History 474B

Devine

Spring 2004

Study Questions for James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage

Assignment: James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage, Introduction, Chapters 1-4, 6, 9-end.

There will be a quiz on the reading at the beginning of class next Wednesday.

1. Gilbert says in his introduction that he is writing the “social history of an idea.” What is the “idea” he is writing about?
2. Why were Americans in the 1950s so concerned about the possibly adverse effects of mass culture? What social and cultural conditions of the postwar period helped fuel this concern and made mass culture something of a scapegoat?
3. Why were teenagers and the new mass media-driven youth culture “threatening” to many Americans in the 1950s? Of course, the younger generation has always been viewed somewhat suspiciously by the older, but why in the 1950s did this suspicion reach crisis proportions?
4. How was middle class hostility toward working class culture and mores linked to fears about juvenile delinquency?
5. What forces (social, cultural, economic) helped create a “teenage culture” during and after World War II? Why was the war itself a significant factor in shaping fears about juvenile delinquency?
6. How did Attorney General Clark and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover differ from Katherine Lenroot, Martha Eliot, and the Children’s Bureau in their approach to addressing the problem of juvenile delinquency? If the FBI and the Children’s Bureau had fundamentally different understandings of the problem, how did this shape the ways they proposed to solve it?
7. How did the Children’s Bureau’s views on the causes of juvenile delinquency differ from those of psychiatrist Frederic Wertham?
8. Why was it difficult to measure precisely any increase in the rate of juvenile delinquency?
9. Gilbert argues that the fear of communist “subversion” and the fear of juvenile delinquency reflected larger societal concerns? What were these concerns?
10. Who was Frederic Wertham? How did he explain juvenile delinquency? Why did the public, rather than the experts, prove more receptive to his arguments?
11. How were Wertham’s attacks on comic books consistent with his views on social psychology (i.e. the importance of environment in shaping behavior)?
12. How did the title of Wertham’s book – Seduction of the Innocent – perfectly sum up his argument against comic books?
13. What role did the Kefauver Committee play in addressing concerns about Juvenile Delinquency? What were the results of the Congressional hearings?
14. What did letters to the Kefauver Committee, to Wertham, and to the Children’s Bureau reveal about people’s attitudes about juvenile delinquency?
15. How did Hollywood respond to the charge that its movies were corrupting youth?
16. What effect did “the Code” have on the content of movies?
17. How did Hollywood’s juvenile delinquency films pave the way for a shift in public attitude toward young people and youth culture?
18. How did “Blackboard Jungle” and “Rebel Without a Cause” differ in their portrayals of juvenile delinquency? How did they both differ from later boiler plate “J.D.” films?
19. Gilbert suggests that parents’ fears of juvenile delinquency and condemnations of mass culture were really expressions of frustration that they had lost control over their children. Do you find this a persuasive argument?
20. How did the public perception of teen culture change by the early 1960s? What role did “experts” like Eugene Gilbert and the mass media play in precipitating this change?
21. By the early ’60s, “youth culture” had become the “youth market.” What was the difference between the two? How did this transformation dissipate Americans’ concern about juvenile delinquency?
22. In your view, what role did mass culture have on young people’s behavior in the 1950s? What about today?