For Westerners, the index case of subculture has to be the
1960s UK conflict between the razor-sharp, tailored
mods and their mortal enemies, the greasy
rockers.
Difference was critical to these first self-identified youth subcultures: difference in dress, in music, in drug of choice, in the favored
mode of
transport...everything. This obsessive focus on not just standing out, but standing out
just so - on showing the world precisely the right angle of a hat, length of a coat, shortness of hair - has defined many a subculture since. We recognize
b-boys,
ganguro girls, and
straightedge punks by such deployments, among many, many other identifiable groups. (It's not just a youth thing, either:
leathermen and the
delightfully recrudescent roller derby culture are largely adult phenomena.)
To a devotee of a given subculture, such matters, far from being a "narcissism of small differences," are a matter of pivotal import in framing how one presents oneself to the world:
how we want to be seen, how we want others to understand us. But I'm getting older now, and further out of the loop, and I realize that just maybe I'm losing the ability to discern these differences in the people I pass walking down the street. I find myself asking, who and where are the new subcultures? And how do they choose to present themselves to us?
posted by adamgreenfield
on Sep 25, 2004 -
17 comments
A history of UK Punk Rock from 1976-79. "Featuring an A-Z of punk bands from Adam and The Ants to The Sex Pistols to X Ray Spex, fanzines, punk girls, rare record sleeves, audio clips, fashion, punk rock lyrics, interviews and loads of pictures." It's not all about the Sex Pistols.
posted by archimago
on Sep 18, 2003 -
48 comments
The Burqa Incident. British freethinker
Sarah Lawrence dresses in a burqa to make a point at the US Libertarian Party Conference, and causes a hotel-wide security alert. Looks like one of those systemic sense-of-humour failures that conspire to spiral out of control these days. But isn't it a
bit worrying when even
Libertarian Party officials start threatening to report their own
conference speakers to the FBI for suspicious dress sense?
posted by ntk
on Jul 21, 2002 -
17 comments
