Subcultures (left to right)
‘Casuals’ which are now known as chavs
Beatnik
Glam/goth
New romantics, grew from punks
Goths
Northern Soul
Today the aim was to take a broad look at subcultures and how they've formed, primarily looking at style cultures and how they dress.
Part One: Thinking about the other
We watched a few Fred Perry videos as the fashion of his designs was in fashion when these sub cultures were all around. We watched a video called 'Born to be Wild' which spoke about the Teddy Boys. The style came from the Edwardians. They were working class people who had money in their pockets that wanted to mess with the class system. It then mentioned about the Notting Hill Riots. The riots were 10 white people assaulting black people, the riots didn't last for long and the police managed to arrest the gang by the following day. The rocker wanted something that wouldn't be destroyed easily so embraced one of the best British inventions, the motorcycle. In the 60's there was a generation gap as no parent wanted their son to lounge around in oil covered jeans and ride a motorcycle and get in fights all day. This then turned into the skinhead culture, which was football hooliganism, which was started by a few kids who wanted to be be different.
The self as other:
'Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself'. (De Beauvoir, 1950)
Here, De Beauvoir talks about Woman being set as the other of Male, and as dominant, Masculinity becomes the holder of all of the power - PATRIARCHY
What is patriarchy?
'a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is reckoned through the male line'.
To define yourself as 'other' means a rejection of the dominant ideology in whatever we are talking about.
From the quote below we can see how different subcultures work and how we see this start to form.
Storming = throwing your toys out of the pram
Norming = stimulating and getting used to culture
The Other:
'everything turns on who counts as a fellow human being, as a rational agent in the only relevant sense – the sense in which rational agency is synonymous with membership of our moral community' (Rorty, 1993, p. 124).
We then looked at newspaper articles. Mass media newspaper articles are key in fuelling the fears about the other.
Part Two: Intertextuality and Assimilation
Intertextuality = the shaping of a text's meaning by another text
Assimilation = the process of taking in and fully understanding information or ideas.
We watched the second Fred Perry film where they spoke more about different subcultures. A Fred Perry Subculture Films #2: This Is A Modern World
They spoke about the mods and these are the notes I took:
They weren't interested in Rock n' Roll
The scooter was very important as they no longer had to rely on their parents
They all looked really smart in the way they dressed
In 1963 the TV had become very big
The boots got bigger, and the hair got shorter
They made their own wars as they thought it was fun to run around and smash things up as they wanted 15 minutes of fame
The culture started to split as people were picking things up from other cultures
We then looked at a picture of a Burberry trench coat and thought about the different people that could wear it and how many different cultures all those people relate to. The coat then means something different because of how many cultures and things it's paired with.
The final video on the Fred Perry culture was all about the Punk's which was maybe the most famous style of subculture.
They wanted to scare people
Nobody looked the same
Feminist ideas started to be heard
Bricolage - (in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things. eg. "the chaotic bricolage of the novel is brought together in a unifying gesture"
Something constructed or created from a diverse range of things. eg. "bricolages of painted junk"
Bricolage is a French word which means 'handyman shop' so in this country would basically mean B&Q.
This lecture was interesting but I did find it quite hard to understand but I have always wanted to know about the history of the subcultures though because a lot of fashion is back in now as it was back in the 60's/70's.
Komentáře