In James Gilbert’s book, A Cycle of Outrage - America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950’s, he cites examples of why Americans were “puzzled and distressed by the activities of postwar teenagers.” In an excerpt from his book, he describes that the increased worry about the changing culture of American teenagers is partly due to the rise in technology during the 1950’s (12). Unlike in the past, teenagers were able to rapidly shift their speech, fashion, taste in music, and overall attitude in a uniform manner due to access to mass media. As technology was on the rise, so was the number of students attending high schools. () This, in turn, allowed for even more solidarity amongst the teenage population.
Prior to the war, while women were working in factories, their children were working to help out the nation too. After the war, the baby boom was the single largest growth industry of postwar America and in the 1950s, America grew by almost 30 million people (chafe, 117). Post-war, teenagers stayed in school and could get a part-time job if they wanted and as a result, which also contributed to the economy was that they spent money on things that they liked, such as rock and roll music. Rebel without a cause portrayed concerns over the growing youth culture and perceptions of juvenile delinquency in the first scene; Judy was wandering around at 1:00AM because her father wiped off her lipstick. She said she thought he would’ve rubbed her lips off.
The lyrics of most rock and roll songs were provocative and dirty. However, the film was a hit and the song was history’s most successful rock single(Birth of the Cool- in class notes). Teenagers before the 1950s would dance and express themselves through classical and American pop music. During the 1950s, the teenagers of the newer generation expressed themselves through a different genre of music, rock and roll. It was exactly the same cycle that the newer generations’ parents went through as teenagers.
Oppositional stance against policies or institutions is prominent just as it was with youth counterculture
Youth enjoyed the aspect of ‘independence’. They did this by starting a wave of strikes in 1965 effecting almost every university and college. They were going around demanding more in their education and elimination of rules and restriction imposed on them. 500 million youth turned up to join forces in peace, use marijuana and listen to the artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin who idolised the use of drugs, sex and opposition to the Vietnam War. Youth movement was strong as they were all willing to cross the government, however the youth movement began to fade following a series of violent crackdowns on protesters which involved several deaths and many injuries.
Evidence of those changes were inherent in the way young people described social behavior, alcohol, cigarettes and other factors of those times.” (Bulletin) Currently, there are words to describe the social situations young people find themselves in, just like the young of the past. Instead of “speakeasies” that are used to bypass the law, young college students of today create “safe spaces” on college campuses because the law isn’t doing enough to protect them against hate crime. Everything about the social movement in those times is reflected back in the current era, as well as most of the eras in between them.
The 1960’s was one of the most tempestuous decades in American history, remembered for its nationwide protests against the vietnam war and strive for political change. During this decade, a group of people called hippies, emerged and created their own liberal counterculture by refusing to participate in mainstream society. Hippies were white, well-educated, middle class adolescents who were products of the “baby boom” generation. As Hippies entered their early twenties in the late 1960’s, they began to advocate for individual freedom and highly promoted people to “do their own thing”. At the same time, they rejected any ideas of conformity and materialism that their parents had constructed and abided by the decade before them.
The sixties was a decade unlike any other. Baby boomers came of age and entered colleges in huge numbers. The Civil Rights movement was gaining speed and many became involved in political activism. By the mid 1960s, some of American youth took a turn in a “far out” direction. It would be the most influential youth movement of any decade - a decade striking a dramatic gap between the youth and the generation before them.
As the year 1950 approached, a new chapter in society and music was about to commence. Television shows including Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver exemplified the conservative values presented by the 1950s. During this decade, the civil rights movement began, Playboy magazine was founded, and rock and roll was born. After World War II, the American economy drastically increased. Families began looking for new houses and consumer goods including televisions, appliances and automobiles.
A new generation brings in a new, different culture. And somehow, it goes from different to rebellious. The adult American society will often look at the youth subculture’s homology: their choice of clothes, music, dance, and their overall lifestyle, and they will just begin to form these “personality conflicts” (O’Connor 412). If adults, more specifically parents, begin to have better understanding of why their subculture is often so different, then they will be able to relate to and raise “better” teenagers. This does not mean that every elder and adult has to embrace youth culture, but there should be an attempt to have a better understanding of it.
Introduction Society’s expectations are exhausting and take a toll on anyone attempting to conform to them. In early 1960’s in Haight-Ashbury, a district of San Francisco, California, young adults started a movement that challenged the social norms of modern society, “the counterculture.” The counterculture was a movement of “hippies” who experimented with drugs to find the meaning of life. They also used music to express their rebellious beliefs. Middle class citizens were expected to graduate high school, go to college, get a job and then have a family.
After our encounter with Nallan, who had been promoted from senator to general, I set about to get revenge. I began to sneak around the city, scavenging weapons and supplies necessary to complete my personal mission. I would go to the nearby military base where Nallan was stationed, and learned as much as I could about it. I figured out when the guard shifts were and where the base was most vulnerable. I watched and followed Nallan and learned his schedule so that I would be able to assassinate him.
In A Clockwork Orange, the dystopian England envisioned by Burgess serves to exaggerate the evils of both youth and adult society as a way to highlight the futility and the recklessness of youth rebellion. Given that the interactions between the young and the grown up words is one of the primary reasons for the development of rebellious youth cultures, the most effective way of communicating the opposing worldviews of both sides is to take them to their logical extremes. Youth culture is not just carefree and naive, but anarchic and infantile. Adults are not just reactionary and strict; they are antipathetic and authoritarian. It is this extreme clash between the generations that serves to perpetuate and even encourage the rise of youth counterculture
Youth subculture is often defined or distinguishable by elements such as fashion, beliefs, behaviours or interests. Many subcultures are related with specific music genres, a telling example is that Mods like Soul&Jazz and Rockers prefer Rock&Roll. Also, vehicles have played an essetial role in youth subcultures. During the 1960’s in the UK, mods were associated with scooters while rockers were associated with motorcycles. What are mods?
Youth cultures are a quickly changing dynamic that goes hand in hand with the modern and globalized surrounding conditions we live in. In a community, there are smaller cultures “subcultures”, within a bigger culture that represent smaller groups of people with almost the same interests or beliefs that differ from those in the bigger community. These subcultures may differ from the older generations, but this change is a sort of resistance from the children to the routine and suffocating living conditions. In the 1979 book by Dick Hebdige “Subculture: The Meaning of Culture” the book and its content relates more to the Birmingham School, Hebdige argued that a subculture is a way of destroying the normalcy. These subcultures are seen as negative due to the criticism given to them by media outlets and how they fight against the societal norms, but they are also a way of solace for those standing out, those who feel neglected by the society.
