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Thinking Allowed: Chavs - Ageing Goths

29/06/2011

Chavs - Ageing Goths

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, Chavs - Ageing Goths

That word 'chav' and the characterisation of the working class. Also, ageing Goths.

Is the term 'Chav' indicative of a growing tendency to demonise the working class? Laurie discusses class and popular culture. Also, what happens to Goths when they get older?

Have the working class in modern Britain become objects of fear, scorn and ridicule? That's the claim of Owen Jones who joins Laurie and Imogen Tyler on today's Thinking Allowed. He claims that the media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminal and ignorant a vast, underprivileged section of society whose members have become stereotyped by one, disgust-filled word - 'chavs'. If this is true, then how has the reality of the working-class majority become regularly served up as a feral rump for our contempt and amusement?
Also, what happens to Goths when they get old? Laurie talks to Paul Hodkinson about his study of members of that youth cult which used to be called Gothic Punk. How have they adapted their love of black clothes, multiple piercings, make up and androgyny to mortgages, children and the rites of passage incumbent upon middle age? 
Producer: Charlie Taylor.

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