So instead I give you this article from 2009 about the film SLC PUNKS.
I just watched SLC Punk I had forgotten what an interesting movie that it is. If you like punk music the soundtrack alone is worth listening to. But that really is not the most interesting aspect of the movie. It is really an existential exploration of what the punk movement meant to people in the 1980's. Or more accurately what punk meant to one man.
I would put it into the same category as Fight Club because it really is asking what a person is supposed to do as they move from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. It is really a question of how do you stay authentic within a scene like that when to be authentic is to not move forward in life. As the characters in the film grow older they begin to split apart and cracks start to form in their friendships as the real world starts to intrude on the adolescent existence.
A girl in the movie finally asks the main character why he is trying so hard to look a certain way. She says wouldn't it be more rebellious to just leave your hair alone and not spend all your time trying to find punky clothes to wear. She had realized that the whole scene was dying and had become basically one big Halloween party where everyone was beginning to look exactly the same. That is the problem with any group movement when people have to start wearing a uniform to be what they think is an individual.
That is the sad nature of the punk scene today. I see these kids roaming around the town looking exactly like the punks did when I was in highschool. Nothing has changed. The world hasn't been destroyed. The system of capitalism hasn't fallen apart. Corporate Amerika hasn't eaten itself (though it might in the future) . There is no scene, nothing is original anymore it is only a variant on what has gone before. It isn't about selling out or even buying in.
It is just about doing what you want to do and not being worried about whatever particular scene you want to fit into.
GOOD DAY!!
4 comments:
I think you may be putting too much emphasis on the reasons folks give for belonging to subcultures (and by subculture I mean not only punks, but enthusiastic Walmart shoppers, Honda owners, Conservatives and Liberals, etc.), reasons which may or may not correspond with reality.
Subcultures carry associated ideas and values which people choose not because they believe they are good, effective, plausible, etc., etc., but because they value what they believe the adoption of that set of ideas and values says about them. Marketing in, marketing out.
When I was much younger, I had long hair, wore lots of tie-dye and dashikis, old army jackets, sandals, etc., and generally tried to behave in a manner my 17-year old self imagined would fit in in my imagined version of Haight-Ashbury, and fantasized about moving to Tennessee to join The Farm (a commune still around in those days, not certain if it still exists). Unfortunately for me, this was in the late '70s-early '80s, so I was about a decade behind, but I'm not much of a trend-setter.
I can look back rationally and realize that I had no illusions as to the viability of the bulk of intellectual baggage that came along with that, but the idea of being perceived as gentle and pacifistic, nonmaterialistic, etc., etc., is what appealed to me. I bought the package, and turned around and used that package to market myself- that's the whole point.
I am willing to grant you the ability to look back rationally and see those problems. But, when you are in the midst of the "scene" don't most people fully believe that the reasons they are giving for belonging are true and valid ones and all for the best intentions "to make the world over in a way that they would like better." ?
His name is a killing word.
I'm not so sure. I think in any given group, the 'true believers' are a distinct minority. Most folks make a conscious choice not to think too hard about things that challenge their preconceptions and/or make them uncomfortable, which is very different than looking thoughtfully at those things and coming up aces.
We construct a self-image, and then we fill it with stuff we believe reinforces that self-image, rejecting that which does not. The process of selection is not one of rationally weighing the evidence, but of judging conformity to that self-image.
At some point some folks break out of that, becoming either arrogant enough to believe that whatever stuff they subscribe to must speak well of them because, hey, they selected it, or so broken down in spirit by life's pain and rejection that they no longer bother to maintain that personal marketing effort at all. We call that growing up .
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