This is an account of how commercial culture in Britain and America has been viewed, since its inception during the Industrial Revolution, as a force likely to undermine national morals.

The international controversy (highlighted in Britain by the Bulger case) over the relationship between "video nasties" and crime is one that has a long prior history. Do books, films or magazines create a corrupting environment which encourages crime and moral decay? This is an account of how commercial culture in Britain and America has been viewed, since its inception during the Industrial Revolution, as a force likely to undermine national morals. There has been wave after wave of scares: from the Victorian "penny gaff" theatres and "penny dreadful" novels to Hollywood gangster films, and American horror comics. A final chapter refers to video nasties, violence on television, "gansta rap" and computer games, each in turn arguably playing the role of folk devils which must be causing delinquency. Why particular issues suddenly galvanize public attention, and why so many people have associated delinquency with entertainment, form the subjects of this book .

Acknowledgements - Introduction - Penny Theatre Panic: Anxiety over Juvenile Working-Class Leisure - 'Penny Dreadful' Panic: Their Readers, Publishing and Content - 'Penny Dreadful' Panic: Their Scapegoating for Late-Victorian Juvenile Crime - Gangster Film Panic: Censoring Hollywood in the 1930s - 'Horror Comic' Panic: Campaigning Against Comic Books in the 1940s and 1950s - Mass Media Panic: The 1980s and 1990s - Conclusions - Appendices - References - Bibliography - Index