Quadrophenia and moral panic

Quadrophenia follows the story of Jimmy Cooper who works as a post room boy for an advertising company. He argues a lot with his parents and spends a lot of time with his mod friends. The mods and rockers do not like each other which eventually leads to a riot between the two groups when in Brighton.

Jimmy is in love with his friend Steph and just before he is arrested in Brighton for rioting, he has sex with Steph. Jimmy is having what he believes, is the time of his life in Brighton and everything seems to be on the up.

But when he returns home Steph is no longer interested in him, he gets kicked out by his parents and quits his job. He is at an all time low. He then returns to Brighton and finds that his idol isn't all that he was known to have been. So jimmy steals his scooter and crashes it over a cliff. 

A moral panic is an exaggerated over reaction by society to a perceived problem which is usually driven or inspired by the media. 

This theory could be linked to Quadrophenia because of deviancy amplification through the riot scenes between the mods and rockers. The public are more likely to remember these scenes and associate it with real life nods and rockers. This is especially likely to happen if there is a small altercation between a mod and rocker that the media then amplifies and creates a moral panic over it