abstract

Haven't been on the board much. Been busy with school.

Spent time researching Media Perceptions of Projects of Bikers and what not along with the standard English studies. I like pet projects, they make college fun.

Here is the work in progress abstract for the paper I was working on tonight. Haven't finished it yet. Thought I would query the abstract to a few journals and see who seemed interested before I finished up the article. Might as well right it to the right way for the right journal the first time.

Abstract:
The biker myth of “trouble on two wheels” may have started in the media as an unfair stereotyping and labeling, but it has become a self-proscribed mantra for many cyclists. The famous news articles that get quoted so often may have spawned the stereotype, but it was the alternative presses that pushed the image to the point of marketing. Hal Burton’s Saturday Evening Post article from 1954 is famous for carrying quotes such as, “Nobody—except another cyclist—likes a man on a motorcycle, ” that laid the foundation for the biker stereotype of bikers living as creatures outside the bounds of normal society. The Burton article is only one of many articles that appeared in popular American magazines depicting motorcyclists as a lawless fringe element. In 1947 Life had published an article “Cyclist’s Holiday ” that depicted a weekend of racing turning into lawless riots immortalizing the event and making movies such as The Wild One marketable to the public. By the 1960s newspapers and magazines were still writing articles that built upon the stereotype of motorcycle menace. Honda was running a marketing slogan in the 1960s, “You meet the nicest people on a Honda” made possible by the established reputation of the biker in the cultural mindset. Despite the shift of mainstream newspapers and magazines ultimately covering a conflicted view of the biker as menace and charitable, subculture specialized genre publications and alternative press kept the image of menace as a selling feature. Those publications were publishing to a niche market and providing the image that would help that niche publishing market grow.