Teddy Boys

There appear to be three processes in such symbolization a word (Mod) becomes symbolic of a certain status (delinquent or deviant) objects (hairstyle, clothing) symbolize the word the objects themselves become symbolic of the status (and the emotions attached to the status). The cumulative effect of these three processes as they appeared in the inventory was that the terms Mods and Rockers were torn from any previously neutral contexts (for example, the denotation of different consumer styles) and acquired wholly negative meanings. The identical effect is described by Turner and Surace in their classic study of the Zoot Suit riots and by Rock and myself in tracing how the Edwardian dress style became transformed into the Teddy Boy folk devil. ... 

An example closer to the Mods and Rockers is the spread during the fifties of the Teddy Boy riots and similar phenomena elsewhere in Europe. Most commentators on these events acknowledged the role of publicity in stimulating imitative or competitive forms of behaviour and some studies have been made on the mass media coverage of such events.At the same time, though, blame was put on publicity in the restricted sense and there was little awareness of the complex ways in which mass communication operates before, during and after each impact . The causative nature of mass communication - in the whole context of the societal reaction to such phenomena - is still usually misunderstood. 

Soon, the emerging styles became associated with deviant or publicly disapproved values. The Teddy Boys were the first youth... 

The heroes of the fifties were cast in the very American mould of the brute and the hipster Brando and Dean being the most perfect and Presley the nearest musical equivalent. But while this type emerged from and pointed towards many more complicated streams in America, the Teddy Boy was extraordinarily simple in what he represented. It would have been difficult to predict from Rock Around the Clock , Disc Jockey Jamboree and the rumblings that sometimes accompanied them, all the proliferation, confusion and sorting out in the youth scene during the subsequent few years. 

Keith Bottomley, Prison Before Trial (London C. Bell and Sons, 1970). Tony Parker, The Plough Boy (London Hutchinson, 1965), p. 235. For further examples from the Teddy Boy phenomenon, see Paul Rock and Stanley Cohen, The Teddy Boy , in V. Bogdanor and R. Skidelsky (Eds), The Age of Affluence 7957-1964 (London Macmillan, 1970). Main source Hastings and St Leonard s Observer (15 August 1964). 

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