Subculture and Style helen.clarke@leeds-‐art.ac.uk
Defini7on of Subculture: • In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether dis7nct or hidden) which differen7ates them from the larger culture to which they belong.
This lecture will look at: • Skateboarding/ parkour and free running/ graffi7 as a performance of the city • The Riot Grrrl movement as a feminine and feminist subculture • The portrayal of youth subculture in film and photography
Dogtown and Z boys (2001)
Skater Peggy Oki
Ian Borden ‘Performing the City’ • Urban street ska7ng is more ‘poli7cal’ than 1970’s skateboarding‘s use of found terrains: street ska7ng generates new uses that at once work within (in 7me and space) and negate the original ones
Lords of Dogtown (2005) • “Skateboarders do not so much temporarily escape from the rou7nized world of school family and social conven7ons as replace it with a whole new way of life.” (Borden:2001)
Parkour/Freerunning Parkour
Free running • a method of movement focused • a form of urban acroba7cs on moving around obstacles with in which par7cipants, speed and efficiency. Originally known as free runners, use developed in France, the main purpose of the discipline is to the city and rural landscape teach par7cipants how to move to perform movements through their environment by through its structures vaul7ng, rolling, running, climbing and jumping. Parkour • places more emphasis on prac77oners are known as freedom of movement and traceurs. They train to be able to iden7fy and u7lize alternate or crea7vity than efficiency the more efficient paths through the city
Yamakasi (2001)
Jump London (2005)
Nancy McDonald The Graffi) 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 graffi7 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 graffi7 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 cri7cally in a way that male writers do not experience
Swoon (US) • “In the mean7me there was a lot of afen7on coming my way for being female, and it just made me feel alienated and objec7fied, not to men7on 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)
Motorbike girl • Brigife Bardot 1960’s • Suggests sexual deviance which is a fantasy not reflec7ve of most conven7onal real life femininity at the 7me
Hells Angels LIFE archive 1965 • In rocker and motorbike culture girls usually rode pillion • Wills 1978: girls did not enter into the cameraderie, compe7on and knowledge of the machine • In this subculture women were either girlfriend of.. Or ‘mama’ figure
Mod girl • Mod culture springs from working class teenage consumerism in the 1960’s in the UK • Teenage girls worked in ci7es in service industries for example, or in clothing shops where they are encouraged to model the bou7que 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 unimagina7ve majority…who were accused of trivialising the mod style”
Hippy girl • Subculture arises through universi7es 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, Fiqh 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
Influences and origins: • The Raincoats, Poly Styrene, LiLiPUT, The Slits, The Runaways/Joan Jef, Pat Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Exene Cervenka, Siouxsie Sioux, Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon, Neo Boys, Chalk Circle, Ut, Bush Tetras, Frightwig, An7-‐Scrun7 Fac7on, Scrawl,and Fiqh Column • hfp://www.nme.com/blog/ index.php? blog=10&p=10176&7tle=poly_ stryrene&more=1&c=1
Riot Grrl??? • Mount Pleasant Race Riots in 1991 • Bratmobile member Jen Smith (later of Rastro! and The Quails), reacted to the violence by prophe7cally wri7ng in a lefer 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 oq-‐used phrase that first appeared in Vail's fanzine Jigsaw "Revolu7on 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
What makes this a true subculture? • 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 incompa7ble reali7es” (Hebdige: 1979)
Media afen7on turns to Grunge scene • Courtney Love and Hole • Style without the subculture • Distorts even further as the 90’s con7nue into the more more media friendly Spice Girls use of phrase “Girl Power”
Spice Girls • 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 reduc7on of young women to cartoon representa7ons
Dick Hebdige Subculture: The meaning of Style • “Subcultures represent ‘noise’ (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representa7on in the media.” • Offence caused by lyrics and behaviour is important as it leads to ques7ons about ‘the parent culture’
The commodity form • Subcultural signs like dress styles and music are turned into mass produced objects • Eg: clothing which is ripped as an anarchic an7-‐fashion statement becomes mass produced with rips as part of the design
A threat to the family? • Womens Own 1977 • Hebdige suggests that runs a feature on the press set up this “Punks and Mothers”, perceived threat as smiling, reclining next away of neutralising to the family pool etc. something that could not be conceived by the • Non poli7cal threat that pe7t-‐bourgeois ul7mately will not therefore has to be disturb tradi7onal ‘domes7cated’ values
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.
st 21 century demonisa7on • “Style in par7cular provokes a double response (in the media): it is alternately celebrated (in the fashion page) and ridiculed or reviled (in those ar7cles which define subcultures as social problems)”
Bricolage: Edwardian Style-‐ Saville Row-‐Teddy Boy
Roger Mayne (1956) • 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 7me hanging about on the streets. Girls had to be careful not to ‘get into trouble’. (Mc Robbie, Garber)
Chris Steele-‐Perkins The Teds (1979) •
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In early 1954, on a late train from Southend, someone pulled the communica7on 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 aqer a dance. They were ready for ac7on: bricks and sand-‐ filled socks were used. Fiqy-‐five youths were taken in for ques7oning. 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 Bri7sh 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 fascina7ng story that spans some three decades. hfp://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 Bri7sh 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 poli7cs of the Na7onal Front skins as they infiltrate the working class estate in the UK in the 1980’s
• The subordina7on of Milky as ‘other’ by Combo
Further Research • McRobbie, Angela (1977) Girls and Subcultures • Hebdige, Dick (1979) Subculture: the meaning of Style • Borden, Ian (2001) Skateboarding, Space and the City • Mc Donald, Nancy (2001) The Graffi) Subculture • DeMello, Margo (2000) Bodies of inscrip7on: a cultural history of the modern tafoo community • Ganz, Nicholas (2006) Graffi) Woman, Thames and Hudson
Filmography This is England (2006) Shane Meadows Quadrophenia (1979) Frank Roddam Dogtown and Z Boys (2001) Stacey Peralta Jump London/ Jump Britain (2005) Mike Chris7e • Yamakasi -‐ Les samouraïs des temps modernes (2001) Luc Besson • • • •