In short, why did they hate each other so much?
I can appreciate that they had different tastes in music, dress, mode of transportation, etc., and perhaps there was an urban-rural thing going on as well. But this by itself somehow doesn’t seem like enough to make people want to beat the shit out of one another (as in the '64 Brighton riots). I could understand it if they had been organized gangs like, say, the Hell’s Angels and the Rock Machine, where territory and financial interests are at stake and thus conceivably worth fighting over. I could also understand it better if they had “stood” for some cause or ideology - like the way hippie culture was in a sense aligned with the peace movement. But, at least according to one website I looked at (http://dvdmg.com/quadrophenia.shtml), the Mods merely “embraced an empty and superficial culture….”
I know that two groups of people do not necessarily need a “good” reason to hate one another. But was there something else - something deeper? – to the Mod/Rocker differences that fed their animosity? I feel like I must be missing an important part of the picture here.