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Penny Dreadfuls, Juvenile Crime, and Late-Victorian Moral Panic
- oldmanjay 11y agoEvery generation needs their war on teenage boys. Luckily for those brave warriors it's not too difficult to whip up a teapot tempest over bugaboos like penny dreadfuls or video games. Of course, since it seems unlikely that the core warrior premise of media driving behavior is actually true, the core warrior desire of media censorship is not a price I'm willing to pay.
- anon4 11y agoIt's time we have a moral panic over moral panics.
- Zikes 11y agoI'm pretty sure we're already there.
- sundressi 11y agoSocieties deal with their populations of young men by tying them down with employment, classroom education, marriage, or the criminal justice machine. It's harder to attack the guilty pleasures of a demographic when they have purchasing power, social sway, or political clout.
- jchaps 11y agoWell, I'm glad we're not experiencing polarizing battles over moralization of popular fiction and the deleterious content of entertainment that young men consume. That must have been exhausting. Thankfully, with the advent of modern communication, people can be informed that they are engaging in a moral panic and reacting emotionally to sensationalism by the more rational and wise leaders of our age.
- stevetrewick 11y ago"We are quite sure it is not to the interest of the nation that the rising generation should be nourished on the literary fare enclosed within the covers of a ‘Penny Dreadful.’ Yet we do not very well see how the reading of the people is to be supervised by the police. Reform, we fancy, must be left to that best of all detectives — public opinion.” Not an attitude the current government or judiciary would appear to share.
- jhallenworld 11y agoWell I'm going to have to read these now :-) http://halfpennydreadfuls.com/penny-dreadfuls/stories http://halfpennydreadfuls.com/penny-dreadfuls/stories
- rhema 11y agohttps://bklyn.newspapers.com/search/#query=penny+dreadful https://bklyn.newspapers.com/search/#query=penny+dreadful I like looking at the original responses. The Brooklyn Newspaper archive is a great way to investigate 1850-1925 history.