at Clapton
• Constable: 'It was several hundred young people rather at a loose end over the weekend and what happened as far as the police are concerned they came into the town and finding not much else to do they committed several acts of wanton and purposeless damage'
• Interviewee: 'They motorbikes they started betting their scooters and knocking down mowers and what else happened'
• Stan Cohen was a young postgraduate student from Johannesburg researching social reaction to juvenile delinquency
• Cohen saw that the media exaggerated the scale of the disturbances and the amount of damage and violence
• Moral panic

  A problem is identified, the causes are simplified and key participants are stigmatized, a press campaign for action is followed by a response from the authorities which may reframe the problem and start a new round of moral panic
• The media helped define the subcultures of mods and rockers, publicize them and nurture the differences between them
• In the 1960s and 1970s, each new subculture pushed harder at the boundaries of the acceptable, provoking a succession of moral panics
• By the mid 80s, a completely new and puzzling form of subculture was emerging involving many more young people than ever before - the acid house scene
• The government was considering giving local councils new powers to control acid house parties, including jailing organizers and confiscating profits
• Sarah Thornton, a young sociologist from Canada, observed that the term 'moral panic' was being used much more widely than by social scientists
• Thornton found that the term 'moral panic' was being used by clubbers, ravers, fanzines, style press and music press to identify the economic media hysteria and sensational reporting around the acid house scene
• Youth were often happier with negative, scandalized, hysterical media coverage of their subcultures than positive coverage, as it made their activities seem important
• There was economic media hysteria, a lot of sensational reporting about the acid house and rave culture
• The general consensus seemed to be that this was thrilling and really a guarantee of the credibility of this culture
• The tabloids seemed to fluctuate between positive and negative coverage of acid house and then rave initially
• The Sun had guides of how to dress in authentic acid house gear, but then not more than two or three weeks later they were absolutely scandalized by the drug taking that was taking place at these kinds of events
• Youth are much happier with negative, scandalized, hysterical coverage than they are with positive coverage
• The negative, scandalized coverage made youthful activity important beyond the bounds of a regular Saturday night
• The negative coverage provoked a response from the authorities, the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 sought to clamp down on illegal raves
• The Criminal Justice Act of 1994 was an attempt to define a musical form in order to criminalize it
• The Criminal Justice Act of 1994 affected the author's generation a lot more than any other piece of legislation they've ever tried to pass
• The Criminal Justice Act of 1994 has almost politicized young people and got them more involved
• After violence broke out during a march in protest against the new Criminal Justice Bill, 10 people were arrested in central London
• Thousands of young people stayed behind dancing and playing music in Hyde Park after being told to move from confrontation with the police
• By 1995, there was an unprecedented cultural revolution in the UK, with the mainstreaming of dance culture in every high street, town and city
• The mainstreaming of dance culture led to the mainstreaming of drug culture in the UK in a way that hadn't been seen before
• A student, Leah Betts, collapsed and died after taking an ecstasy tablet at her 18th birthday party
• Leah Betts' death looked like it was going to be a classic moral panic, as there had been other deaths associated with taking ecstasy that had been reported in the media
• Leah Betts' story received considerably more media coverage than previous ecstasy-related deaths, likely due to the availability of dramatic photographs of her on her deathbed
• Leah Betts being young, white and pretty made her more appealing to the media as a victim
• Within a day of Leah Betts' death, it became clear that the ecstasy tablet was pure and that she had died not from a poisoned tablet, but from a combination of taking the tablet and drinking too much water