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. 

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

Young people were represented in various  terms as danger to the society in 1964. All this took place by the coast side at Brighton, Bournemouth and Margate were young people classed as Mods and Rockers were represented on newspapers with language terms like the wild ones, rioting teenagers etc. such negative language use therefore discriminates the young people making them more likely to seen as being the danger.

This is an example of news headlined language that were used to describe both the teenage rivals. to make it more effective to the audience consuming the news headlines, words like 'take cover' and 'battling' are warfare related words that therefore makes the audience more fearful of the mods and rockers, this is simply because warfare lead to violence, danger, death etc. so when the teenagers are describes with warfare language, its to show that they are dangerous to the society.

The media being able to choose what the audience sees, uses this idea to get the most inconvenient pictures for the audiences to see. for example, this picture shows how an attack as been carried out by mods towards some rockers. the pictures as been cropped to get the audience thinking of how high the balcony is and this is to give the audience an ideas that its a serious situation that could lead to various amount of danger, that therefore gives the consumers more awareness of keeping away from the situation as much as possible. 

This message is mostly forwarded to middled aged people or older as they were classed as the most vulnerable ones. evidence of this was showed by the media when it was said that 'Margate,' a 50 years old woman had to chase of 200 teenage youths with a broom which therefore shows that they teenagers are seen to attack innocent individuals however looking on the other side of this confrontation, 200 teenage youths being chased off by a 50 years old lady with a broom seems almost to say if an old lady can keep off 200 young men, then they aren't that much of a danger to the society. its the media that expanded on the story in a way that puts the rivalry youths in a position that therefore makes them highly dangerous.

In addition to this, i think media as used deviancy amplification spiral and evidence that i have to of that is from the YouTube footage I watched of the mods and rockers, there was a quote in-between the documentary that says, "the battles were smaller. but gotten much wider coverage" this shows that the media had therefore expand the story of some ways that therefore leads to more people getting involve.