Suicide solutions?
Or, how the emo class of 2008 were able to contest their media demonization, whereas the headbangers, burnouts or ‘children of ZoSo’ generation were not
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v6i1.19Keywords:
Black Parade album, case study, claims-making, Daily Mail, emo subculture, heavy metal, middle class, moral panic, new media, suicide epidemicAbstract
This article offers a comparative analysis of press mediated morality scares, concerned with the influence of types of heavy metal music on incidences of teen suicide, in two different periods. On the basis of this comparison, I argue that the campaign against heavy metal, in the 1983–87 period in the United States, is an example of a successful moral panic; whereas the attempt to generate a similar scare about the emo sub-genre, in the UK in 2008, is an example of a failed one. So why did one succeed and the other not? Debating Critcher’s ‘make-over’ of the moral panic model and its critics, I suggest the answer lies in a number of factors, some of which support the model, others undermine it. First, while sensationalist press coverage on behalf of ‘parents’ characterized both panics, in the UK this lacked endorsement by elite/professional bodies, so societal ‘solutions’ were never clearly posed. Second, the enhanced role of niche/subcultural media in contesting the emo panic. Third, the ability of emo fans to ‘speak back’ to their demonizers, exemplified by the march on the Daily Mail, which was widely reported. Finally, to the extent that emo is a middle-class defined subculture, with a pronounced female profile, it is not viewed as a threat to societal norms as that of the working-class, male-defined fandom of 1980s heavy metal.
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Walser, Robert. 1993. ‘Professing Censorship: Academic Attacks on Heavy Metal’. Journal of Popular Music Studies 5: 68–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-1598.1993. tb00083.x
Weinstein, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. New York: Da Capo Press.
Boethieus, Ulf. 1995. ‘Youth, the Media and Moral Panics’. In Youth Culture in Late Modernity, ed. Johan Fornas and Goran Bolin, 39?57. London: Sage.
Brown, Andy R. 2007. ‘“Everything Louder than Everything Else”: The Contemporary Metal Music Magazine and its Cultural Appeal’. Journalism Studies 8(3): 642?55. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616700701412209
—2009. ‘“Girls Like Metal, Too!”: Female Readers’ Engagement with the Masculinist Culture of the Tabloid Metal Magazine’. Paper presented at the Heavy Metal and Gender conference, University of Music and Dance, Cologne, Germany, 8?10 October 2009.
—2010. ‘The Importance of Being “Metal”: The Metal Music Tabloid and Youth Identity Construction’. In The Metal Void: First Gatherings, ed. Niall Scott and Imke Von Helden, 105–134. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Chastagner, Claude. 1999. ‘The Parents’ Music Resource Centre: From Information to Censorship’. Popular Music 18(2): 179–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S026114300000903X
Christenson, Peter. 1992. ‘The Effects of Parent Advisory Labels on Adolescent Music Preferences’. Journal of Communication 42(1): 106–113.
Cohen, Stanley. 2002 [1972]. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers. 3rd edn. St. Albans: Paladin.
Critcher, Chas. 2003. Moral Panics and the Media. Buckingham: Open University Press.
de Young, Mary. 1998. ‘Another Look at Moral Panics: The Case of Satanic Day Care Centers’. Deviant Behaviour: An Interdisciplinary Journal 19(3): 257–78.
Forde, Eamon. 2001. ‘From Polyglottism to Branding: On the Decline of Personality Journalism in the British Music Press’. Journalism 2(1): 23–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 146488490100200108
Gaines, Donna. 1990. Teenage Wasteland. New York: Harper Collins.
Gauntlett, David, and Ross Horsley, eds. 2004. Web.Studies. 2nd edn. London: Hodder Education.
Goodchild, Seth. 1986. ‘Twisted Sister, Washington Wives, and the First Amendment: The Movement to Clamp Down on Rock Music’. Entertainment & Sports Law Journal 3: 131–96.
Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. 1994. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds. 2006 [1976]. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. 2nd edn. London: Hutchinson.
Heath, Joseph, and Andrew Potter. 2005. The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became the Consumer Culture. Chichester, West Sussex: Capstone Wiley.
Martin, Linda, and Kerry Seagrave. 1993 [1988]. Anti-Rock: The Opposition to Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Da Capo Press.
McRobbie, Angela. 1994. Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge. http:// dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203168332
McRobbie, Angela, and Sarah L. Thornton. 2000. ‘Re-thinking “Moral Panic” for Multi-Mediated Social Worlds’. In Feminism and Youth Culture, ed. Angela McRobbie, 180–97. London: Macmillan.
Osgerby, Bill. 2004. Youth Media. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203 343630
Pettinichio, Darlyne. 1986. The Back in Control Centre Presents the Punk Rock and Heavy Metal Handbook (pamphlet). Fullerton, CA: Back in Control.
Raschke, Carl L. 1990. Painted Black: From Drug Killings to Heavy Metal—the Alarming True Story of How Satanism is Terrorizing Our Communities. New York: Harper Collins.
Richardson, James T. 1991. ‘Satanism in the Courts: From Murder to Heavy Metal’. In The Satanism Scare, ed. James T. Richardson, Joel Best and David G. Bromley, 205–217. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.
Roberts, Ken, and Glennys Parsell. 1994. ‘Youth Cultures in Britain: The Middle Class Takeover’. Leisure Studies 13(1): 33–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02614369400390031
Rosenbaum, Jill Leslie, and Lorraine Prinsky. 1991. ‘The Presumption of Influence: Recent Responses to Popular Music Subcultures’. Crime and Delinquency 37(4): 528–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011128791037004007
Sands, Sarah. 2006. ‘EMO Cult Warning to Parents’. The Daily Mail, 16 August.
Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity.
Ungar, Sheldon. 2001. ‘Moral Panic versus the Risk Society: The Implications of the Changing Sites of Social Anxiety’. British Journal of Sociology 52(2): 272–91.
US Senate. 1985. Record Labeling. Hearing Before the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, United States Senate. First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records, 19 September. US Government Printing Office, Washington. http://www.joesapt.net/superlink/shrg99-529/index.html
Walser, Robert. 1993. ‘Professing Censorship: Academic Attacks on Heavy Metal’. Journal of Popular Music Studies 5: 68–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-1598.1993. tb00083.x
Weinstein, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. New York: Da Capo Press.
Published
2012-05-14
Issue
Section
Controversies
How to Cite
Brown, A. (2012). Suicide solutions? Or, how the emo class of 2008 were able to contest their media demonization, whereas the headbangers, burnouts or ‘children of ZoSo’ generation were not. Popular Music History, 6(1-2), 19-37. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v6i1.19
