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Folk devil is a person or group of people who are portrayed in folklore or the media as outsiders and deviant, and who are blamed for crimes or other sorts of social problems.
The pursuit of folk devils frequently intensifies into a mass movement that is called a moral panic. When a moral panic is in full swing, the folk devils are the subject of loosely organized but pervasive campaigns of hostility through gossip and the spreading of urban legends. The mass media sometimes get in on the act or attempt to create new folk devils in an effort to promote controversy. Sometimes the campaign against the folk devil influences a nation's politics and legislation.
The concept of the folk devil was introduced by sociologist Stanley Cohen in 1972, in his study Folk Devils and Moral Panics , [1] which analysed media controversies concerning Mods and Rockers in the United Kingdom of the 1960s.
Cohen's research was based on the media storm over a violent clash between two youth subcultures, the mods and the rockers, on a bank holiday on a beach in England, 1964. Though the incident only resulted in some property damage without any serious physical injury to any of the individuals involved, several newspapers published sensationalist articles surrounding the event. Cohen examined articles written about the topic and noted a pattern of distorted facts and misrepresentation, as well as a distinct, simplistic depiction of the respective images of both groups involved in the disturbance. He articulated three stages in the media's reporting on folk devils:
In the case of the mods and rockers, increased police presence the following year on the bank holiday led to another occurrence of violence. Cohen noted that the depiction of mods and rockers as violent, unruly troublemakers actually led in itself to a rise in deviant behaviour by the subcultures. [2]
The basic pattern of agitations against folk devils can be seen in the history of witchhunts and similar manias of persecution; the histories of predominantly Catholic and Protestant European countries present examples of adherents of the rival Western Christian faith as folk devils; minorities and immigrants have often been seen as folk devils; in the long history of anti-Semitism, which frequently targets Jews with allegations of dark, murderous practices, such as blood libel; or the Roman persecution of Christians that blamed the military reverses suffered by the Roman Empire on the Christians' abandonment of paganism.
In modern times, political and religious leaders in many nations have sought to present atheists and secularists as deviant outsiders who threaten the social and moral order. [3] The identification of folk devils may reflect the efforts of powerful institutions to displace social anxieties. Some Christian groups alleged that there were fifty million Americans who engaged in some form of devil worship within their lifetimes. [4]
Another example of religious and ethnic discrimination associated with Cohen's folk devil theory would be Islamophobia, the discrimination of Muslims and those perceived as being Middle Eastern in origin. Post-9/11 reactions by Western countries stereotyped Muslims as violent, hateful, and of possessing fanatical extremist ideology. The group was depicted as posing a threat to social peace and safety in the Western world, and was subject to much hostility politically, from the media and from society. [5]
Certain politicians, pundits, and media outlets are attempting to trigger that fear response by portraying transgender individuals as society’s folk devils, crafting a narrative that paints them as sexual deviants and labeling them as “groomers.” Even as such accusations are debunked or explained, multiple states have introduced or implemented anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation as a response to the panic. The proposed laws include bans on gender-affirming care, limits on the participation of transgender athletes in sports, requirements for transgender individuals to use public bathrooms based on their assigned sex at birth, and restrictions on public drag performances. [6] [7]
In a 2014 study,[ citation needed ] Cohen's theory of the moral panic was applied to the media reaction to the Columbine massacre.
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two students from Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, went on a shooting spree which resulted in the deaths of 15 people. News reports in the weeks following the tragedy labelled the shooters as being “obsessed” with goth subculture, and suggested a link between Harris and Klebold's alleged identification with gothic subculture and their acts of violence.
In their attempt to make sense of the Columbine shootings, journalists and other media commentators linked goths to terrorism, Charles and Marilyn Manson, self-mutilation, hostage-taking, gang culture, the Waco cult, the Oklahoma City bombing, Satanism, mass murder, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, suicide, the Internet, video games, skinhead music, white extremism, and Adolf Hitler.
The ABC news program 20/20 aired a special entitled “The Goth Phenomenon” in which it reinforced claims that the shooters were heavily submerged in goth culture, and suggested that individuals of gothic subculture were to blame for homicidal activity in the past. The hostility and hysteria over the perceived ‘evil’ goth culture amplified in the years following the shooting. Goths were stereotyped in the media as being perpetuators or supporters of violence donned in black trench coats. Several high schools across the United States banned black trench coats and other apparel perceived as being linked to goth culture. Some police departments in the United States labelled gothic subculture as being “gang-based”, and as something that should be subjected to “increased police surveillance”. From the time of the Columbine shooting until 2003, there were reports of individuals sporting what was seen as gothic dress being interrogated, ticketed and arrested. In 2002, U.S. Representative Sam Graves caused Blue Springs, Missouri to be granted US$273,000 to combat the “new gothic threat”. [8] [9] [10] The backlash against goth subculture after the Columbine shooting draws many parallels to Stanley Cohen's research on the mods and rockers, two other youth subcultures cast as folk devils by society. In both instances the groups were portrayed in one distinct, dumbed-down image, ostracized, stripped of any redeeming qualities, and blamed for wrongdoings in society. [11]
Goth is a music-based subculture that began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s. It was developed by fans of gothic rock, an offshoot of the post-punk music genre. Post-punk artists who presaged the gothic rock genre and helped develop and shape the subculture include Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, the Cure, and Joy Division.
The Columbine High School massacre, often simply referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and a failed bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten of the twelve students killed were in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history, until it was surpassed by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, and later the Uvalde school shooting in May 2022, and the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history until the Parkland high school shooting in February 2018. Columbine is still considered one of the most infamous massacres in the U.S. for inspiring most other school shootings and bombings, the word "Columbine" has since become a byword for modern school shootings. Columbine still remains both the deadliest mass shooting and the deadliest school shooting to occur in the U.S. state of Colorado.
Gothic fashion is a clothing style worn by members of the goth subculture. A dark, sometimes morbid, fashion and style of dress, typical gothic fashion includes black dyed hair and black clothes. Both male and female goths can wear dark eyeliner, dark nail polish and lipstick, and dramatic makeup. Styles are often borrowed from the Elizabethans and Victorians. BDSM imagery and paraphernalia are also common. Gothic fashion is sometimes confused with heavy metal fashion and emo fashion.
A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usually perpetuated by moral entrepreneurs and mass media coverage, and exacerbated by politicians and lawmakers. Moral panic can give rise to new laws aimed at controlling the community.
Mods and rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the late 1950s to mid 1960s. Media coverage of the two groups fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youth, and they became widely perceived as violent, unruly troublemakers.
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were two American high school seniors and mass murderers who perpetrated the Columbine High School massacre at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 in Columbine, Colorado. Harris and Klebold killed 12 students, one teacher, and wounded 24 others. After killing most of their victims in the school's library, they died by self-inflicted gunshot wounds. At the time, it was the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history.
The deviancy amplification spiral and deviancy amplification are terms used by interactionist sociologists to refer to the way levels of deviance or crime can be increased by the societal reaction to deviance itself.
Stanley Cohen was a sociologist and criminologist, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, known for breaking academic ground on "emotional management", including the mismanagement of emotions in the form of sentimentality, overreaction, and emotional denial. He had a lifelong concern with human rights violations, first growing up in South Africa, later studying imprisonment in England and finally in Palestine. He founded the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics.
Mod, from the word modernist, is a subculture that began in 1950s London and spread throughout Great Britain, eventually influencing fashions and trends in other countries. It continues today on a smaller scale. Focused on music and fashion, the subculture has its roots in a small group of stylish London-based young men and women in the late 1950s who were termed modernists because they listened to modern jazz. Elements of the mod subculture include fashion ; music and motor scooters. In the mid-1960s, the subculture listened to rock groups such as the Who and Small Faces. The original mod scene was associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night jazz dancing at clubs.
Rockers are members or followers of a biker subculture that originated in the United Kingdom during the late 1950s and was popular in the 1960s. It was mainly centred on motorcycles and rock 'n' roll music. By 1965, the term greaser had also been introduced to Great Britain and, since then, the terms greaser and rocker have become synonymous within the British Isles, although used differently in North America and elsewhere. Rockers were also derisively known as Coffee Bar Cowboys. Their Japanese counterpart was called the Kaminari-Zoku.
Youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviors, and interests. Youth subcultures offer participants an identity outside of that ascribed by social institutions such as family, work, home and school. Youth subcultures that show a systematic hostility to the dominant culture are sometimes described as countercultures.
Alternative fashion or alt fashion is fashion that stands apart from mainstream, commercial fashion. It includes both styles which do not conform to the mainstream fashion of their time and the styles of specific subcultures. Some alternative fashion styles are attention-grabbing and more artistic than practical, while some develop from anti-fashion sentiments that focus on simplicity and utilitarianism.
The Toronto goth scene, the cultural locus of the goth subculture in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the associated music and fashion scene, has distinct origins from goth scenes of other goth subcultural centres, such as the UK or Germany. Originally known as the "Batcavers", the term "goth" appeared only after 1988, when it was applied to the pre-existent subculture. Distinctive features included internationally recognized gothic and vampiric fashion store 'Siren', a goth-industrial bar named 'Sanctuary: The Vampire Sex Bar', and Forever Knight, a television series about an 800-year-old vampire living in Toronto. In Toronto, the goths did not seek to reject mainstream status, and achieved partial acceptance throughout the mid to late 1990s.
A social panic is a state where a social or community group reacts negatively and in an extreme or irrational manner to unexpected or unforeseen changes in their expected social status quo. According to Folk Devils and Moral Panics by Stanley Cohen, the definition can be broken down to many different sections. The sections, which were identified by Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda in 1994, include concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, and volatility. Concern, which is not to be mistaken with fear, is about the possible or potential threat. Hostility occurs when an outrage occurs toward the people who were a part of the problem and agencies who are accountable. These people are seen as the enemy since their behavior is viewed as a danger to society. Consensus includes a distributed agreement that an actual threat is going to take place. This is where the media and other sources come in to aid in spreading of the panic. Disproportionality compares people's reactions to the actual seriousness of the condition. Volatility is when there is no longer any more panic.
Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers is a 1972 sociology book by Stanley Cohen. It was the first book to define the social theory of moral panic.
Subculture: The Meaning of Style is a 1979 book by Dick Hebdige, focusing on Britain's postwar youth subculture styles as symbolic forms of resistance. Drawing from Marxist theorists, literary critics, French structuralists, and American sociologists, Hebdige presents a model for analyzing youth subcultures. While Hebdige argues that each subculture undergoes the same trajectory, he outlines the individual style differences of specific subcultures, such as Teddy boys, mods, rockers, skinheads, and punks. Hebdige emphasizes the historical, class, race, and socioeconomic conditions that surrounded the formation of each subculture. While Subculture: The Meaning of Style is one of the most influential books on the theory of subcultures, it faces a range of critiques.
Following the massacre at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, one common view was that the violent actions perpetrated by the two shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were due to violent influences in entertainment, specifically those in the music of Marilyn Manson.
Susan Francis Klebold is an American activist and author whose son, Dylan Bennet Klebold, was one of the perpetrators of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. After the massacre, she wrote A Mother's Reckoning, a book about the signs and possible motives she missed of Dylan's mental state.
Mall goths are a subculture that began in the late-1990s in the United States. Originating as a pejorative to describe people who dressed goth for the fashion rather than culture, it eventually developed its own culture based around nu metal, industrial metal, emo and the Hot Topic store chain. It has variously been described as a part of the goth subculture, as well as a separate subculture simply influenced by goth.
No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine is a 2002 non-fiction book by Brooks Brown and Rob Merritt about the Columbine High School massacre. Brown was a student at Columbine High School at the time of the shooting and a friend of the perpetrators, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The book recounts Brown's experiences growing up as close friends with Klebold, his time as a student at Columbine, and his experiences with media, police, and school authorities following the shooting.