ILLU5060 - Subcultures & Style

Subcultures & Style Lecture Notes

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Exploring & defining subculture & style
Subculture:

• Dates to ~18th century to refer to deviant groups or urban underclass.
• The Lower tiers of society.
• Modern association with Post 1945.
• Teenagers & teen identity.
• Punks, Rockers, goths etc.
• Defined as a group who rebel against mainstream culture.
• Minority groups that counter the mainstream culture.

Mainstream culture:

• Popular.
• Lowest common denominator.
• Safe, unoffensive.
• Conservative.
• The things you can safely discuss at an extended family gathering.
• Society’s current default.
• “The organisation of a society into hierarchical structures that are shaped by political media social & corporate media”- Owen Jones.
• Found in Institutions, systems, & authorities.
• Operates through consensus.

A subculture signals a breakdown of consensus.

• Dissenting voices.
• Outright refusal to participate in mainstream culture.
• Desire to subvert, parody, or disrupt elements of mainstream culture.

Contradictory themes: Empowerment (personal autonomy) – Impotence (Lack of power/ political influence)

Case Study 1: The Beats (1950’s America)

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​Frame of Reference:

• Sub cultural elite – mostly male, young, white, educated, middle class, sexually ambivalent
• Writers: William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlingetti.
• Frame of reference: Post WW2 1950’s America, alienation from mainstream society. America escaping from economic depression.
• The Beat, as in “beaten”.
• Disenfranchised

Beat Literature themes:

• Anti-mainstream (straight) culture.
• Opposition to the military-industrial machine.
• Anti 1050’s materialism & consumerism
• Anti-censorship
• Moral ambiguity – liberal attitudes towards sex, gender, & relationships.
• Emphasis on individual autonomy.
• Underlying spirituality/ ecological consciousness
• Iconoclastic in form – freeform and experimental prose, links with abstract painting, be-bop jazz.

Square values vs. Beat values
Square values:

• Mainstream culture.
• Deferred gratification/ planned future action.
• Conformity to bureaucratic rules.
• Comfort in routine – strong work ethic.
• Consumerism = status.
• Family as moral center.
• Defined gender roles.
• Deference to Church & State.
• Fatalism.

Beat values:

• Counter-cultural
• Hedonism – leads to personal enlightenment.
• Spontaneous action/ new experiences.
• Non-conformity.
• Distain for work ethic.
• Anti-materialistic.
• Spiritual > interest in other (eastern) belief systems.
• Non-binary relationships.
• Belief in self-autonomy.

The Beats: The cycle of a subculture

• Growth & significant – self-promotion by beat writers.
• Popular with a young college audience – disenfranchised by Dwight Eisenhower’s America.
• Attracted audiences outside USA > Europe (French new wave, 1960’s counterculture).
• Vilification & absorption – reassertion by the mainstream.

Absorption of a subculture

• Critical re-framing in the popular press
• Media distortion & vilification of “beat” culture, evolving into a caricature of beat values, the birth of “beatthink”.

The Beatnik caricature (Lipton 1959)

• Sloppily groomed/ goatee
• Turtle neck sweater, sandals, sunglasses, beret.
• Prone to nonsensical slang and an affected patois.
• Convinced in his own intellectual superiority.

The Beat-chick caricature (Lipton 1959)

• Appearance; oversized sweater, black stockings, black eyeliner, unkempt hair
• “Weird & Spacey”
• Deviant/ morally suspect
• Sexually available/ open

1960s: Beat exploitation films develop.

​Case Study 2: Punk (1970s Britain)

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Punk n. 1. Inferior, rotten or worthless person or thing. 2. Short for punk rock. 3. A young male homosexual. 4. A prostitute – adj. (Collins English Dictionary)
“No subculture has sought with more grim determination than the punks to detach itself from the taken-for-granted landscape of normalised forms” Hebdige: subculture & the meaning of style 1979
Key frame of reference points:

• The influence of the subcultural elite.
• Punk dress & rituals.
• DIY, sub-design and demystification.
• Detournement of mainstream texts.

Subcultural elite
Punk Vs. Mainstream values:

• Clockwork souls routines/ the job yuou hate but are too scared to pack in/ arse lickers
• Television
• 19/Honey/Harpers/ Vouge/ Infact all magazines that treat their readers as idiots

Formulating a Dress code:

• Anti-taste: reflection social dislocation.
• Use of collage & bricolage (use of a safety pin).
• Provocative: adoption of fetish wear & sexualised shock imagery.
• Subversion and co-opting of loaded cultural signs.
• Cross-gender dress.

Subversion of loaded signs – eg use of the swastika (the symbol of the enemy)
Provocative – use of pornographic imagery/ fetish fashion
Subcultural Rituals

• Nihilism.
• Sarcastic patois.
• Speed logic.
• The “pogo”.
• Participation in the spectacle. Blurring of audience/ performer dynamic
• Gobbing etiquette.

DIY, sub-design and demystification

• Participation & creation of cultural capital.
• Amateurism as a virtue- authenticity.
• DIY culture. Make your own means of production.
• Anti-corporate anti-elitism – demystification.

Punk visual lexicon/ semiotic code:

• Energetic/ urgent.
• Crudely produced.
• Cheaply printed – restricted use of colour.
• Mix of photomontage/ collaged elements.
• No rock star posturing.
• Lettering: ransom note style/ stencilled/ use of Letraset.
• Themes: class & suburbia, consumerism, urban decay, sexuality, criminality, anti-mainstream.

Detournement:

• Aping the parent culture
• Appropriation & alteration of an existing mainstream artefact

Jamie Reid’s punk graphics: political content of early punk. Jamie Reid & The Suburban Press (1970 – 1975) – “low-level shit stirring”.
Punk: The cycle of a subculture - There is a point where a subculture is at its most potent – after which it begins to be co-opted or absorbed into the mainstream.
Features/ signs of absorption:

• The subculture becomes common knowledge – popular, exploited by the mainstream.
• Subcultural elite lose control of the subculture.
• Early mainstream commercialisation of dress code – selling out.
• Corporate commodification & branding.
• The authentic story – “staking a claim” by the subcultural elite.
• Mythologising the story.
• Re-presentation & nostalgia (post modernity) – Curating and reframing the past.
• Academic reframing.
• Institutional/ cultural reframing.

The Cycle Of A Subculture: Absorption Into The Mainstream

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There is a point where a subculture is at its most potent – after which it begins to be co-opted or absorbed into the mainstream.
Features/ signs of absorption:

• The subculture becomes common knowledge – popular, exploited by the mainstream.
• Subcultural elite lose control of the subculture.
• Early mainstream commercialisation of dress code – selling out.
• Corporate commodification & branding.
• The authentic story – “staking a claim” by the subcultural elite.
• Mythologising the story.
• Re-presentation & nostalgia (post modernity) – Curating and reframing the past.
• Academic reframing.
• Institutional/ cultural reframing.

Defining Subculture

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A Subculture is a sociological phenomenon that stems from a disenfranchised group's need/ desire to rebel against their perception of mainstream societal values, thus forming their own micro-society in which they can feel authentically invested in.
​Subcultures adopt their own values & aesthetic codes which confront their contemporary mainstream culture.
A unique & distinct cultural uniform separates members of a subculture from that which they oppose. The perceived otherness of a subculture's uniform helps separate them from the mainstream, until eventually the mainstream adopts & appropriates said uniform, and it becomes a historical costume.

David Muggleton - Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning Of Style

Cultural Capital Case Study: Vaporwave

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As subcultures develop, they form their own unique cultural branding.
Cultural capital may take several forms which may or may not be present in a given subculture.

• Visual themes - unique icons, or appropriated iconography used in a different context. Art & design.
• Audio themes - A recognisable "sound" that permeates throughout the subculture.
• Cultural themes - Key points of political/ social/ spiritual consistency. A coherent ideology.

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Vapourwave is primarily a music genre which developed its own subcultural following which has transformed into a vague nihilistic commentary on modern consumerism & capitalism through its visual aesthetic.

Vaporwave's visual aesthetic has surpassed its music as the primary cultural capital of the movement. Both the audio and visual elements of vaporwave are iconic & distinct, yet the visual elements are more striking.

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Common themes of the vaporwave visual aesthetic include:

• Anime and cartoons, often from the '70s to '90s but not always.
• Drug use, almost always in the form of codeine syrup or lean, or pills.
• Consumerism; the vaporwave aesthetic often displays brand names and logos. The most common include Adidas, Pepsi Cola, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh Plus, PlayStation, Arizona Iced Tea, and Fiji Water.
• Computer hardware and graphics from the '80s-early '00s.
• Cities and malls.
• Sadness or distress; often employed to emphasize the ironic soullessness of the Vaporwave aesthetic.
• Liminal spaces - A location which is a transition between two other locations, or states of being. Typically these are abandoned, and oftentimes empty.
• Grids, lines, shapes; a crisp clean edge.
• The colours pink and teal.
• Altered Reality; pictures with unnatural hues and tones can be seen throughout.
• Computer glitches.
• The use of Japanese, Korean and Chinese characters.

Vaporwave | Aesthetics Wiki | Fandom