Introduction

While ‘moral panic’ clearly provides a useful tool with which to explore the 1956 cinema incidents, there are, inevitably, limits to the extent to which such a model can be used to explain, entirely, a particular incident or situation. The interests and perspectives of sociologists and historians will naturally differ in the manner in which they interpret particular social circumstances; additionally, as Jock Young himself pointed out, both he and Cohen were influenced by the radical sociocultural discourses of the late 1960s. The ‘new generation of sociologists became’, he argues, ‘advocates for the emerging subcultures of youth and fierce critics of […] the various agents of social control’. Generational affiliation, thus, informed their judgements of the situations which they examined, and their work, although retaining relevance today, was also a product of the era in which it was written. Subsequent scholars, while still finding much value in the concept of ‘moral panic’, have endeavoured to question and update it in various respects, offering additional readings of social situations which do not necessarily contradict the original concept wholesale, but which allow other interpretations to run alongside and intermingle with it, and, where appropriate, supersede it. This chapter reconsiders the validity of ‘moral panic’ interpretations outlined in the previous chapter by widening its perspectives on the press coverage of the 1956 episodes – first, by assessing the manner in which society and the wider public responded to the reports, and second, by analysing the more tonally varied coverage which appeared in the various papers even as the disturbances were ongoing. While it is difficult to draw unilateral or definitive conclusions concerning such variations, they may be explained as much by the nature of the newspaper business at this time as by any significant wholesale shifts in press or public understanding of rock ‘n’ roll.

Gauging Public Reactions to the ‘Riots’

Scholars have frequently tried to gauge just how deeply moments of apparent moral panic affect society. To what extent, and in what ways, do the anxieties engendered by the ‘panic’ take root? Cohen himself recognized that such episodes can be fleeting, and need not make a deep imprint on society.