"Blue Jeans, Black Leather Jackets, and a Sneer: The Iconography of the 1950s Biker and its Translation Abroad"

The biker, along with the inner-city gang member the iconic symbol of 1950s juvenile delinquency, changed over the course of the 1950s and 1960s from a figure of violent alienation to a joke to a counter cultural hero. This transformation is significant because it mirrors the change in overall attitudes toward juvenile delinquency during this period, a change that I argue was crucial to the development of the Counterculture so central to the 1960s. In this article, I study this transformation as a consequence of the situational dynamics of the Cold War, where the biker functioned, on a symbolic level, as a foil and complement to American national identity. The biker as iconic figure provides us with a focal point for studying these larger cultural processes.