Youth revolts in style predate postwar consumer culture and carry racial politics

Evidence

Hanif Kureishi’s writing exists at the intersection where the forces of youthful rebellion meet their rearticulation (and possibly neutering) in the shiny packaging of the mainstream entertainment industry. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 166 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The female model was a libidinous “mid-riff” who flaunted her sexuality. In commenting on the merchandizing of this seamy, dumbed-down teenage counterculture, the consulting producer Douglas Rushkoff asked, “So is there anywhere the commercial machine won’t go? Is it leaving any room for kids to create a culture of their own?” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1001 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Marketers commercialized a teen counterculture with new entertainment media that could serve their purposes well. A PBS documentary, The Merchants of Cool, provides a glimpse into how marketers crafted the media to shape the buying habits of teenagers (Dretzin & Goodman, 2001). Through “cool hunting,” marketers looked for what was cool and the trendsetters and early adopters. The hunters must become cool themselves to avoid being seen as establishment outsiders. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 999 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Postwar prosperity prompted adolescents to reject phoniness and seek meaning — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 890; Postwar youth subcultures may have harbored democratic potential invisible to political surveys — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2353; Youth as a moral-panic icon predates the postwar consumer boom — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2965 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Popular culture siphons youthful rebellion into corporate profit #complicates (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 166
• Commercial media colonize youth counterculture leaving no authentic space for self-creation #complicates (0.79) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1001
• Commercial media manufacture teenage identity and counterculture to drive consumerism #complicates (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 999
• Popular culture and youth media destabilize entrenched class repression from within #complicates (0.76) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1119
• Corporations shifted from advertising products to engineering youth culture itself #complicates (0.75)
• Youth culture and capitalism had become fully aligned by the mid-2010s #complicates (0.74)
• Consumerist appropriation severs style from the social system that produces the underclass #complicates (0.73) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2862