Mods Vs Rockers In the 1960s: Creation Of A Moral Panic

Read through and watch the text(s) below and then answer the question that follows in bold print at the end of the post...

One weekend in 1964 residents and holiday-makers in the seaside towns of Brighton, Bournemouth and Margate, were rocked by a sudden influx of young, cool gangs. They were Mods and Rockers, and the culture clash that occurred that weekend, described in the articles below in The Daily Sketch, Daily Mirror and others, has become iconic in the history of youth culture. 

Mods and Rockers were easily identifiable by their distinctive clothing styles: the Mods wore Fred Perry and Ben Sherman designer suits, covered by a Parka jacket; while the Rockers wore leather biker jackets and jeans. Mods also rode European scooters like Lambrettas and Vespas and listened to a mix of Motown, ska and bands such as The Who. 

The Rockers favoured motorbikes and listened to American rock and roll such as Eddie Cochrane and Elvis. Although the movements were short-lived, violent clashes between the two gangs were seized on by the media and used by moralists to exemplify the outrageous liberties enjoyed by Britain’s youths. 

The seafront vandalism and violence described in the newspaper article was later made into the 1979 film Quadrophenia.

The video below shows how the media in the 1960s reported the clashes between mods and rockers and considers whether or not the media coverage exaggerated the scale of events leading to a 'moral panic' in relation to the behaviour of these youth subcultures.

This is evidence of historical creation of collective identity for British youth cultures.

 

Question

In what ways do the media texts referenced above create a representation of young people as being a danger to society?

The way in which the media represents the youths of the 1960's was very negative, over exaggerated and was then turned into a deviancy amplification spiral. The media manipulated the way the teenage Mods and Rockers were shown by their use of words and pictures shown in the most popular media of the time, newspapers.

One way the media represented the youths of 1960s was by using words which showed them as a danger to society. For example, in the Daily Mirror in the summer if 1964, the words 'beat up' were used in the headline. This is very eye catching and gives the impression they are violent and a threat to people in society. This implies that the violence that the Mods and Rockers were showing in Margate was worse than just fighting, it was more serious and could have lead to a worse outcome if the police had not been on hand to defuse the situation. 

The word 'wild' was used many times in the headlines of the newspapers at that time. For example, in the Daily Sketch in may 1964, the word Wildest was used. This word showed the youths as out of control and were doing what they wanted. Using the word 'wildest' also create the picture of them being like animals, uncontrollable and dangerous.

The media also chose pictures very carefully to portray the fights between the Mods and the Rockers worse than they actually were. For example, this picture to the left shows a group of Mods throwing deck chairs at a couple of Rockers. This picture has been cropped to make it look like the Rockers are having to jump of a really high balcony to get away from the Mods. In reality the balcony is only a few feet about ground level, however the picture does not suggest this.
This picture is also cropped so that you cannot see the other people that are either side of them. This means that either side of this picture there could have been normal people going on about their normal day however, showing just this cropped photo means that the readers of this paper think that this was happening all across the town when it might have just been a one off.

Other words also used in many of the headlines in the newspapers were related to war. For example, the words 'charge', 'battle' and 'invade' were all use in the headlines. The media will have used these because of the war ending in 1945. The target audience that the papers are aimed at will have seen and been in the end of the war and will have an emotional connection to the words used in the papers, reminding them of the war and the sadness and anger that came with it. By using this language the audience will relate the violence of the Mods and Rockers to the evil of the war and the danger that it cause to many people all over the world.