* you can have style without subculture*
Definition of subculture
- group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong
Lecture will look at:
- skateboarding
- Riot Grrrl movement
- portrayal of youth subculture in film and photography
Dogtown and Z boys (2001)
- documentary documented by skateboarder
- mix of original photography from the time and up-to-date documentary footage
- provides a history of skateboarding and surf culture
- takes emergence of this culture from 1970s from original nerdy past time roots into competitive culture of today
- financed by VANs
- empty swimming pool as skate arena - use of empty spaces that have been re-created as actual skateboard parks
- original to contemporary and difference between this transformation
- team not exclusively male - Peggy Oki
- clothing was chosen for practical use, protection from injuries, no kind of differentiation between male and female members in 1970s
- no particular feminine aspect but girls not excluded
Ian Borden 'Performing the City'
- urban street skating is more political than 1970s skateboarding's use of found terrain: street skating generates new uses that at once work within (in time and space) and negate the original ones
- skating is a way outside of experience, an alternative
- subcultural activity
- way of being in city that is resisting direction of city itself
- use of handrails and city architecture
- redefinition of urban space in comtemporary skateboarding
Lords of Dogtown (2005)
- skateboarders do not so much temporarily escape from the routinized world of school family and social conventions as replace it with a whole new way of life - Borden, 2001
- importance of social interaction because of fractured family situations
Parkour/Freerunning
- parkour = method of movement focused on moving around obstacles with speed and efficiency
- free running = form of urban acrobatics in which participants known as free runners use the city and rural landscape to perform movements through its structures
Yamakasi (2001)
- demonstrates subculture of the sport/skills
- story, creates a group of superheros who fight injustice in Paris ghettos
- use parkour to steal from the rich to give to the poor
- political element
Jump London (2005)
- documentary
- Mike Christie
- navigate buildings, famous landmarks, Royal Albert Hall etc
- challenge to architecture to traditional experience
Nancy McDonald, The Graffiti Subculture
- "Here on the street real life and the issues which may divide and influence it, are put on pause. On this liminal terrain you are not black, white, rich or poor. Unless you are female, 'you are what you write'."
- not about style, about subcultural activity
- a freak can be a king, he can be four foot tall with four eyes...
- status that doesn't come from the way you look
- separation of style and subculture
Black graffiti writer - Prime
- I mean I've met people that I would never have met, people like skinheads who are blatantly racist or whatever. I can see it in them and they know we know, but when you're dealing on a graffiti level, everything's cool and I go yard with them...
Miss Van
- McDonald suggests that women come to the subculture laden with the baggage of gender in that her physicality and her sexuality will be commented on critically in a way that male writers do not experience
- overly sexualised cartoon figures - could read this is focus on appearance or a way of putting femininity in people's faces
Swoon (US)
- female artist
- black woman resting on top of city
- politically motivated
- works in urban regeneration
- graffiti projects with areas in need, using graffiti as a way of claiming back space that has been devastated by an event/is run down
Angela Mc Robbie and Jenny Garber
- girl subcultures may have become more invisible because the very term subculture has acquired such strong masculine overtones (1977)
- most people who write about subculture are male - may have been the case in 1977 but post theory re-addresses this balance
- Japanese street style - Lolita fashion - all female street culture - over femininity - some ways this is read really negatively, return to child like state, strange sexual overtones BUT could be seen as celebration of femininity to the extreme that it's totally sugary, putting teeth on edge
Motorbike girl
- Brigitte Bardot's 1960s
- suggests sexual deviance which is a fantasy not reflective of most conventional real life femininity at the time
Hells Angels
- girls ride pillion
- no involvement in mechanical or competitive side
- Wills 1978: girls did not enter into the camaraderie, competition and knowledge of the machine
- either girlfriend or 'mama' figure
Mod girl
- springs from working class teenage consumerism in 1960s in UK
- teenage girls worked in cities in service industries, or in clothing shops where they are encouraged to model the boutique clothing
- meant they had money for socialising and mod rallies
- fit in without attracting too much attention
- can be a face in the mod culture - have a status without being attached to a boy
- develop a group identity separate from every day world of work
Quadrophenia (1979)
- tensions between mods and rockers, 1965, London
- Brighton ban holiday weekend
- the 'faces' or 'stylists' - hierarchies in subculture, accused of trivialising the mod style - defined against unimaginative majority
- originals and unimaginative people following the trend
Hippy girl
- subculture arises through universities in late 60s and 70s
- middle class girl therefore has the space to explore subculture for longer before family
- space for leisure without work - encourages personal expression
- allows you to find yourself - hippy ideals
- more likely to have access to this space e.g. education, travel
Bad hippy/good hippy
- Janis Joplin v.s. peace and 'flower power'
- Janis Joplin, mistress of own destruction
Riot Grrrl - mid 1990s onwards
- underground punk movement based in Washington DC, Olympia, Portland, Oregon and greater Pacific Northwest
- wouldn't have called themselves feminists
- music scene
- covered serious issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, empowerment
Bands
- Bikini Kill, Bratmobil, Excuse 17, Heavens to Betsy, Fifth Column, Calamity Jane, Huggy Bear, Sleater-Kinney, Sassy Lime
- approach and attitude
Cold Cold Hearts, Allison Wolfe of Riot Grrrl
- Bratmobile - Sorry Yer Band Sux
- assertion of female figure in music industry
Influences and origins
- late 70s and early 80s female punk rockers
- Runaways, Joan Jett
Riot Grrrl?
- Mount Pleasant Race Riots 1991
- Bratmobile member Jen Smite reacted to the violence by prophetically writing in a letter to Allison Wolfe "this summer's going to be a girl riot"
- fanzines, based around some of the issues
- Wolfe and Molly Neuman collaborated with Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail - zine with an oft-used phrase
- looked at issues that affected females - eating disorders etc
What makes this a true subculture?
- zines revived from 1970s DIY punk ethic
- influenced by posters and graphic design from Dadaists in 1920s and 30s
- women self publishing their own music
- gives women a voice in music industry
Roaul Hausmann - Dada
- ABCD self portrat
- like the author of the surrealist collage typically juxtaposes two apparently incompatible realities
Media attention turns to Grunge scene
- Courtney Love and Hole
- style without subculture
- distorts even further as the 90s continue into the more media friendly Spice Girl use of phrase "girl power"
Spice Girls
- band styling presents set of visual types that are easily consumable by the target audience
- there is no empowerment for young women as there is nothing but the reduction of young women to cartoon representations
- reduces any understanding of what power might be to a comment on style
- even lyrics betray emptiness of idea of girl power
- can't even say what they want - what's empowering about that?
Dick Hebdige - Subculture: The meaning of Style
- offence caused by lyrics and behaviour is important as it leads to questions about the parent culture
- projection of societies "ills" focused on punk subculture triggered by offence caused by lyrics
- subcultures represent noise, interference in the orderly sequence...
The commodity form
- subcultural signs like dress styles and music are turned into mass produced objects
- Vivienne Westwood - polar opposite to DIY aesthetic
- ripping clothing was seen as an anarchic anti-fashion statement but this has been mass produced as part of the design
A threat to the family?
- Womens Own 1977, punks and their mothers - offers alternative youth culture
- non political threat that ultimately will not disturb traditional values
- Hebdige suggests that the press set up this perceived threat as a way of neutralising something that could not be conceived by the petit-bourgeois therefore has to be domesticated
Zandra Rhodes - 9ct white gold diamond safety pink brooch
- although punk seems to challenge eventually and surprisingly quickly is goes mainstream/high end and is turned into 'to shock chic' which marks the end of the movement as a subculture
- designed in 1977, can see how quickly the subculture is consumed by commercial world
- similar thing happens to grunge - rise of Nirvana
- appears on catwalks before its even begun
21st century demonisation
- the 'hoody' - symbol of demonised aspect of society
- style provokes a double response in the media: it is alternately celebrated in the fashion page and ridiculed or reviled in those articles which define subcultures as social problems
- way of belonging to a group which has a strong identity but also means you can be unidentifiable within the group
Bricolage: Edwardian style - Saville Row - Teddy Boy
- the meaning of the clothing changes as its context is changed
- Hebdige looks at long frock coat as upper class item moving into mass production and then being appropriated by working class in teddy boy style
Roger Mayne (1956)
- teddy boy culture was an escape from claustrophobia of family into the street and caff
- girls might adopt the appropriate way of dressing, they would much less likely to spend the same amount of time hanging about on the streets
Chris Steele-Perkins, The Teds (1979
Racists give Nazi salute in London, 1980
- deviates from mod culture
Gavin Watson, Skins (1980s)
- interesting documentary record of subculture
This is England (2006), Shane Meadows
- new kid on estate transforms himself into British Skin
- dad killed in Falklands War and new friends become surrogate family
- alienated from traditional family unit
- right of passage, journey from young man to teenage
- explores difference between skinhead style and politics of National Front skins as they infiltrate the working class estate in the UK in 1980s
- media demonises skin head culture
- film makes difference by including role of Combo, fostering political ideas
- subordination of Milky as 'other' by Combo
- violence triggered by fact Milky invites Combo to house, triggers racist attack, can't get head around combination of himself and somebody who is totally 'other' to him
- comparison between graffiti Prime, something becoming outside of race, example of working class conflict in a subculture that is ultimately influenced by immigration into Britain in 60s and 70s
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