Chapter One:
Media as Meaning Makers
Outlaw motorcycle culture provides an ideal opportunity to examine aspects of America’s perceptions of deviance and the outlaw myth. Some would suggest romanticizing bikers continues the tradition of mythologizing outlaws such as Billy the Kid, Clyde Barrow and D. B. Cooper.
But bikers also illustrate social change and evolving definitions of wrong and right, the center and the margin. The media, as society’s voice and conscience, reveal much about the temper of an age and the nation’s response to perceived threat. Historical discussion of the media also exposes the evolution of those definitions and society’s changing relationship to deviant subcultures. Understanding how the media have focused attention on bikers reveals a social dynamic between the law abiding majority and the outlaw few, the perceived need to preserve order, and the changing definition of what constitutes deviance. (1)
This research takes a cultural studies approach to communication. The critical element, what guides its assumptions about what the media do, is that communication is “not the act of imparting information or influence, but the creation, representation, and celebration of shared beliefs.” (2) Moreover, “a ritual view centers on the sacred ceremony which draws persons together in fellowship and commonality.”(3) G. Stuart Adam describes journalism as an art form, as “an invention or a form of expression used to report and comment in the public media on the events and ideas of the here and now.” (4) Extending that definition, the media become a way of “framing our experience and forming the public consciousness of the here and now.”(5)
All media, Adam believes, include criticism and a “conferral of judgment” on events and ideas and are created for public consumption. The media are our alternative to directly experiencing the present. Imagination comprises the center of that consciousness–forming process. All individuals spontaneously form images of events in order to recognize and place them in a meaningful context. The narrative, no matter what medium it is communicated through, is little more than a method of imparting knowledge and creating awareness of the seen and unseen world. As it applies here, it is through the media that the public’s perceptions of outlaws and deviance are created and maintained.
Communication research maintains that journalistic objectivity is an impossibility. Individual biases on the part of reporters and editors, time and space constraints, and conventional definitions of what constitutes news determine which stories are selected and how they are reported. (6) Equally important to the news media is how well the event fits normalized themes and frames for constructing the story. (7) News sources may be chosen more for accessibility and impact or stature than for insight. Those sources pre–digest events, select out what they think is important and what the public needs to know, then regurgitate what remains to reporters pressed by deadlines. (8) In the end, what hits the page and the television screen is a pre–selected daily digest of events and opinion legitimized by the existing political structure in order to manage potential political conflict and protect the status quo.
The news media employ specific strategies to cover every exigency of the newsroom and create the illusion of fair and adequate coverage. (9) To explain the similarity of news coverage across media, Stanley Cohen and Jock Young employ the consensual paradigm, which states that journalists share a particular view of the way the world must be. (10) It assumes a preconceived definition of propriety, social order and normal human nature. The conventions and practices which define the newsroom are socialized into reporters, editors and photographers from their first day on the job. In the end, the journalist’s accepted paradigm of how and why things happen and of what the universe looks like conspire to homogenize the news, no matter how out of the ordinary it may be, into the typically atypical. (11)
Cohen and Young’s discussion parallels Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s conservative propaganda model in which the media encourage “spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus.” (12) This media system, internalized by journalists, programs the listening and reading audience with the “values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.” (13) Herman adds that the news media’s collaboration in confusing the truth in deference to the state reveals that “they accept the nominal objectives of the state as real, and rarely probe into the actual reasons for state policy and actions.” (14)
Herbert Gans, in discussing “enduring values,” argues that the public’s trust in objectivity is a result of assuming all members of the media hold to the same beliefs as they do. If those beliefs “arouse no dissent or when dissent can be explained away as moral disorder, those who hold values can easily forget they are values.” (15) That values endure indicates they rarely change, but Gans adds “not all enduring values are applied at any given moment, for they enter as subjective reactions to available news.” (16)
Howard Becker notes that whether an act is identified as deviant depends on the nature of the act and what is done about it; different groups judge actions differently at different times. Not only is the act itself important, so too are official allegations of wrongdoing by “moral entrepreneurs.” Becker states, “If we look long enough and close enough, we discover that they do this sometimes, but not all the time; to some people but not others; in some places but not others.” (17)
Becker’s approach is important for it comprises that portion of the process by which something is understood to break the rules and is labeled deviant. There are the acts themselves, and the judgment of those acts. It is in the observance, discussion and description of alleged deviance, the drama as played out in “moral rhetoric,” that definition takes place. Becker focuses on “those sufficiently powerful to make their imputations of deviance stick: police, courts, physicians, school officials, and parents.” (18)
The mass media are an obvious and necessary addition to this list of moral entrepreneurs, and to the system of moral judgment overall. Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranek and Janet Chan suggest the news media, through recognition of sources and perceived experts, have a special responsibility as the public’s “daily barometer” of how society works: “News is a representation of authority. In the contemporary knowledge society news represents who are the authorized knowers and what are their authoritative versions of reality.” (19)
Those who call attention to deviance may do so out of self–interest or because they perceive a threat to the cultural template. Enforcement of rules and morals is an act of enterprise. As deviance is the result of being identified and labeled a rule breaker, some one or some thing must first bring that behavior to the public’s attention. While this job usually falls to professional enforcers (i.e., the police), there are occasions when it is to others’ advantage to make an issue of deviant behavior, not only to justify their existence, but to protect the status quo. Becker believes most studies of deviance address the rule breakers rather than the entrepreneurs and enforcers. Ignoring one side of the process points out an important aspect of his interactionist theory: “We must see deviance . . . as a consequence of a process of interaction between people, some of whom in the service of their own interests make and enforce rules which catch others who, in the service of their own interests, have committed acts which are labeled deviant.” (20)
Stewart Macaulay expands on the issue of enforcing rules and identifying deviant behavior. He finds that laws are regularly delivered and enforced by those acting in their own self–interest. More importantly, he notes that the act of identifying and enforcing is often performed by extralegal “alternative institutions,” public and private, which mimic legal action. As an example, the media often weigh evidence and pass judgment in making news decisions. Similarly, traditional outlaw clubs have their own rules and laws which are enforced privately.
These institutions, outside “the ‘boundaries’ of what we call the legal system,” need to be investigated “if the goal is to describe and analyze the place of law in society.” (21) Like Becker, Macaulay suggests the effect of these institutions on the law is the occasional nature of enforcement (again, the fact that some laws are enforced only some of the time) which is only “indirectly influenced by formal rules and procedures.” (22)
The media interpret and enforce social norms out of self–interest, and the media’s ability to control deviance is a keystone in the construction of administered society. (23) For Peter Dahlgren the news media command the “aura of the self–evident,” regulating and consolidating their own practices as a means of “retaining definitional control,” deflecting investigation and defending their own interests. Dahlgren’s response is to not only treat “serious” journalism as a type of popular culture, but to treat popular culture as journalism. This approach offers “new prisms through which to view and to better understand journalism,” and questions the logic of defining journalism as hard news and politics while discarding other relevant and important meaning–making genres as merely “popular.” (24)
These criticisms of the news media could be directed toward the United States’ entertainment industry as well. In his examination of the television industry, Inside Prime Time, sociologist Todd Gitlin argues that before the cable boom the networks catered to the lowest common denominator and rarely gambled on programming that might have alienated even a small percentage of their audience. (25) This translated into support for enduring core values and inoffensive TV fare. Gitlin predicted that while the television market would eventually fragment into special–interest programming (much like the magazine industry), economics would force the industry back to business as usual. This is similar to the Hollywood film industry, which, since the advent of television, has produced fewer films each year in order to focus on narrowly defined blockbuster movies. Since the 1980s, a successful film needed to bring in a large box office and appeal to international audiences, as well as show potential for video rentals and merchandising. (26)
How news and entertainment media define deviance and outlaw subcultures directly relates to their attempts to maintain control. Sociologist Stanley Cohen states that the media give inordinate attention to deviance because it reassures the audience a line exists between good and evil. But, he adds, “The value of the line must continually be reasserted; we can only know what it is to be saintly by being told just what the shape of the devil is.” (27) Marguerite Moritz finds that mainstream and alternative media interact to “define and redefine in an ongoing way the limits of mainstream acceptability.” (28)
In addition, John Stevens’ research on sensationalism argues that news reports of crime and outrageous behavior — rape, murder, torture — are a public service: “Even if such publication eventually prompts cries of ‘enough is enough’ from critics both inside and outside the media, the clarification of that line helps establish what is and is not acceptable.” (29)
How and why deviants and deviance are imagined as they are is as important as who is selected for recognition and public approbation. The selection of adjectives, narrative frames, metaphors and myths is one way an audience is prodded to perceive a story in one way rather than another. For example, describing bikers as highway pirates or freewheeling gypsies, and selecting the adjective “outlaw” rather than “criminal” to describe clubs like the Hell’s Angels and Satan’s Slaves, prompts a wistful or romantic image. “Big Daddy” Ed Roth, a voice for motorheads in the 1960s, called the Angels “the Wild Bill Hickocks, the Billy the Kids, the last American heroes we have,” but to others they were “huns” and “hoodlums.” (30) Accurate or not, these images create certain meanings and place the phenomenon of outlaw bikers in a specific context.
Reporters draw from a multiplicity of story types; what guides their choice is a belief that one will be most meaningful to the audience. (31) Writers and artists can also promote understanding through the use of metaphor, the process of drawing comparisons between objects, symbols and ideas. This comparison, based on a principle of similarity, produces in the reader a way of seeing: “Conceived of as an operation of mind, metaphor makes that which is unknown identifiable by locating it within cultural categories.” (32)
The same process can be seen in the invocation of myths and mythic images to inscribe meaning onto experience. Richard Slotkin’s Gunfighter Nation describes how one particular myth — that of the American frontier — shaped this nation. For Slotkin, ideology and myth are inseparable; a society’s myths symbolize and dramatize its ideology. Unquestioned as an accurate representation of a culture’s values and beliefs, a particular myth can be invoked again and again until it becomes such a compressed set of symbols and clichés that single images and phrases spark “a complex system of historical associations.” (33)
For Roland Barthes myth is a “type of speech defined by its intention” and a communication of meaning that presupposes understanding. (34) Meaning depends on “an instantaneous reserve of history,” the accepted meanings of certain mythic symbols and stories passed down over centuries, which now need no explanation or defense. Myth has a dual function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand at the same time that it imposes that meaning on us. It is this imposition which prompts Barthes to write that the making of myth deprives images of their history. It leaves them empty of their “true” or original meaning, which has been usurped by the mythology of the object. The use of myth is intentional but at the same time the process “makes itself look neutral and innocent.” (35) Myths are also modified as it is discovered they are ineffective or obsolete. Myths explain ongoing events and experience only so long as the comparison is useful.
David Eason notes that story structures, including myth, do not necessarily create meaning, but instead prompt readers to make certain mental connections and conclusions. (36) For Elizabeth Bird and Robert Dardenne the value of a society’s myths is that they outline the boundaries of acceptable behavior. They also serve to reassure: “News creates order out of disorder, transforms knowing into telling, offers reassurance and familiarity in shared community experience, provides answers to baffling questions (even when none are available) and provides ready explanations for complex phenomena.” (37) They argue that no matter what form news takes the media legitimate the dominant paradigm by fitting new situations into old myths sanctified as accurate and safe, allowing the audience to accommodate new information with little or no effort. (38)
What Barthes hints at, and Bird and Dardenne hope the media avoid, is that myth and metaphor can be abused, either for ideological reasons or out of ignorance. In The Whole World is Watching, Todd Gitlin reveals how the media, because they misidentified Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) goals and methods, employed the wrong myths and metaphors in reporting and interpreting its activities. Consequently, they created a hostile image in the public’s minds. The media lumped all SDS activities together as civil disorder, and as these interpretive “frames” developed they “emphasized certain themes and scanted others. Deprecatory themes began to emerge, then to recur and reverberate.” (39) The result was that SDS’s image was actively remade, as if in a “funhouse mirror,” by the media. The New Left movement was trivialized, marginalized, and portrayed as deviant. It became a sideshow, and as reports piled up, SDS itself began to conform to the image in order to be regarded as “newsworthy” and to receive needed publicity.
All media play a role in how audiences come to understand events and issues. William Gamson and Andre Modigliani, in studying media coverage of nuclear energy, argue that public debates create “issue cultures.” The media create different “interpretive packages” which must compete in the marketplace for audience acceptance. While the popularity of the interpretations ebbs and flows, the audience, with different experiences and predispositions toward the information, can agree or disagree with the positions and extract different meanings from them. As with Gitlin’s frames and Slotkin’s myths, Gamson and Modigliani believe these “condensing symbols” “suggest the core frame and position in shorthand, making it possible to display the package as a whole with a deft metaphor, catchphrase, or other symbolic device.” (40) Gaye Tuchman adds that symbols and frames “try to establish their way of organizing information” and influence the audience’s perception of the issue. (41)
Given this criticism, however, it must be noted that not all media support the status quo equally. Despite Herman and Chomsky’s fervor to create a mass communication monolith, the media do occasionally have room to maneuver, and they can play a subversive role. John Fiske suggests that where there is class antagonism — perceptual differences between the social system and those who are forced to live within it — “new popular tastes and pleasures” develop.
When we understand those tastes (genres developed for specific interests) Fiske believes it is possible to validate the antagonist’s lifestyle and “trace the ways in which various formations of the people maintain and strengthen their own sense of difference from the social relations and identities, the knowledges and behaviours proposed for them by the hegemonic order.” (42) Furthermore, while Jock Young suggests differences between media are illusory, there are media outside the middle–class mainstream that have their own consensus of the way things “ought to be.”
This research is a study of genres, not of all media. A genre is a body of texts that provides a consistent view of the way things are. Genres use their own vocabulary, myth and image to speak to a like–minded audience. Jane Feuer argues that genres bypass the “interpretive community” by restricting the use of signs and controlling those “ideological constructs that provide and enforce a prereading.” (43) In some ways that can be viewed as strictly an economic decision. Dependence on tried and true formulae guarantees the attention of a specific audience and assures the interpretability of the message.
John Cawelti, in his analysis of genre literature, writes that genres fulfill the reader’s desire for enjoyment and escape. However, “in order for these patterns to work, they must be embodied in figures, settings and situations that have appropriate meanings for the culture which produces them.” (44) The rationale for genre study is the necessity of focusing on those texts which have most self–consciously appropriated bikers and biker culture.
Also important is the fact genre study brings together ideas of structuralism, semiotics and communication as ritual. Feuer describes three approaches: aesthetic, ideological and ritual. The aesthetic approach identifies and labels those conventions which define a particular genre. The ideological approach views genre as a means of maintaining the status quo. Because that approach can not take into account all media, this research gives preference to the ritual approach, which “sees genre as an exchange between industry and audience, an exchange through which a culture speaks to itself.” (45) It is understood, however, that part of the ritual is to promote, protect and maintain the cultural norms and values of the prospective audience.
Peter Larsen’s rationale for using genre as the “medium level of analysis,” is to “analyze what are arguably significant examples from a larger corpus of texts.” (46) He believes genres and their conventions can be studied as systems that “function ‘ideologically’ in the sense that they reproduce and reinforce beliefs of how social reality is (and should be) structured.” (47) Working through genres allows the researcher to select those texts which “imply particular, partial versions of social reality,” and which speak to various but specific audiences through language and imagery they can interpret. (48) This method of analysis is critical to the analysis of film, fiction and music, where the greatest number of bikers and outlaws can be found in a few select genres.
The artist’s use of genre, to some extent, ensures popularity because it must meet the expectations of a particular audience; the application of previously successful plots and familiar characters should guarantee the attention — and correct interpretation — of a specific audience. The way to understand genres, and explain their evolution and the changing fortunes of popularity and production, Barry Keith Grant explains, is as “collective expressions of contemporary life that strike a particularly resonant chord with audiences.” (49) Grant describes a contract between the generic work, its creator and the audience, with the work embodying conventions which will communicate the “appropriate meaning” to the primary audience.
Moreover, the genre and its individual components make it particularly useful in telling a certain kind of story. Using an example provided by Edward Buscombe, “It is unlikely you will produce a good poem on a large–scale historical theme such as the Trojan War if you choose the sonnet form.” (50) If meaning arises from the conjunction of codes and conventions, and if the image and myth embodied by bikers communicates a particular message, one question to consider is what kind of stories are related best through tales of bikers and outlaw motorcycle clubs?
It is necessary to note that distinct genres do not appear all at once, and not all remain successful or popular for extended periods of time. Genres take time to develop and gain stability. As Rick Altman points out, it is difficult for a genre to simultaneously maintain popularity and remain ideologically proper. He contends that genres arise in one of two ways: “Either a relatively stable set of semantic givens is developed through syntactic experimentation into a coherent and durable syntax, or an already existing syntax adopts a new set of semantic elements.” (51) Once established, with a recognizable language and structure, Altman argues that the most durable genres are those which manage to sustain through experimentation a meaningful dialogue with the audience. “Those that disappear the quickest,” he continues, “depend entirely on recurring semantic elements, never developing a stable syntax.” (52)
These are important ideas to consider, first because they allow for examination of a genre over time, and second because they explain the diffusion and commingling of various generic elements. Altman elaborates on the creation process with the concept of “genericity.” Each genre, he believes, is a “specific type of lie, an untruth whose most characteristic feature is its ability to masquerade as truth.” (53) Within a genre there exists a hard core of inherently generic works, surrounded by less generic works which cannibalize bits and pieces of the vocabulary and grammar for their own purposes. Because genre theory also examines the culture in which a work is produced and exhibited, this sliding scale of genericity is particularly useful at analyzing the utility and popularity of genres as they develop, evolve and sometimes disappear.
Thoughtful consideration of the evolution of outlaw motorcycle clubs and their presence in the media does not yet exist. This is curious considering the nationwide concern elicited by a small group of nonconformists, misfits and criminals who were, at one time, easily controlled by law enforcement officials. News and entertainment media, relying on myths readily understood by readers, viewers and listeners, exploited the image of outlaw bikers, identifying them early on as a menace to middle–class values. Outlaw motorcycle clubs and their activities at once served to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior, reveal the effectiveness of law enforcement procedures against a tide of criminal activity, and satisfy the reading and viewing audience’s demand for sex and violence.
Not all media subscribed to a menacing image of bikers and outlaw clubs, however. Instead, when it was to their advantage, they focused on positive aspects of club activities such as brotherhood, mechanical skill, self–confidence and masculinity. At the same time these media reinforced the value of individuality and non–conformity. This did not necessarily mean they produced a sanitized image of bikers. Indeed, alternative and specialized media often accentuated some of the more anti–social aspects of the biker lifestyle — boozing, brawling, misogyny and brazen sexuality — either to shock “squares” and “citizens,” to accentuate what was valuable and different about biker culture, or to gain and maintain the outlaw’s distance from society’s mainstream.
Media response to one–percenters since the Hollister riot in 1947 suggest this comparative analyses of select genres. The use of bikers and motorcycle clubs as concrete examples of outlaw behavior also allows for analysis across genres of variations in their definitions of deviance and their responses to rule–breaking behavior. The purpose of such an investigation is to consider how, and to what extent, the media act as instruments of social control, and how changes in definitions of deviance reflect changes in the media’s perceptions of rule–breaking behavior and the outlaw myth. This is as well an opportunity to examine larger aspects of America’s perceptions of deviance and the myth of the outlaw, and how images reflect changes in society over time. The specific research questions addressed are:
1) How do media genres construct and use the biker myth and images of outlaw clubs? Again, genres rely on myths and images to introduce their audiences to a variety of messages. At the same time, the formula restricts and controls how those messages can and will be interpreted.
2) What do the images reveal about the genre’s relationship to social boundaries, deviance and the status quo?
3) What differences in methods and freedom from the strictures of the status quo exist between media genres? Because the mass communication monolith described by Herman and Chomsky does not exist, the ability of a genre to defend or criticize the status quo and middle–class propriety should vary along a continuum, from a cooperative position to one which is antagonistic. The ability to maneuver, to possibly condone deviance and question the status quo, is reflected in the particular view of reality espoused by the genre and by its sense of what “ought to be.”
The first step toward answering these questions was to select the genres to be compared. Genres needed to represent mainstream media as well as what might be considered alternative or subversive voices. To that end, the genres analyzed here are: mainstream newspapers, national news magazines, television situation comedies, literary non–fiction and biography, masculinist fiction, biker films and biker magazines. Using representative texts from each of these genres exposes their respective visions of reality and how they communicate that vision to their audience. The research does not pretend to be an exhaustive analysis of every representation of outlaw cyclists. Rather it is more concerned with providing a flavor for the variety of images used to portray a subculture which has long been stereotyped and otherwise marginalized and ignored by mainstream media.
The next step was to clarify definitions and the critical method for interpreting the various texts. It was clearly not enough to rely on common sense and society’s accepted standards of right and wrong to describe and interpret portrayals of biker culture. Becker’s interactionist theory provides one context from which to observe the process, over time, by which acts are defined as deviant and then acted upon. Included in that process is the changing status of rule–breaking groups — how they “come to be thought of as outsiders and their reaction to that judgment” (54) — the variety of evaluations of that behavior registered by others, and the possible reasons for the creation and enforcement of rules.
Becker approaches deviance as both collective action, with groups and individuals constantly adjusting their behavior as it relates to others, and as collective behavior: “The theory insists that the observer look at all the people involved in any episode of alleged deviance. When we do, we discover that these activities require overt or tacit cooperation of many people and groups to occur as they do.” (55) Observing deviance, because it is a “product” or consequence of transactions between social groups and those who are viewed by that group as “rule–breakers,” requires we consider all of the actors, not simultaneously, but one at a time. In interactionist theory deviance is a consequence of the application of rules, sanctions and standards. Deviance depends on the nature of the act, how others receive it, and the allegations of wrongdoing by law enforcement officials and other moral entrepreneurs. It is in the media’s observance and description of alleged deviance that definition occurs.
Becker offers two models for analyzing deviant behavior and explaining the development and organization of deviance. He begins by outlining categories for the “simultaneous” discrimination of different behaviors. At any one instant we can look at behavior as belonging to one of four categories, based on our perceptions of it:
Types of Deviant Behavior
“Obedient” “Rule–Breaking”
Perceived as deviant: Falsely accused Pure deviant
Not perceived as deviant: Conforming Secret deviant (56)
As an example of how the division works, simply riding a motorcycle has at times been perceived as deviant. Those who did not ride motorcycles were “conforming.” Those who were believed to ride motorcycles (either because they dressed like bikers or associated with bikers) but did not would be “falsely accused” of deviance. Those who rode motorcycles but were discreet could be “secret deviants.” And those who flaunted their behavior, the outlaws, would be “pure deviants.” This organization distinguishes between those who are true rule breakers and those who might otherwise be wrongly lumped together as “deviant.” If we do not recognize the differences in the behavior we “commit the fallacy of trying to explain several different kinds of things in the same way.” (57) Obviously, not everyone will fall into the same categories at all times, since society’s perceptions of behavior change.
What Becker calls a sequential model of deviance allows for changing perceptions of rule–breaking behavior. As applied here, it reveals changes in the status of biker clubs and outlaw culture over time, and exposes the development of the media’s approach and position towards bikers and what it is that is deviant in their actions. The model addresses his conception of career: the movement from stage to stage as organizations and individual rule breakers become more involved and more devoted to deviance. Those who conform to society’s rules do so out of self–interest and commitment to convention. Many have deviant thoughts but not all follow through on them, either because it is not in their self–interest or because they are committed to certain norms. But those who do not conform are included in the first stage of the model. At this point, and throughout the rest of the stages, the observer takes into account how rule–breakers justify their behavior. They may see their actions as valid from their own perspective, or simply see certain rules as wrong. It also determines from whose perspective we use the term “outsider.”
Successive stages address the individual or group that “sustains a pattern of deviance over a long period of time, who makes of deviance a way of life, who organizes his identity around a pattern of deviant behavior.” (58) They are identified by the development of deviant motives and interests, learning new social behaviors, learning the patterns of that behavior, and developing a stylized language. Once labeled deviant, the actor is treated accordingly. Designation as “pure deviant” precludes a normal life, and at the same time it becomes easier to be deviant.
This labeling in many ways becomes a self–fulfilling process — individuals act as deviants because they are expected to and because it is difficult to act otherwise. The final stage is the development of organized groups for which deviant behavior is the common bond. It is signaled by the development of “complicated historical, legal and psychological justification for deviant activity.” (59) Members rationalize and justify their actions to others and self, making it easier to be deviant.
Becker’s theories allow that at any one time it is possible to know what behaviors and groups are defined as deviant, and who is included in them. And by tracing the development of representations of outlaw motorcycle clubs, their motives, interests, behaviors and rationalizations, it is possible to describe their growth as organizations and as perceived threats to the middle–class mainstream and to the status quo. More importantly, comparing the genres and their responses to deviance allows for consideration of why some behaviors were sometimes condemned (and sometimes not), and the degree to which some media were willing to accept deviance in some situations and question the legitimacy of certain rules, norms and consensus.
Careful reading and analysis of the media makes possible comparisons of the imagery, myths and stereotypes used and the impression they created, implicitly or explicitly, in the public’s mind. The process is explained, in part, by the work of Graham Knight and Tony Dean and Asa Berger and their research into lexical selection. (60) Gitlin’s description of the methods and themes the media use to frame “deviant” groups and interpret new experience will also be useful in revealing the marginalization of bikers and outlaw clubs. Similarly, the media’s occasional willingness to accept or even promote certain activities, or show them in an attractive or non–threatening manner, suggests criticism of the status quo and its rules.
Teun van Dijk’s theories of discourse analysis are also useful in analyses of individual news stories. For him, discourse is an iceberg; only a portion of the work’s true meaning is revealed at any one time. The rest, he argues, must be adduced through lexical, structural and rhetorical analysis. Van Dijk addresses, in his way, journalistic conventions and how they become represented in stories. For example, the media employ specific strategies, such as concrete detail, eyewitnesses, and credible sources to enhance their perceived credibility and truthfulness. Similarly, the headline and lead activate the memories necessary to understand the text. They also indicate what the reporter/writer believed was important and what the reader would comprehend and accept. Van Dijk calls these elements the macrostructure, but the same can be said for smaller textual units — propositions and macropropositions. All can be seen as elements of myth as they serve as an “important strategic cue in controlling the local understanding of the subsequent text.” (61)
Chapter 2
1. This research uses Howard Becker’s definition of deviance as behavior that differs from what a dominant group considers appropriate, as non–conformity to social rules, or as rule–breaking behavior. Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: The Free Press, 1973), 9.
2. James W. Carey, “Mass Communication Research and Cultural Studies: An American View,” in The Mass Media in Germany and The United States, ed. James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Woollacott (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979), 412.
3. Ibid., 412.
4. G. Stuart Adam, “Notes Towards a Definition of Journalism: Understanding an Old Craft as an Art Form,” The Poynter Papers: No. 2 (St. Petersburg, Florida: The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 1993), 11.
5. Ibid., 45.
6. On gatekeeping see David Manning White, “The Gatekeeper: A Case Study in the Selection of News,” Journalism Quarterly 27 (Fall 1950): 383–396; James Buckalew, “News Elements and Selection by Television News Editors,” Journal of Broadcasting 14 (Winter 1969–1970): 47–54; John Dimmick, “The Gatekeeper: An Uncertainty Theory,” Journalism Monographs 37 (1974); D. Charles Whitney and Lee Becker, “‘Keeping the Gates’ for Gatekeepers: The Effects of Wire News,” Journalism Quarterly 59 (Spring 1982): 60–65; Guido Stempel, “Gatekeeping: The Mix of Topics and the Selection of News,” Journalism Quarterly 62 (Winter 1985): 791–796; Dan Berkowitz, “Refining the Gatekeeper Metaphor for Local Television,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 34 (Winter 1990): 55–68.
On periodicity and event orientation see Gaye Tuchman, “Making News By Doing Work: Routinizing the Unexpected,” American Journal of Sociology 79 (July 1973): 110–131; Mark Fishman, “Crime Waves as Ideology,” in The Manufacture of News: Social Problems, Deviance and the Mass Media, eds. Stanley Cohen and Jock Young (Beverly Hills: Sage 1981), 98–117; and Paul Rock, “News as Eternal Recurrence,” in The Manufacture of News, 64–70.
7. For more discussion of repetition of news themes and frames see Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge, “Structuring and Selecting News,” in The Manufacture of News, 52–63; Robert Darnton, “Journalism: All the News That Fits We Print,” chap. in The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (New York: Norton, 1990), 60–93; and Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 1–18.
8. See Steve Chibnall, “The Production of Knowledge by Crime Reporters,” in The Manufacture of News, 75–97.
9. See Tuchman; Galtung and Ruge; Herbert J. Gans, “Objectivity, Values and Ideology,” in Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (New York: Vintage, 1979), 182–213; Edward Epstein, “The Intelligence Function,” in News From Nowhere: Television and the News (New York: Random House, 1973), 133–151; Bernard Roshco, “‘News Judgment’ — The Effect of Social Values,” in Newsmaking, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 104–119; David Altheide, “Organizing for News,” in Creating Reality: How TV News Distorts Events (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1973), 61–95.
10. For discussions of how culture and psychology influence this paradigm, see Galtung and Ruge; Holly S. Stocking and Paget H. Gross, “How do Journalists Think? A Proposal for the Study of Cognitive Bias in Newsmaking” (Eric Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skill, 1989); Susan Fiske and S. E. Taylor, “Social Schemata,” in Social Cognition (New York: Random House, 1984), 139–169; Elizabeth Rice, “On Cultural Schemata,” in American Ethnologist 7 (February 1980), 152–171.
11. See Richard C. Vincent, Bryan K. Crow and Dennis Davis, “When Technology Fails: The Drama of Airline Crashes in Network Television News,” Journalism Monographs 117 (1989).
12. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 302.
13. Ibid., 1.
14. Edward S. Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 5.
15. Gans, 186.
16. Ibid., 197.
17. Becker, 184.
18. Ibid., 196.
19. Richard V. Ericson, Patricia Baranek and Janet Chan, Negotiating Control: A Study of News Sources (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 3.
20. Becker, 163.
21. Stewart Macaulay, “Law and the Behavioral Sciences: Is There any There There?” Law and Policy 6 (April 1984): 179.
22. Ibid., 178.
23. Self–interest in this case could mean using newsworthy events and situations to sell newspapers or to improve ratings.
24. Peter Dahlgren, “Introduction,” in Journalism and Popular Culture, eds. Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks (London: Sage, 1992), 2–4.
25. Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (New York: Pantheon, 1983).
26. See Joshua Hammer and Andrew Murr, “The Blockbuster Game,” Newsweek, 25 June 1990, 50–52.
27. Stanley Cohen, ed., Images of Deviance (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1971), 10.
28. Marguerite J. Moritz, “How U. S. News Media Represent Sexual Minorities,” in Journalism and Popular Culture, eds. Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks (London: Sage, 1992), 156.
29. John D. Stevens, “Social Utility of Sensational News: Murder and Divorce in the 1920s,” Journalism Quarterly 62 (Spring 1985): 54.
30. William Murray, Previews of Coming Attractions (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1970), 79.
31. David Eason, “Telling Stories and Making Sense,” Journal of Popular Culture 15 (Fall 1981): 125.
32. Ibid., 125.
33. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth–Century America (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 5.
34. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 124.
35. Ibid., 125.
36. David Eason, “New Journalism, Metaphor and Culture,” Journal of Popular Culture 15 (Spring 1982): 142–149.
37. S. Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, “News and Storytelling in American Culture: Reevaluating the Sensational Dimension,” Journal of American Culture 13 (Summer 1990): 34.
38. S. Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, “Myth Chronicle and Story: Exploring the Narrative Quality of News,” in Media Myths and Narratives, ed. James Carey (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1988), 67–86.
39. Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching, 27.
40. William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach,” American Journal of Sociology 95 (July 1989): 3.
41. Gaye Tuchman, “Qualitative Methods in the Study of News,” in A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research, eds. Klaus Bruhn Jensen and Nicholas W. Jankowski (London: Routledge, 1991), 89.
42. John Fiske, “Popularity and the Politics of Information,” in Journalism and Popular Culture, eds. Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks (London: Sage, 1992), 62.
43. Jane Feuer, “Genre Study and Television,” in Channels of Discourse, ed. Robert C. Allen (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press), 118.
44. John Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 6.
45. Feuer, 119.
46. Peter Larsen, “Textual Analysis of Fictional Media Content,” in A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research, eds. Klaus Bruhn Jensen and Nicholas W. Jankowski (London: Routledge, 1991), 129.
47. Ibid., 129.
48. Ibid., 129.
49. Barry Keith Grant, “Experience and Meaning in Genre Films,” in Film Genre Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 116.
50. Edward Buscombe, “The Idea of Genre in American Cinema,” in Film Genre Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 15.
51. Ibid., 34.
52. Ibid., 38.
53. Rick Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre,” in Film Genre Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 29.
54. Becker, 10.
55. Ibid., 183.
56. Ibid., 20
57. Ibid., 21.
58. Ibid., 30.
59. Ibid., 38.
60. See Graham Knight and Tony Dean, “Myth and the Structure of News,” Journal of Communication 32 (Spring 1982): 144–161; Arthur Asa Berger, Media Analysis Techniques, The Sage CommText Series, V. 10 (Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1991).
61. Teun van Dijk, News as Discourse (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988), 35.