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From International Socialism, No.11, Winter 1962, p.33.
Thanks to Ted Crawford & the late Will Fancy.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Insecure Offenders
T.R. Fyvel
Chatto and Windus. 25s.
Fyvel argues: in Britain honest bourgeois values have been replaced by the dreaded americanization. Parliament, the Church, the Boat Race (!), public schools are ‘suddenly less significant’. Mass media (an amalgam of corset ads and psychotic killings) have become the new social superego. Mum is forced out to work to pay for the sacrificial offerings demanded by God-Telly, the family disintegrates and is replaced by the street corner clique as the source of teenagers’ values. The ephemeral nature of these cliques, both geographically and chronologically makes them the inevitable victims of the most degenerate aspects of contemporary advertising and entertainment. The detergent morality leads to a fantastic increase in juvenile crime: the American figures shock most; kids under 21 account for half the car thefts arid robberies and 20 per cent of all cases of rape.
Apart from the flabby analysis of contemporary class rule one’s main criticism of this book is that the link between pop culture and asocial values is tautological. The power of the debased mass media explains both the popularity and the frustrating nature of kitsch kultur leading inevitably to anti-social aggression. This mechanical frustration-aggression model completely ignores the universal aspirations contained in pop culture. The great pop singers (Elvis, Ray Charles, Buddy Holly) all developed from deep folk traditions while the twist is almost a Reichian exercise to cure an inhibited pelvis. The tragedy of teenagers is not their premature sexuality or aggressive abreactions but that their sexuality is restricted to back alley knee-trembling, their natural vitality can find no better outlet than coshing old women. The problem is as deep as human nature and as old as history; it won’t be solved by building a few youth clubs.
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Last updated on 19 March 2010