A01=Charles R Acland
Adult Gaze
American social discourse
Author_Charles R Acland
Category=JBCC
Category=JBSP1
Category=JBSP2
Category=JKVQ2
Chambers's Attorney
Chambers's Version
Charles R. Acland
cultural studies methodology
Daytime Talk Show
Daytime Television Talk Show
deviance theory
Endless Host
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Juvenile Delinquency
media construction of youth violence
media criminology
Modern Family
moral panic analysis
Oprah Winfrey Show
preppy
Preppy Murder
River's Edge
Robert Chambers
Rough Sex
Sensational Crime
Sex Specific Crimes
Sex Specific Studies
Sierra Nevadas
Trash Tv
Under-age Drinking
Underage College Students
Underage Drinking
visual representation crime
Wasted Youth
York's Central Park
Young Man
Youth Films
Product details
- ISBN 9780813322872
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 25 Nov 1994
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this book, Charles R. Acland examines the culture that has produced both our heightened state of awareness and the bedrock reality of youth violence in the United States. Beginning with a critique of statistical evidence of youth violence, Acland compares and juxtaposes a variety of popular cultural representations of what has come to be a perceived crisis of American youth. After examining the dominant paradigms for scholarly research into youth deviance, Acland explores the ideas circulating in the popular media about a sensational crime known as the "preppy murder" and the confession to that crime. Arguing that the meaning of crime is never inherent in the event itself, he evaluates other sites of representation, including newspaper photographs (with a comparison to the Central Park "wilding"), daytime television talk shows (Oprah, Geraldo, and Donahue), and Hollywood youth films (in particular River's Edge). Through a cultural studies analysis of historical context, Acland blurs the center of our preconceptions and exposes the complex social forces at work upon this issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Acland asks of the social critic, "How do we know that we are measuring what we say we are measuring, and how do we know what the numbers are saying? Arguments must be made to interpret findings, which suggests that conclusions are provisional and, to various degrees, sites of contestation." He launches into this gratifying book to show that beyond the problematic category of "actual" crime, the United States has seen the construction of a new "spectacle of wasted youth" that will have specific consequences for the daily lives of the next generation.
Charles R. Acland teaches cultural and media studies in the Faculty of General Studies at the University of Calgary, where he is an assistant professor.
