‘They [young people] form a depressing group and one by no means typical of working-class people; perhaps most of them are rather less intelligent than the average…’ (Richard Hoggart 1957)
"The youth of today!...". Don’t worry. I’m not going to lapse into a Monty Python sketch, but phrases such as this and "it was never like that in my day" are often attributed to the older generations of western cultures. I have experienced comments such as this many times from many older people and, disappointingly, people that are even younger than me (even old punks). Before I begin however, I must make it very clear that there are many people from the post 60s and 70s generations that have no problems with the youth of today or the youth of any other day.
I think those who were part of a youth subculture from the birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the 1950s have a better understanding of what it is to be a youth and what it is to be part of a subculture. In today’s postmodern (or post postmodern) climate it is fine to continue wearing the clothes and styles of our youth. Every year in the closed holiday season the holiday camps are full of old Soul Rebels, Rock ‘n’ Rollers, Mods and Rude Boys.
In the 1940s my parents were not part of a youth subculture and went straight from being children to adults. One day my dad was wearing short trousers, the next he was in the RAF in Burma and my mother went from school to work, child to adult, within the space of a few days. It wasn’t until the 1950s that record producers and fashion designers realised there was a gap in the market and that teens had disposable income, so they got their own music and their own fashions and those that had finished their childhood by this time struggled to understand what the ‘teenager’ was?
Richard Hoggart was the father of British Cultural Studies and was part of a hugely important movement that began to take working-class culture more seriously during the 1950s. This was the time that writers and film makers began to take on subjects that depicted and related to the young British working-class.
Clip from ‘We Are The Lambeth Boys’ 1959
Before this they had quietly put up with forelock tugging Cockney stereotypes in films and television. Hoggart himself had come from an impoverished background in Leeds and was brought up by his grandmother because both of his parents had died by the time he was eight. He managed to get himself a place at a grammar school and won a scholarship to Leeds University, which was still very unusual for working-class folk. In 1962 Hoggart founded The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham and was a pioneer in examining culture in a broad multi-class way, with academic depth.
To this point, all was good. He even wrote one of the most important books on working-class culture in the post war period, ‘The Uses of Literacy’ (1956). This book drew a picture of post-war urban life and the cultures that grew up within it. Although the book was an honest personal account of how mass consumption and mass culture was changing due to Americanisation, as well as being a serious attempt to explore an area that had rarely been a serious discussion in the past, it was still very damning and judgemental. However hard he may have been trying, he was still making the point that the ‘youth of today’ were not like the youth when he was a lad.
Me far right (not politically) when I was ‘The Youth of Today’.
Within the book there is an essay called ‘The Jukebox Boys’ and it talks of the relatively new phenomenon of the teenager in a rather scathing manner. "One such illustration is to be found in the reading of young men on national Service…the only books read by a great many, my own experience suggests, are those written by the most popular crime novelists. Otherwise they read comics, gangster novelettes, science and crime magazines, the newer style magazines…"
Maybe this is all something to do with our nostalgic selves. Nostalgia affects us all, especially in a time of recession and political uncertainty when we want to wrap ourselves in the comfort blanket of the past. It makes us feel and think that the past was a far better place than the present and because the ‘youth of today’ are always going to be a part of the present and not the past, they must be lacking in something?
Maybe Hoggart pictured some noble working classes of his past, who spent their time reading Dostoyevsky, and Jane Austen and not the pulp/dime novel of the 20s and 30s?
He goes on to say "the juke-box boys…spend their evenings in harshly lighted milk bars… Girls go to some, but most of the customers are boys between fifteen and twenty, with drape suits, picture ties and an American slouch…they put copper after copper into the mechanical record player…The records seem to be changed about once a fortnight by the hiring firm; almost all are American; almost all are vocals and the styles of singing much advanced beyond what is normally heard on the Light programme of the BBC…Compared even with the pub around the corner, this is all a peculiarly thin and pallid form of dissipation, a sort of spiritual dry rot."
It is obvious that the ‘milk bar/cafe’ didn’t exist in Hoggart’s youth so he struggles to understand it, but this is the way things should be. Adults shouldn’t understand youth. It’s their club. We might dress in the same clothes, but if you’re over 25 you shouldn’t be allowed in.
Toward the end of the essay he says "They form a depressing group and one by no means typical of working-class people; perhaps most of them are rather less intelligent than the average and are therefore even more exposed than the others to the debilitating mass trends of the day. They have no aim, no ambition, no protection, no belief."
Little did Hoggart know at the time, but this was only the beginning of youth subculture and contrary to his understanding of what this phenomenon was, those who were part of youth subcultures often went on to become the most creative of people, due to their opportunity of having an expressive outlet.
Having taught at an art school for nearly 25 years, I have been able to observe changing fashions and the last big fashions I can remember were probably cyber-punk, goth and emo, which included long coats, striped jumpers, ear tunnels, and New Rock boots. Gradually, the fashions have become more what trend forecasting group K-Hole described as Normcore. Normcore is jeans, trainers, t-shirts, hoodies; genderless, neutral clothing that allow young people to be more eclectic in their musical tastes. This may seem dull to some of us who dressed more extravagantly in our youth, but the next time you find yourself complaining about young people wearing their trousers too low, or moaning about the popular music of the day, or saying "when I was young it was better", just stop yourself and have a look at those photos of you when you were 15 and remember what you thought then of older folk passing judgement on how you looked, what you read, what you watched, and what you listened to.
Main image: Screen grab from Monty Python's 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch
