Notes in Lecture
Lecture
In
sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a
group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden) which
differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.
Ian
Borden ‘Performing the City’
•Urban
street skating is more ‘political’ than 1970’s skateboarding‘s use
of found terrains: street skating generates new uses that at once work within
(in time and space) and negate the original ones
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)
Parkour/Freerunning
ParkourA method of movement focused on moving around obstacles with speed and
efficiency. Originally developed in France, the main purpose of the discipline
is to teach participants how to move through their environment by vaulting,
rolling, running, climbing and jumping. Parkour practitioners are known as traceurs.
They train to be able to identify and utilize alternate or the more efficient
paths through the city
Free Running
A 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)
Jump
London (2005)
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’.
Black
graffiti writer Prime says:•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, they’d come round my house , I’d give them dinner or something.
Miss
Van
McDonald
suggest that women come to the subculture laden with the baggage of gender in
that her physicality (her looks) and her sexuality will be commented on
critically in a way that male writers do not experience
Swoon
(US)
“In
the meantime there was a lot of attention coming my way for being female, and
it just made me feel alienated and objectified, not to mention patronized. ‘Look at what girls can do-aren’t they cute?’
To hell with that shit. I don’t want it.”
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)
Brigitte
Bardot 1960’s
Suggests
sexual deviance which is a fantasy not reflective of most conventional real
life femininity at the time
Hells Angels
In
rocker and motorbike culture girls usually rode pillion
Wills
1978: girls did not enter into the cameraderie, competion and knowledge of the machine
In
this subculture women were either girlfriend of.. Or ‘mama’ figure
Mod Girls
Mod
culture springs from working class teenage consumerism in the 1960’s in the UK
Teenage
girls worked in cities in service industries for example, or in clothing shops
where they are encouraged to model the boutique clothing
This
meant they had money for socialising and
mod rallies.
Quadrophenia
(1979)
Hebdige
outlines the hierarchies within the mod subculture where “the ‘faces’ or
‘stylists’ who made up the original coterie were defined against the
unimaginative majority…who were accused of trivialising the
mod style”
Hippy
girl
Subculture
arises through universities of the late
60’s and early 70’s
Middle
class girl therefore has the space to explore subculture for longer before
family etc.
Space
for leisure without work: encourages ‘personal expression’
‘Bad’
hippy/’good’ hippy
Janis Joplin
Peace and ‘flower power’
Riot
Grrrl- mid
1990’s onwards
Underground
punk movement based in Washington DC, Olympia, Portland, Oregon and the greater
Pacific Northwest
Bands
Bikini
Kill, Bratmobil,
Excuse 17, Heavens to Betsy, Fifth Column, Calamity Jane, Huggy Bear, Adickdid,
Emily's Sassy Lime, The Frumpies, The Butchies, Sleater-Kinney, Bangs and also queercore like
Team Dresch
Cold Cold Hearts,
side project band of Allison Wolfe of riot grrrl band Bratmobile,
playing 'Sorry Yer Band
Sux'
live at Black Cat, Washington, D.C. 3/7/97
The
Raincoats, Poly Styrene, LiLiPUT, The Slits, The Runaways/Joan Jett, Patti
Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Exene Cervenka,
Siouxsie Sioux, Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon, Neo Boys, Chalk Circle, Ut, Bush
Tetras, Frightwig, Anti-Scrunti Faction, Scrawl,and Fifth Column
Mount
Pleasant Race Riots in 1991
Bratmobile
member Jen Smith (later of Rastro! and The Quails), reacted to the
violence by prophetically writing in a letter to Allison Wolfe: "This
summer's going to be a girl riot."
Wolfe
and Molly Neuman collaborated with Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail to create a new
zine and
called it Riot
Grrrl,
combining the "riot" with an oft-used phrase that first appeared in
Vail's fanzine Jigsaw "Revolution Grrrl
Style Now”. Riot grrrls took
a growling double or triple r, placing it in the word girl, as
a way to take back the derogatory use of the term
Zines
revived from 1970’s DIY punk ethic
In
turn this was influenced by posters and graphic design from the Dadaists in the
1920’s 30’s
Women
self-publishing their own music
Raoul Hausmann-
Dada
ABCD
Self-portrait (1923-24)
“Like
the author of the the surrealist collage typically juxtaposes two apparently
incompatible realities” (Hebdige:
1979)
Courtney
Love and Hole
Style
without the subculture
Distorts
even further as the 90’s continue into the more more media friendly Spice
Girls use of phrase “Girl Power”
Band
styling presents a 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
“Subcultures
represent ‘noise’ (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence
which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the
media.”
Offence
caused by lyrics and behaviour is
important as it leads to questions about ‘the parent culture’
Subcultural
signs like dress styles and music are turned into mass produced objects
Eg:
clothing which is ripped as an anarchic anti-fashion statement becomes mass
produced with rips as part of the design
Zandra
Rhodes 9ct White Gold Diamond Safety Pin Brooch
Although
punk seems to challenge eventually and surprisingly quickly it goes
mainstream/high end and is turned into “To shock chic” which marks the end of
the movement as a subculture.
Teddy boys
•Teddy
boy culture was an escape from the claustrophobia of the family, into the
street and ‘caff’.
While many girls might adopt the appropriate way of dressing, they would be
much less likely to spend the same amount of time hanging about on the streets.
Girls had to be careful not to ‘get into trouble’. (Mc Robbie, Garber) •In
early 1954, on a late train from Southend, someone pulled the communication cord.
The train ground to a halt. Light bulbs were smashed. Police arrested a gang
dressed in Edwardian suits. In April two gangs, also dressed Edwardian-style,
met after a dance. They were ready for action: bricks and sand-filled socks
were used. Fifty-five youths were taken in for questioning. The following
August Bank Holiday the first 'Best Dressed Ted Contest was held. The winner
was a twenty-year-old greengrocers assistant. The Teddy Boy myth was born.
•Originally
published in 1979, The Teds is now being re-published by Dewi
Lewis. A classic of British documentary photography, it is a vivid and
absorbing book combining the images of Chris Steele-Perkins with a text by
Richard Smith, to tell a fascinating story that spans some three decades.
•http://www.chrissteeleperkins.com/books-content.php?id=7
Racists
give Nazi salute in London, 1980
Gavin
Watson Skins
(1980’s)
This is England (2006)
Shane Meadows
The
new kid on the estate transforms into a British Skin
His
dad has been killed in the Falklands War and his new friends become a surrogate
family
The
film explores the difference between the skinhead style and the politics of the
National Front skins as they infiltrate the working class estate in the UK in
the 1980’s
•The
subordination of Milky as ‘other’ by Combo
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