st. The entirety of the video is set within a high-school environment, a dark concert hall, retaining the familiar palette. On opening, red drapes hang as a backdrop to the band on the stage, dressed head to toe in black, and accompanied by a cheer-leading squad (also sporting scarlet), the unmissable separating feature from the portrayed squad and an orthodox team being that they each wear World War II-esque gas masks. From the off this suggests many connotations. Gas masks in purpose are to prevent suffocation, the word "suffocating" often used throughout media to represent feelings of repression, of being crowded or the sense that a decision or decisions that ought to be one's own to make are in another's hands. 
This theme of rebellion against a predestined existence are commonly expressed throughout teenage-orientated media, as they have been for decades since the existence of the anarchical punk movements, even dating back to the activities of the Edelweiss Pirates in the late 1930's. The most common connotation of the phrase "youth-culture" is individuality, or rather a unified sense of self opposed to one aspect of the adult world or the other, whether it be the opinion of a parent on an adolescent's fashion sense or their taste in music -animosity towards any form of dictation is the heart of the matter. This theory is strengthened as the video progresses, as the masked cheerleaders take up police batons, incorporated into their dance routine. The police force are yet another trope villain portrayed throughout the media in teen-targeted productions, the epitome of upholding order and retaining a formulaic structure, governing civilians through endless maxims as much as formal law. The cheerleader countenance itself is a high-school cliche throughout the media - representative of what's presumed to be an exclusive club for the popular and pretty, an interesting contrast to the alternative style of music. 
The lyrics to the song essentially capture the heart of this iconography - "They're gonna clean up your looks, with all the lies in the book, to make a citizen out of you. Because they sleep with a gun, and keep an eye on you son, so they can watch all the things you do." "They" are in this case representative of parents, teachers and adults in general. The lyric "to make a citizen out of you" clearly denotes conformity, as "keep an eye on you son" denotes the big-brother system of control and regulation, all-too-commonly portrayed as particularly offensive to adolescents.
As the video progresses, a congregation of black-clad teenagers, presumed to be pupils, swarm the auditorium. Initially apprehensive, the situation escalates to a riotous mosh, followed by the eventual raiding of the stage itself in which the band are humorously trampled. This brawl is initiated as the aforementioned red-drapes drop, revealing images of the nuclear mushroom cloud, synonymous in iconography to that of the gas masks. The phrase "to go nuclear" is often translated to define absolute drastic action, or to describe a course of action resulting from being pushed to the metaphorical edge and having to react excessively in order to reclaim hypothetical lost land.
This theme of rebellion against a predestined existence are commonly expressed throughout teenage-orientated media, as they have been for decades since the existence of the anarchical punk movements, even dating back to the activities of the Edelweiss Pirates in the late 1930's. The most common connotation of the phrase "youth-culture" is individuality, or rather a unified sense of self opposed to one aspect of the adult world or the other, whether it be the opinion of a parent on an adolescent's fashion sense or their taste in music -animosity towards any form of dictation is the heart of the matter. This theory is strengthened as the video progresses, as the masked cheerleaders take up police batons, incorporated into their dance routine. The police force are yet another trope villain portrayed throughout the media in teen-targeted productions, the epitome of upholding order and retaining a formulaic structure, governing civilians through endless maxims as much as formal law. The cheerleader countenance itself is a high-school cliche throughout the media - representative of what's presumed to be an exclusive club for the popular and pretty, an interesting contrast to the alternative style of music. 
The lyrics to the song essentially capture the heart of this iconography - "They're gonna clean up your looks, with all the lies in the book, to make a citizen out of you. Because they sleep with a gun, and keep an eye on you son, so they can watch all the things you do." "They" are in this case representative of parents, teachers and adults in general. The lyric "to make a citizen out of you" clearly denotes conformity, as "keep an eye on you son" denotes the big-brother system of control and regulation, all-too-commonly portrayed as particularly offensive to adolescents.
As the video progresses, a congregation of black-clad teenagers, presumed to be pupils, swarm the auditorium. Initially apprehensive, the situation escalates to a riotous mosh, followed by the eventual raiding of the stage itself in which the band are humorously trampled. This brawl is initiated as the aforementioned red-drapes drop, revealing images of the nuclear mushroom cloud, synonymous in iconography to that of the gas masks. The phrase "to go nuclear" is often translated to define absolute drastic action, or to describe a course of action resulting from being pushed to the metaphorical edge and having to react excessively in order to reclaim hypothetical lost land.
In summary, both the lyrics and video represent in their entirety the same key theme - the theme concisely put forth at the off by the song-title: the emergence of the relatively recent term "teenagers" where once there was no such noun, and the connotations it holds, whether fabricated by media production, grounded in reality, or most commonly a combination of the two.
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