Teens ’n’ twenties

Abstract

While the cinema and the dancehall had entertained generations of Irish youths prior to the sixties, this chapter addresses new manifestations of youth culture in this period, with a particular focus on the showband, beat and folk scenes. This chapter explores how the self-image of young people was informed and shaped by transnational developments in popular culture, which were transmitted through a variety of media and manifested in ways that were significantly affected by local factors. It analyses how a transnational youth culture was adopted and adapted in Ireland and identifies its role in shaping discussions of the sexual lives of young people. Ultimately it highlights how the development of a thriving Irish youth culture undermined previous rhetoric that equated the modern with the foreign, and threats to Irish culture and morality as external.