This study will examine the relationship between the media and British rave music and culture, using as source material Sarah Thornton's essay "Moral Panic, the Media and British Rave Culture," from Microphone Fiends: Youth Music & Youth Culture, edited by Andrew Ross and Tricia Ross. The essence of the Thornton essay is that the gap between the alternative scene as described both by the media and the members of this particular alternative scene themselves is not as great as both "sides" might imagine or want to imagine. The conclusion can fairly be drawn that the mainstream culture in modern society is so vast that any subculture or counterculture springing up in its midst is inevitably intimately connected to that larger mainstream entity.
In other words,the alternative culture of the rave dance scene is not as radical a subculture as is depicted by both the ravers and the media. Both benefit from this deception. Thornton demonstrates a number of features of rave culture which fit into the stereotypes of status quo social life. The study will also consider some of the ideals of the rave culture, ideals which reflect some of the ideals of the larger culture, and will consider as well the future of the music of the British rave scene.
The notion that somehow the rave culture emerged and exists separate and distinct from the "media" is critiqued thoroughly by Thornton, who concludes that "Diverse media are inextricably involved in the meaning and organization of subcultures" such as the rave culture. The notion that youth subcultures are spontaneous or "organic" affairs with little or no organization or order, or any other of the many coalescing features common to more mainstream groups, is also fully and thoroughly critiqued by Thornton:
Youth subcultures are not organic, unmediated social formations, nor autonomous, grassroots cultures which only meet the media upon 'selling out' or at moments of 'moral panic.' Micro-, ni...