Full Description
Nobody worried about teenagers" prior to the 1940s. In fact, as a culturally or economically defined entity they did not exist. But in the 50 years since the last world war, when the term was first coined, teenagers have had an enormous impact on American culture. They have reshaped our language, our music, our clothes. They have changed forever the way we respond to authority. They have become a 200 billion consumer group avidly courted by marketers. And they have changed our culture, which will never again treat their demographic group merely as young adults. Teenagers ranges widely across American culture of the middle twentieth century to depict the shifting characterizations of teens from invisible young adults to young soldiers in training, to bobby soxers and zoot suiters, to rock 'n' rollers and juvenile delinquents, from hippies to savvy consumers. Grace Palladino examines everything from Andy Hardy and Elvis Presley to Seventeen magazine and MTV. She challenges those who decry teenage hedonism and immorality today, showing that modern disaffected teenagers, as in the past, are responding just as much to hypocritical adult behaviour as to a commercial cult of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.
Contents
* Introduction: Theyre Getting Older Younger Adolescents * The High School Age * Advise and Consent: Building Adolescent Character * A New Deal for Youth: Progressive Education and the National Youth Administration Bobby Soxers * Swing Shift: Bobby Soxers Take the Stage * Andy Hardy Goes To War: Soldiers, Defense Workers, V-Girls, and Zoot Suiters * Do You Know Where Your Children Are?: Juvenile Delinquency, Teen Canteens, and Democratic Solutions Teenagers * The Advertising Age: Seventeen, Eugene Gilbert, and the Rise of the Teenage Market * Great Balls of Fire: Rhythm and Blues, Rock n Roll, and the Devils Music * Stairway to Heaven: The Real Life Business of Rock n Roll * The Perils of Prosperity: Teenage Rebels, Teenage Sex, and the Communist Menace * The Content of Their Character: Black Teenagers and Civil Rights in the South Adversaries * A Hard Days Night: Beatles, Boomers, and the Bomb * Lies My Father Told Me: Berkeley, Vietnam, and the Generation Gap * Up the Down Staircase: Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll * Conclusion: Back to the Future
