Youth Subcultures in Fiction, Film and Other Media

This collection explores the representation, articulation and construction of youth subcultures in a range of texts and contexts. It brings together scholars working in literary studies, screen studies, sociology and cultural studies whose research interests lie in the aesthetics and cultural politics of youth. It contributes to, and extends, contemporary theoretical perspectives around youth and youth cultures. Contributors examine a range of topics, including 'bad girl' fiction of the 1950s, novels by subcultural writers such as Colin MacInnes, Alex Wheatle and Courttia Newland, as well as screen representations of Mods, the 1990s Rave culture, heavy metal, and the Manchester scene. Others explore interventions into subcultural theory with respect to metal, subcultural locations, abjection, graffiti cultures, and the potential of subcultures to resist dominant power frameworks in both historical and contemporary contexts.

Nick Bentley is Senior Lecturer in English at Keele University, UK. Previous publications include Contemporary British Fiction: A Reader's Guide to the Essential Criticism (2018), Martin Amis (2015) and The 2000s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction (co-edited with Nick Hubble and Leigh Wilson, 2015). Beth Johnson is Associate Professor of Media and Film at the University of Leeds, UK. She is author of Paul Abbott (2013), and co-editor of Television, Sex and Society: Analyzing Contemporary Representations (2012) and Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain (2017) with David Forrest. Andrzej Zieleniec is Lecturer of Sociology at Keele University, UK. He also researches and teaches in media, communication and culture, geography, education studies and criminology. His research and teaching interests focus on the interface between space, society and culture. Previous publications include Space and Social Theory (2007) and Park Spaces: Leisure Culture and Modernity (2013).

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Part One. 'Subcultural Fictions'.- Chapter 2: Girls on the Rampage: 'Bad Girl' Fiction in 1950s America; Bill Osgerby.- Chapter 3: Queering the Grammar School Boy: Class, Sexuality and Authenticity in the works of Colin MacInnes and Ray Gosling; Lucy Robinson and Ben Jones.- Chapter 4. Punk Fiction: Punk in Fiction; Nick Bentley.- Chapter 5. Styles, 'Codes and Violence': Subcultural Identities in Contemporary Black Writing of Britain; Dave Ellis.- Part Two. Subcultures in Film, TV and Screen Studies.- Chapter 6. You're all partied out, dude!: The mainstreaming of heavy metal subcultural tropes, from Bill & Ted to Wayne's World; Andy R. Brown.- Chapter 7: The Narrative Nightclub; Matthew Cheeseman and David Forrest.- Chapter 8. Don't Look Back in Anger: Manchester, Supersonic and Made of Stone; Beth Johnson.- Chapter 9. Mod at the Movies: 'face' and 'ticket' representations of a British subculture; Stephen Glynn.- Part Three. 'Theoretical and CriticalPerspectives' in Other Media.- Chapter 10. Figures in black: Heavy Metal and the mourning of the working class; Scott Wilson.- Chapter 11. Shock Rock Horror! The representation and reception of heavy metal horror films in the 1980s; Nedim Hassan.- Chapter 12. Youth, Hysteria and Control in Peter Watkins' Privilege; Rehan Hyder.- Chapter 13. Representing Subcultural Identity: A photo-essay of Spanish Graffiti and Street Art; Andrzej Zieleniec.- Chapter 14. From Wayward Youth to Teenage Dreamer: Between the Bedroom and the Street; Jo Croft.- Chapter 15. From Exaltation to Abjection: depictions of subculture in Quadrophenia and Ill Manors; Keely Hughes.- Index