Lesson Notes

1900 - 1940

• 400% rise in high school enrolment in the USA
• This in turn led to the creation of 'Peer Culture'
• Magazine (and fashion, beauty)  industries targeted the insecurities of adolescent girls
• Post WWII created a demand for labour, which in turn created adolescent disposable income

In the early post war period, in both Britain & the USA, the term 'Youth Culture' was primarily used to refer to the mass culture of certain groups of working class men (Abrams 1959)

In particular, the growth of consumer society, rising living standards and forms of mass entertainment became equated with specific modes of negotiating the transaction from working class male child to men

1945 - 1960 : Birth of the Teen

• Economic potential is obvious - Market of the future
• However, negative stereotypes began in the media
• Youth simultaneously represented a prosperous and liberated future and 'a culture of moral decline'
• This was the first sign of adult cultures dichotomous image of teenagers
• However, they are still a lucrative target market 

Negative stereotyping to protect power structures

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