| Summary |
Annotation Interest in youth culture is on the rise today, as pressures build tocensor controversial song lyrics, reintroduce school prayer, and prohibitteenagers' access to contraceptives. It's not the first time Americans have beenoutraged over the "seduction of the innocent."When James Dean and Marlon Brando donned motorcycle jackets and adoptedalienated poses in Rebel Without a Cause, and The Wild One, in the 1950's, sodid countless numbers of American teenagers. Or so it seemed to their parents.American teenagers were looking and acting like juvenile delinquents. Bymid-decade, the nation had reached a pitch of near obsession with the harmfuleffects of film, radio, comic books, and television on American youth. Expertsacross the land denounced mass culture as depriving young people of theirinnocence and weakening their parents' hold on them. By the end of the decade,the obsession had ended, although the actual numbers of juvenile delinquents hadapparently risen.A Cycle of Outrage explores the 1950's debate over the media and juveniledelinquency among parents, professionals, and the creators of mass culturethemselves. In this groundbreaking study, James Gilbert sees the attempt toblame the media as part of a larger reaction of discomfort echoed in recentdebates over censorship. The book examines how the central phenomena of the1950's--the development of youth culture and the rise of a mass mediasociety--became intertwined and confused and argues that young people ceased tobe a threat as they were recognized to be a market. |
