Hebdige's theory

Dick Hebdige focuses on Britain's postwar youth subculture styles as symbolic forms of resistance and wrote the book 'Subculture: The Meaning of Style' in 1979. He draws from Marxist theorists, literary critics, French structuralists and American sociologists to present a model for analyzing youth subcultures. Hebdige argues that each subculture undergoes the same direction, while outlining the individual style differences of specific subcultures. Hebdige emphasizes the historical, class, race and social/economic conditions that surrounded the formation of each subculture.

Hebdige also argues that the representation of youth is very limited. This is due to the fact he believes that youths are either shown as 'trouble' or 'fun' with no in-between. In this sense, he is suggesting that teenagers are either the violent, drug-dealing monsters they are stereo-typically portrayed as, or simply silly, harmless youths who think they are already adults. This represents the dramatic effect on youths, due to them either being shown in the two different ways of being trouble or having fun in the media. It suggests that we never get to see the good and hard working teens of society who just fade into the background, as they are seen as boring by by the media.

In Hebdige's book, 'Subculture: Them Meaning of Style', he describes how members of the working class encounter daily hardships and alienation from the ruling hegemony. Younger generations are reluctant to suffer what their parents go through without protest and so they develop distinct styles and practices which manifest their separate identity, condition and subversion. The media discovers the subculture with a reaction that is typically moral panic. The subculture expands while in the process losing its rebellious edge either by turning into another commercial consumer product before the mainstream hegemony can return to its peaceful, un-threatened state.

By looking at this theory we are able to see that the media in society tends to ignore the good and hard working to instead focus on the 'fun' and 'trouble'. Therefore, this makes adults believe that all youths behave in this manner and confirms the stereotype already put across by the media. Furthermore, this makes it seem as though youths are either extremely bad or extremely good with no in-between for the normal teenagers that are never mentioned by the media. The media only display the violent and 'monstrous' side of youth in order to build up this view that they are to blame for issues that are actually caused by adults. Fundamentally, this means that if the media were to express how there are actually goo and normal youths, then they would be challenging their own stereotype.