Footloose

The film that focuses on a town where dancing has been made illegal is a prime example of a “moral panic.” How did the moral panic start? A car accident that provoked an “explosion of fear and concern at a particular time and place about a specific perceived threat.” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 150) The threat in question is dancing, which turned into a social issue when the town officials created a “collective definition of that condition as a problem.” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 151) From then on, there weren’t any more high-school dances and people weren’t allowed to dance. The “crusade” made by town officials created a “process of sensitization,” where even the mere idea of dancing in public was a crime (Goode & Ben-Yehuda 156).

The theory that accurately describes the ‘Footloose’ phenomenon is the Interest Group Theory. The “rule creators and moral entrepreneurs” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 165) believed that their efforts made sense. It should be noted that the people that created this moral panic were “activists… who are more or less entirely self-serving or, possibly, entirely idealistic.” (Goode & Ben Yehuda 166) When people started to realize that their moral panic wasn’t a real social issue, the idealistic proponents of the anti-dancing law were quick to understand that they might have been wrong. However, there were others who saw the law as a way to make sure kids didn’t interrupt their plan for the town, and weren’t happy with the disruption of the moral panic.

Why would someone have started a moral panic about dancing in the first place? A plausible answer is that the older generations were afraid of people leaving their small town to go to the city and live and work there, so there was “some latent fear or stress [that] must pre-exist” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 167) stemming from the older generations. The adults then saw that accident as the perfect excuse to implement a law that would attempt to keep younger generations in their town.

However, like most moral panics, the panic faded (or in this case was disproven). There was a lasting impact, because people had to fight for their right to dance, which affected the entire society by showing them that high-schoolers do have opinions and aren’t just destructive people with no respect for their elders.