'Moral Panics' an Introduction, by Charles Krinsky

'Moral Panics' 

In the article 'Moral Panics', Charles Krinsky addresses the prevalence of drug, alcohol, and other substance abuse in youth culture, and highlights the recent fear of such behaviourism's as being similar to the concept of the 'Folk Devil': the demonisation of the young.

Firstly, the new implement of mass social networking, and the traditional medium of discourse and personal perception of sociological values, may produce the idea of unnatural social acceleration, and the adjacent fragility of extended communities. Also, in thoughts of mass paranoia, hysteria, and 'Moral Panics' as concepts which may shake the foundations of a larger expanse of moral equilibrium, view of the normative individual, and the literal, aesthetic stereotyping of the young in promoting the idea of pseudo-individualisation, and mass deception as a form of control and narcosis: 'through the creation of folk devil stigmas, a process of marginalization is undertaken. Personas of 'otherness' are defined and cultivated, legitimizing folk devils as targets of fear, hostility and restraint' (Lemmings and Walker [2009:223]).

In relation to Adorno and Heinhorker's article, the idea of the model macrocosm and authoritarian aesthetic as being shaped and formed from beyond the confined walls of the microcosm, may give social implication to the idea of false-consciousness being inadvertently conformed to through the consumption, and active use of the computer game, domestic social networking, and passivity to both local and global political agenda. In addition, the control of the mass may be seen as a form of implemented narcosis, in the tactical building of the authoritarian macrocosm, and the use of fragmentation and separation of different social stereotypes, societies, and communities as a ways of promoting a notion of false-consciousness and false-identity.    

In addition, the psychology of narcosis and substance abuse may be witnessed as an unconscious reaction to the view and influence of the model macrocosm, and of the unnatural extensions of the physical, mental, and emotional acceleration of new human associations, which are addressed in Marshall McLuhan's article "The Medium Is the Message". Also, the sense of the implosive narcotics of medium and substances, and the fragility of youth in their natural challenging of model, authoritarian, and the father figure, may reveal the underlying issues of new human associations and accessibilities to mind-altering substances and objects.  

Additionally, it may be said that in a time when moral panic fought violence with violence, such as corporal punishment, there could be witnessed a threat in deviance and in the consequence. However, it may be said that in modern culture, it is now the threat which is the 'moral panic', which makes the threat a reality, and to which the consequence is then objectified and challenged to be established, in thoughts that 'distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people' (Calhoun, Gerteis, Moody, Pfaff, Schmidt, and Virk [2002:26]). This is perhaps the rule of the father, and the delegate vision of the devil as a notion of the prerogative of the dejected youth as these imagined folk devils, in relation to 'the stages in the psychological reaction to threat, paying particular attention to the defence and coping mechanisms which inhibit a realistic assessment of the approaching disaster' (Cohen [2011:163]). Alternatively, the new human association and need for industry created products, such as the false vision of war figurines, war film, and the war game as implementing aggressive notions of a last-stand mentality in these medium, and the use of certain ideologies and clothing as an indicator of the war or gang uniform creates consequently turbulent, and morally ambiguous communities: 'one of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain since the war has been associated with the emergence of various forms of youth culture (originally almost exclusively working class, but often recently middle classed or student based) whose behaviour is deviant or delinquent' (Critcher [2006:29]). 

In the theory of these new reflections of media and of 'moral panics', and projection of youth culture and views may be witnessed in the music medium in contemporary media, denoting metaphors of drug abuse, the narcosis of the television, authoritarian figure, model macrocosm, pseudo-individualism, religious and political influences and coerce: 

Reference List:

Calhoun, C. Gerteis, J. Moody, J. Pfaff, S. Schmidt, K. and Virk, I. eds., 2002. Classical Sociological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 

Cohen, S. 2011. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: Routledge. 

Critcher, C. ed., 2006. Moral Panics and the Media. Berkshire: Open University Press. 

Lemmings, D. and Walker, C. eds., 2009. Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.