CONFLICTS RELATED TO MOD STYLE
The mod style that developed during 1950s was also associated with many conflicts. During early 1960s, the subculture of Teddy Boys faded and was replaced by new youth subcultures – mods and rockers. In article reveals information on conflicts related to mod style. As we have said Teddy Boys were replaced by mods and rockers, the mods were considered or seen as effeminate, stuck-up, emulating the middle classes, aspiring to a competitive sophistication, snobbish and phony. However, rockers were seen as hopelessly naive, loutish and scruffy.
Dick Hebdige has the view that, during that period, mods rejected the crude concept of masculinity by rocker, the transparency of his motivations, his clumsiness”. However, according to the rockers of that time, the mod’s vanity and obsession with clothes is not at all masculine. This led to arguments over mod style, scholars also debated on how much the groups have contact during 1960s. Dick Hebdige claims that the two groups have less contact since they come from or belong to different regions of England and at the same time they have totally disparate goals and lifestyles. And this led to certain mod style conflicts during 1960s.
Talking about the conflicts associated with mod style, the mods and the rockers comes up many conflicts. According to a BBC news stories, the mods & rockers were jailed after the seaside resort towns’ riots. The conflicts between mods & rockers led sociologist Stanley Cohen to mint the term moral panic in his study ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’. His study covers the mods and rockers riots during 1960s. Even newspapers exclaimed the mods and rockers clashes as being of disastrous proportions and titled them as “sawdust Caesars”, “vermin” and “louts”.
Conflicts related to mod style as well as rockers make a constant place in the newspapers editorials and certain magazine columns during 1960s. Birmingham Post editorial described mods as well as rockers as the ‘internal enemies’ in the England. The magazine Police Review claimed that the mods and rockers’ purported lack of respect for law and order could cause violence to “surge and flame like a forest fire”. Due to the media coverage, two British Members of Parliament traveled to the seaside areas to survey the damage, and MP Harold Gurden called for a resolution for intensified measures to control hooliganism.
