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(Ali and Watkins 1998: 100).The dramatic scene was part of the culmination of youthful protest, thestudent revolts that swept around the world, as no protest of the young had everdone before.Student agitation resulted from an unsettled and unsettling combination: dissatisfaction with the perceived smug bourgeois existence of theolder generation (the parents of the protesting young); anger at persistent racismin the United States, and a decaying but still persistent colonialism in Algeria;outrage at American military intervention in Vietnam and at class differences stillevident in Europe; and widespread disaffection with the Stalinist regime in theSoviet Union.Two events aroused particular concern.The first was the January1969 Tet Offensive in Vietnam which suggested the ability to resist theAmerican superpower.The second was the Prague Spring of 1968 when liberalgovernmental reform was briefly initiated but soon checked by intervention ofthe Soviet Union.Both military activities were to show the vulnerability ofSoviet domination and the limitations of American military force.This discontent with the existing order took shape in 1961, now seen as theinitial year of popular discontent.The sit-in undertaken by four African-American college students in a Woolworth store lunch counter inGreenborough, North Carolina, was the act in which the modern Americanstudent movement made its first mark on history (Fraser 1988: 39).Soon similarsit-ins at universities and marches of protest followed in Britain and Germany,then in France and Japan, in the Philippines and Belgium.Here was a truly global phenomenon, expressed differently in each countrybut with common ties and interests.In effect, there was a common vision ofwhat was wrong with modern urban society and politics.That vision was sharplyshaped by published photographs and television coverage of the majorcontemporary events that distressed the increasingly militant young.The visualcontrast between Martin Luther King Jr and Lyndon B.Johnson, the onestanding high in confidence of his cause, the other stooped in uncertainty, wasof major iconographic significance.So also was the dramatic setting and eloquentexecution of King s I have a dream speech before the Lincoln Memorial andits contrast, the bitterly mocking chant of American college students as heard New world of images 71frequently on nightly television news: Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did youkill today? If Vietnam was the first television war, the student revolutions of 1968 werethe first youth movements to get television coverage (Arlen 1969; Fink et al.1998: 9 13).In 1967 and 1968 the student movement reached its high pointwith confrontations on a global scale.The assassinations of Martin Luther KingJr and Bobby Kennedy precipitated widespread protest marches and sit-ins.May1968 was the month of the most intense activity.Perhaps its most dramaticsetting was that of Paris on 10 May, a date that has entered history as the Nightof the Barricades when the students blockaded the streets around the Sorbonneand members of the CRS (national police security units) brutally charged androuted the students.This new generation, angry and disaffected, developed its own forms of sightand sound or at least it accepted new ones provided for it.By clothes andmusic the young quickly defined themselves.Denim trousers and overalls,formerly the garb of farmers and factory workers, became the uniform of bothyoung men and young women, and henceforth were called blue jeans ,celebrated in songs by musicians like Eric Clapton and David Bowie.NeilDiamond probably made the definitive statement in his 1979 hit Forever inBlue Jeans. Diamond sings that money may talk but it does nothing else and sohe d rather be forever in blue jeans. Marketing youth cultureBlue jeans continue to have their appeal and still remain premium wear of youngpeople and also of people of all ages.Even though the United States and muchof the Western world is settling into early middle age, youthfulness remains adesirable state and, more recently, a recognized distinctive market.While bound together by a document over two hundred years old, thecitizenry of the United States showed little interest in other forms of preservationuntil recent decades.Popular culture, however continues to emphasizeyouthfulness more than any other quality.Certainly there are the elderly and not-so-young in the center ring of popular culture: music stars like Madonna andBruce Springsteen, and sportsmen like Jack Nicklaus in golf and Michael Jordan,until recently, in basketball.And, in the close-up world of the Hollywood film,Paul Newman and Anne Bancroft both septuagenarians carry on, as didKatharine Hepburn as an octogenarian, living to be 96.Nonetheless, the field,the stage and the screen are really the inherited property of the young, heraldedin the media as the new generation or the up-and-coming not to mentionthe boy bands or the teenyboppers.Automobile and cosmetic advertisementsregularly emphasize vibrancy and luster, sensuality and vigor.Theirs is a rhetoricof youth.Only the pharmaceutical companies paint the picture gray; but eventhen it is often to assure the elderly rapidly becoming a major segment of thepopulation that they too, if properly medicated, can still join in youthful fun.Soon after World War Two, American businessmen recognized a potential 72 A History of Popular Cultureyouth market and began to design and produce for it.In the 1990s that marketburgeoned, greatly assisted by the growing economy.It has been estimated thatteenagers account for about $458 billion of the annual purchase of consumergoods in the United States, either through their own income or through anallowance, the latter now at a $50 weekly median.The rest of the market-driveneconomies of the world are now tapping into this growing market, mostnoticeably in Western Europe, Japan and Southeastern Asia
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