Live Reading: Subculture - The Meaning of Style

(One 22/206 - Definition of Ideology)

The German Ideology by Marx – he showed how the basis of capitalist structure is “hidden from consciousness of the agents of production”. Ideology thrives beneath consciousness and appears as ‘normal common sense’. Frankfurt School Althusser notes that Ideology isn’t just a world-view or ‘political opinions’ – but it is Unconscious and acts on men without them noticing.

The example given in the book is in the neutral construction of modern institutes of education (red brick, white tile, etc...) – which contains implicit ideological assumptions. Even the lay-out of the lecture theatre dictates flow of information and ‘structures authority’.

“Thus, a whole range of decisions about what is and what is not possible within education have been made, however unconsciously, before the content of individual courses is even decided.”

(One 25/206)

The “shroud of common sense” validates and mystifies these social relations and processes, and semiotics aims to uncover all of this shit that’s controlling us. To read these “maps of meaning” governing society, which ‘thinks us as much as we think them’.

Althusser writes that Ideology has no history because it appears to us as universal and timeless, and Ideology will “always be an essential element of every social formation”.

This characterization of society is like a kind of organic being developing beyond humans, dragging them along in its own meaning and signs while the humans think they are self-determined, which reminds me a lot of Bataille’s Labyrinth. My view is that it’s a fun experiment to think this way, but also needlessly paranoiac.

(One 26/206)

Then again, rather than being an organism – Ideology has to have a source. In this case, ideologies representing the interests of dominant groups creates the maps of meaning. Groups that have control of both the material means of production as well as the mental means of production. This leads up to Gramsci’s definition of Hegemony.

(One 27/206 - Definition of Hegemony)

Hegemony – “situation in which a provisional alliance of certain social groups can exert ‘total social authority’ over other subordinate groups, not simply by coercion or by the direct imposition of ruling ideas, but by ‘winning and shaping consent so that the power of the dominant classes appears both legitimate and natural’”

But, Hegemony can only function with the consent of the dominated majority, and so it must always be won from them. That means that it is a ‘moving equilibrium’ that can always be deconstructed and demystified by people like Barthes. Objects will become signs, and signs will become objects – but there is always the chance of objection and contradiction to prevent the “closing of the circuit” (Lefebvre).

(One 30/206)

Linking back to the main subject of the book, subcultures can challenge the hegemony through style – expressed “obliquely” with contradictions displayed, rather than issued directly. Humble objects can be stolen and turned into signs of struggle (memes) to show resistance, like Genet’s Vaseline being used as ass lube. They go “against nature” and interrupt the “process of normalization”. They go against the oppressive web of meanings. The rest of the book will explore case studies of how subcultures like punks, mods, and teds rose – probably in this Cultural Marxist sort of framework.

Will take break for now. May return later.

Look man, I appreciate what you're doing but I don't understand why.

Purely selfish reasons. Summarizing helps info retention, and posting helps with motivation. Also, most of the board is talking about random shit anyway, so who cares.

Veeky Forums would probably do a lot better if the board was exclusive made of book-club style threads that actually looked at books, rather than the usual meandering.

(Two: 37/206 - Punk Subculture)

Begins with England cultural history, starting with 1976 Heat Waves & Notting Hill Carnival Riots. During this “strange apocalyptic summer” – punk came about.

Punk grew from multiple styles – Bowie glitter rock, American proto-punk, London pub-rock inspired by 60s mod subculture, Southend R & B bands, Northern Soul, and Reggae (see pic for detail). Eclectic clothing style led to visual cacophony. Contained “distorted reflections of all the major post-war subcultures”

(Two: 40/206)

Influence by avant-garde art & poetry flowed down from Bowie & New York punk bands into British Punk aesthetics – although the bands were usually “young and self-consciously proletarian”. By early 70s, flowed together into cohesive nihilist aesthetic. “It gave itself up to the cameras in ‘blankness’, the removal of expression...”

Yet, simultaneously, Reggae also had its influence on Punk. Johnny Rotten from Sex Pistols & The Clash were influenced by reggae style.

The book then states that you cannot decode punk until you reach back into history of black British subcultures like reggae, as well as British working class youth cultures preceding punk. Unearthing the ‘dialogue’ between both forms.

Forgot pic

Fair enough, carry on.

Thanks for posting. I like this a lot.

Cool thread. I wanted to read this one.

(Three: 44/206 - Reggae and Rastafarianism)

Difference between rock & reggae should be “sufficiently obvious” – mainly in terms of rhythms and influences. Reggae was influenced by Jamaican Oral culture & appropriation of the Bible – “possession by the Word”. Distinctive percussion reflects Africa.

Strange thing is that Reggae (and Rastafarianism) was born from mixture of a mythicized Black Africa, anti-thesis to Western culture for blacks, with the Bible – the “civilizing agent par excellence” of the white man). How did this paradox come about?

Although scripture was used by colonial authority to support slavery, there were “increasingly obvious” contradictions between Christian ideology and the practice of slavery. Black communities began to interpret the texts on their own, and read between the lines for their own ‘Africa’ in the Bible. They now had a set of metaphors, Biblical ones, to reflect their own condition.

(Three 46/206)

Rastafarian beliefs – accession of Haille Selassie to the throne of Ethiopia in 1930 represented the fulfilment of Biblical and secular prophecies concerning the imminent downfall of ‘Babylon’ (i.e. the white colonial powers) and the deliverance of the black races.

This ‘explosion’ of the Sacred Text had lots of appeal to working-class youth in the ghettos.

Pic related for description of this subversion

Initially persecuted, they began to be recognized over time – coinciding with development of Jamaican pop music industry & reggae.

(Three 49/206)

Rastafarian threads began to be increasingly noticeable in early 60s ska records, leading into reggae. Slower rhythms, and the “Messianic feel” dominated. Rastafarian ethos spread through reggae. It grew into a youth style.

With the development of this youth style, came themes of alienation and stuff like weed usage. This alienation was born from police harassment, unemployment, and bad housing. The period (1969) was a period of confrontations between black community & authorities. The music began to deal with problems of race and class. An idea of a Rasta rebel going up against authority began to develop.

youtube.com/watch?v=_ILjMmfAGXQ

(Three 50/206)
War of signs developing on the terrain of Ideology. The ‘sound-system’ (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_system_(Jamaican)) became a kind of symbol for an inner sanctum to “stare down Babylon”. If the system was attacked, then the community itself was symbolically threatened.

youtube.com/watch?v=HTiR1ieyQLo

man, if you actually get lit bitches to read hebdige i'm gonna love you forever

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LnI4m3Oebg
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB0AYaXD93U

Thanks man.

Didn't know who he was beforehand though. Just wanted to pick up something on subcultures. His style is pretty interesting, so I might read his other stuff one day.

(Three 53/206 - Exodus)

For First gen West Indian Immigrants, relations with the larger white communities were less fraught, as they shared the same “language of fatalism” with their white working class neighbours – resigned to lowly positions.

Black children, on the other hand, were less inclined to accept inferior positions, and were more willing to strike out. Reggae provided that alternate set of values. These values were registered in changes in style among black youth – in clothes and gestures.

First wave immigrants were skilled or semi-skilled labour with a mindset “tempered by conservatism”. On the other hand, second wave immigrants (60s) were unskilled and more desperate. They transitioned from West Indies to Great Britain with “hopes of an almost religious nature and intensity pinned down in the outcome”.

As the immigrants began to congregate in decaying inner rings of Britain’s larger cities, they developed a style “less hemmed in by Britishness”.

he's pretty dense but sorely underappreciated. i should buy a copy, i haven't read it in years.

you might also like uses of literacy by hoggart

I guess one of the good things about putting it in a thread like this is that it forces me to take the time to decode all of the stuff written down, rather than just skimming it.

Will check that recc out too.

(Three 54/206)

The style of those on the deviant margins of West Indian society in the mid 60s was amped up through Caribbean flashiness to reflect alien intent and a sign of Otherness. This segued into 70s youth culture when youths were developing a “refracted form of reggae aesthetic”. A ‘back to Africa’ sort of image.

yeah i read it and transcribed most of it as "notes".
uses of literacy is specifically british working class and was originally going to be called abuses of literacy. it fleshes out a lot of background of subcultures and the breakdown of the class structure.

(Three 56/206)

On the other hand, white-working class youths were monitoring these developments, while trying to form their own subcultural options. They mythologized the Negro and black culture.

Hebdige opens up here, at the end of chapter 3, into a general analysis of the relationship. How two groups can “be either open or closed, direct or indirect, acknowledged or unacknowledged”. Examples of actual links are mods, skinheads, and punks, while examples of the inverse (repression and inversion into antagonism) comes with the teds and greasers. (pic related)

Stopping for now. Hopefully the thread still exists when I get back.

bampalamp you punks

Bumping, we need more threads like this one.

(Four 58/206 - Hipsters, Beats, and Teddy Boys)

Bond linking white youth cultures & black urban working class cultures have long been commentated upon. This chapter opens with quote from Kerouac about wishing he was a Negro. Jazz was “drained of surplus eroticism, and any hint of anger or recrimination... refined into inoffensive night club sound”. Removed from subtle connotations.

Yet, these supressed meanings came back in bebop with new force, and grabbed hold of younger white audiences – beatniks and hipsters. This sudden convergence of black and white led to moral panic in how Conservative America faced these two subcultures.

(Four 60/206)

The beatnik and the hipster drew from black culture in two different ways. The former was more a “lower-class dandy, dressing up like a pimp” – while the latter mythologized them. (see pic related). Both took from the same source, but it manifested in different Styles in the end.

To bring back to British context, Beatnik culture transitioned from American to Britain in the 50s. Hebdidge explains that hipsters didn’t transfer over because there was a lack of significant black presence in Britain working class communities – the immigration had only just begun at the time. When it fully came into force in the 60s, it was more of the ‘Caribbean’ form.

(Four 61/206)

Besides the beats, the even more spectacular convergence had occurred outside jazz, in the form of rock. Fusion of black gospel /w white country to create a completely new form. Even though it was a B&W fusion, though, it did not show that symbolic alliance outwardly. The music was taken out of its original context and transplanted to Britain, as a “nucleus for the teddy boy style”

Characterization of teddy boy in pic related.

(Four 62/206)

History of rock’s construction was obscured, seeming like a “spontaneous expression of youthful energies”. When teddy boys began taking arms against newly arrived immigrants, they did not realize the irony. Teds were frequently involved in attacks against West Indians (1958 race riots), and they were also against the beatniks as well. One was focused in college campuses, bars, and pubs – while the other was in traditional working class areas. One was literate and avant-garde, while the other was proletarian and xenophobic.

This split can be seen in development of ‘trad jazz’ in 50s – opposed to the energy of rock and roll with a “blokeish” ambience.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZmkBurTnkdY

(Four 65/206 - Mods)

Once sizeable immigrant communities developed by early 60s /w established working class communities, both cultures could finally intersect. Mods was first subculture grown around West Indians. Like the hipster, they were a “lower-class dandy”. They were more subdued and subtle in their appearance, unlike the obtrusive teddy boys. They “quietly disrupted the orderly sequence leading from signifier to signified... undermined conventional meaning of collar, suit, and tie – pushing neatness to point of absurdity”.

Mod activity normally took place “somewhere on the way home from school or work” – cellar clubs, discotheques, boutiques, record shops. There was also an emotional affinity with black people developing. They were “more firmly embedded than either the teds or the rockers in a variety of jobs” (notes at back states that mods were usually skilled labour vs unskilled labour of rockers) – and had a greater emphasis on weekends. They lived in the small pockets of free time.

The Black Man, to the mods, served as a “dark passage down into an imagined underworld below the familiar surfaces of life”. See pic related for cool prose description of how they viewed it.

(Four 68/206 - Skinheads)

By 1966, Mod movement, due to pressures from places like media & market forces, was breaking down into number of diff scenes. Split between ‘hard mods’ and fashion-focused mods.

Skinheads grew out of the hard mods, as “aggressively proletarian, puritanical, chauvinistic” – and their style was “a kind of caricature of the model worker”. They suppressed ‘prettiness’.

In order to create a more ‘lumpen’ identity, they drew on West Indian Immigrants + white working class. Machismo mixed with “rude boy” subculture from black delinquents. They didn’t just appropriate it, but radically subverted it:

“The endlessly stretched vowels of Alf Garnett, the absolute epitome of working-class narrowness and racial bigotry were further inflected (and undercut) by the smattering of patois (ya raas!) picked up by every self-respecting skinhead from reggae records”

(Four 69/206)

Irony – values normally associated with white working class, which had eroded, were rediscovered in black West Indian culture. White skinheads ‘resolved’ the tension between an experienced present (mixed ghetto) and an imaginary past (classic white slum).

What resulted was certain problems: alliance between white & black youths was extremely precarious & provisional. Usually they avoided conflict by scapegoating to other alien groups. “Paki-bashing” could be read as a kind of displacement manoeuvre – “limited identification with one black group was transformed into aggression and directed against another black community”.

(Four 70/206)

As 70s approached, and with it the erosion of many pre-war working class institutions (what skinheads sought to protect) – there were also ideological shifts in reggae, now committed to its own ‘blackness’ – that caused divide. In the summer of 1972, skinheads joined residents in attacking 2nd gen immigrants, signifying the final shift away.

(Four 73/206 - Glam and Glitter Rock)

As black culture split apart from white working-class culture, pop atrophied into “vacuous disco-bounce and sugary ballads”, while glam rock was a synthesis of two dying subcultures (Underground + skinheads). They pursued a ‘white line’ away from soul and reggae.

Bowie created new sexually ambiguous image with self-conscious “European obsessions”. The style was devoid of any obvious political or counter-cultural messages, and aimed towards deliberate escapism and avoidance of real world. When it addressed any contemporary crisis, it was done obliquely. Subversive emphasis shifted from class & youth into sexuality & gender-typing. They confounded images of men & women “through which the passage from childhood to maturity was traditionally accomplished”.

(Four 75/206 - Punk)

Finally we reach the ending section of this part, going all the way back to the punks.

Glam rock alienated majority of working-class youth, disengaged from their concerns, and punk could be seen as a reaction to that. They ran counter to the arrogance and elegance of glam, while simultaneously taking the “stilted language” from it. They resorted to parody, irony, and used darkly comic bondage signifiers. “A deliberately scrawled addendum to the ‘text’ of glam rock”. Aimed to undercut intellectual posturing of previous gen musicians.

In turn, this led to a turn back to reggae, which had the political bite now. Despite the exclusiveness of the reggae style, and the “virtual impossibility of white identification” – it was this that drew punks to them the most. The deliberately opaque language of Rastafarianism, an alien essence, resonated with punk’s adopted values (anarchy, surrender, decline).

Punks found positive meaning in such a blatant disavowal of Britishness, and found meaning in what made the skinheads withdraw.

(Four 78/206)

Style determined through contradictions, in that it was local and came from traditional notions of Britishness (like Queen or Union Jack), but was predicated on denial of place. Reggae had the mythicized Africa, but punks had none – so they ‘transcended it’ and ‘converted into signs’. A world which was “there and not there”. They could live a life of “unmitigated exile” which was “both fictional and real”.

On one level, the punks openly acknowledged the significance of contact, and some punk bands even featured in Rock against Racism campaign. On another hand, their music was even more emphatically white and British. Hebdige goes into a bunch more appropriations in pic related.

(Four 81/206)

This identification with blacks antagonized teddy boy revivalists, and there were constant battles. Yet, even with the affinity with reggae, the integrity of both styles were maintained – their music was audibly opposed. Using semiotic terms, punk includes reggae as a “present absence” – symptomatic of contradictions and tensions inhibiting open dialogue between immigrant culture and indigenous. Even though punks were linked with reggae on the surface, the deeper signs signified a split.

Hebdige concludes the chapter talking about the overall dialectic between black & white culture. As one subculture turns rigid, new subcultures form which lead to corresponding mutation to musical form. These mutations occurs “at those moments when forms and themes imported from contemporary black music break up (or overdetermine) the existing musical structure” – e.g. when Glam was exhausted, punk moved back to earlier rock, and to contemporary reggae.

“At the heart of punk subculture... lies this frozen dialectic between black and white cultures... trapped, as it is, within its own history, imprisoned within its own irreducible antimonies”

That's the historical part done. Now the rest of the book goes into application of the theory to come up with a thesis on subculture.