NCJ Number
161801
Date Published
1995
Length
185 pages
Annotation
Using the "preppy murder" in New York City as a case study, this book analyzes the public discourses and representations of youth delinquency, showing the way in which "youth in crisis" reveals a public anxiety about the perpetuation of the preferred social order.
Abstract
The author advises that the response to a perceived crisis indicates the importance of an analysis of the discursively constructed social order. Youth, as perceived in the 1980's, is the focal point at which the struggles between order and crisis occurs. Part I of this book addresses this issue by focusing on three central themes: the historical construction of ideas about youth, the associated concepts of deviance, and the centrality of "youth" and "deviance" in ideas about social order and crisis. Youth is a central component and defining feature of the contemporary American scene and the particular hegemonic project of the New Right. Here the New Right's high estimation of the traditional nuclear family is key. Part II of the book examines the representation of a youth crime known as the "preppy murder" in photographs, newspapers, magazines, and the murderer's confession. Part III shows the circulation of that representation in disparate locations, in particular daytime television talk shows and youth films. The author traces connections between popular cultural artifacts to show that even as the particular crime ceases to be the focus of discussion, a general crisis of youth is being established. Fundamental to this analysis is how some events are taken as evidence of something else, as evidence of crisis. This is "the politics of spectacle." 250 references and a subject index