Popular culture can crack national character from the inside
Evidence
In some ways, the break in English culture begins there. It begins in television; it begins with youth culture; it does begin with “Rock around the Clock” in a funny kind of way. [Laughter] Those of us who listened to “Rock around the Clock” just knew that something was happening here that, if it gets loose, if it leaves the Odeon and starts to take root out there, will unhinge the British stoicism, the tight-arsed, stiff-upper-lip class, whatever that is, repression. It will just unpack that from the inside. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1119
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Hall’s point that youth culture and television unhinged British repression is a cultural-studies mechanism that parallels how media transforms national identity — connects to the imagined community concept in the reader’s toolkit.