A Historical Perspective on the Diffusion of
European Male Costume and the
Rise of the Youth Sub-Culture as “Style” Smorgasbord
By Peter Konefal
What commonality exists between the plundered costume of the aristocracy worn by literati on the streets of Mozart’s Venice and the melange of hip hop and skater style consumed en masse by suburban white male youth in almost every suburban high school in North America, if not worldwide. How, and by what mechanism did the stylistic attributes of aristocratic costumes circulate from their original political and social context to land on the backs of an upwardly mobile citizenry? The erosion of the monarchic power in the 18th century set the stage for an unprecedented diffusion of ‘elite’ styles and was implicated in the social transformations that eventually led to a rejection of noble opulence altogether. The rise of the entrepreneurial class and the burgeoning economic regime of capitalism entailed its own entourage of changes in men’s style and dress . The rise of the bourgeoisie had everything to do with the first wide scale diffusion of style across formerly sacrosanct boundaries of class and wealth. As Stuart Ewen documents with great breadth in his landmark text All Consuming Images, class and public worth in society were increasingly defined not by heredity or public action, but by appearances. The more one could master appearances and demonstrate wealth, whether faked or not, the greater one’s public standing was. By the turn of the century, social critic Rosalind William’s writes, the exotic wonderland of consumerism was ingrained as an ethic that overrode artistic and social sensibility . For men’s fashion, this meant the cultivation of a respectable, formal and wholly conservative costume that served not only for business but for everyday affairs. We see this homogeny of dress and the restrained public conduct of the upper and middle classes in Georges Seurat’s neo-impressionist 1884 painting “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”. While this is surely an example of a historical period in which the mastery of manners, appearances and fashion were very important in order to belong to the ‘right’ community, we now turn our attention to the second half of the 20th century, when evidencing one’s association with a particular ethnic and stylistic community through the display of clothing achieved even greater importance.
We now investigate the changes in style and dress that occur among the newly important demographic of young baby boomers in post-war Britain and the US. These stylistic changes occurred in part because for the first time a young generation could afford to do what previous generations could not: spend disposable income on clothes and fashion. For young post-war Britain, this meant self-cultivation as a pseudo-American teenager. From teddy boy, to punk anarchist, grunge recluse or hip hop egoism, the market for youth style was seized upon as a highly profitable endeavour. Suddenly the concept of ‘target markets’ and ‘teen demographics’ emerged, and with it evolved a market that ‘had something for everybody’. The desire to be current, hip and fashionable inculcated a willingness to ‘belong’ by purchasing the accoutrements of a particular youth sub-culture no matter how far removed from any relevant cultural meaning. Any culture, from anywhere which had a style or possessed an upcoming “look” or “sound” was ripe to be plucked from its origins and harvested for popular cache. While conscious of the risk of simple dichotomies of ‘authentic’, ‘pure’ culture out of which ‘mass’, ‘commercial’ culture and style arise, how do we understand authenticity in relation to the global marketplace of style and youth culture after world war II?
Throughout history, class divisions have often been dramatically reflected in the style, and expense of one’s clothing. In the 16th century, the fashion of the aristocratic English male often mirrored the sheer opulence and decorative value of women’s costume. Heavily influenced by the uptight etiquette and fashions of the Spanish court, English aristocratic men as well as women wore a dramatic ruff in order to connote authority and prestige . Upon viewing the 16th century painting, Queen Elizabeth at Blackfriars, one is impressed by the incredible decorative costumes of the men, which functioned to accentuate the idealized v-shape of the torso, enclosed the waist in a tight cuirasse and effectively incapacitated them from doing physical work. This was royal costume that embedded the harsh division between ruler and ruled, and almost mandated the uptight, stiff posture that accompanied the costume. It was powerful in that it advertised a member of the upper class before any words were said. The aristocracy were the stylistic celebrities of the Jacobin era, and their style exerted considerable influence upon the middle class who were eager to purchase something, anything that advertised their wealth in the same way. Middle class men were compelled to wear fur to accentuate their comparatively drab costume, and made every legal attempt to imitate the style of their aristocratic brethren.
Some monarch’s seized upon the apparent demand for the style and look of the aristocracy and made efforts to enable the sale of these properties - for a hefty price of course. By actively cooperating and encouraging the masses to purchase the ‘noble’ look, the aristocracy was making an unprecedented compromise in order to attain more wealth. Louis XIV was among the first to ‘brand’ himself along with his royal style and appointed marketers to sell France’s image and sophisticated aesthetic taste throughout the world (Ewen, 30). This trend spread across the spice and sugar trade routes established between the Americas and Europe. In the 19th and 20th century, the transference of European classical style to the mansions and wardrobes of the nouveau riche class of Americans increased dramatically. Wealthy, upper class estates that had reaped incredible profits off the plantation slavery system were desperate to purchase the signs of wealth from an increasingly expanding market for Greco/Roman, Renaissance and Baroque styling and motifs.
The paradox of ‘elite style’ which could be ‘democratized’ had begun, and its evolutions would become ever more cheap and blatant as the middle and lower class realized the importance of looking and acting like an elite. In Stuart Ewen’s chapter All Consuming Image, he cites the example of Ira Steward who in 1873 described an emerging middle class whose identity was fixated on the possession of material goods, increasingly paranoid by the sanctity of a ‘thin veil of appearances’ that upheld their social status. To be middle class, was to ‘have just enough’ to look like one was wealthy. Clearly the democratization of aristocratic style was taking its toll on those who could not afford it. Such a demand for the ‘look of the wealthy’ created demand for ever-cheaper replications of expensive clothing and caused a boom in cheap, ready-to-wear clothing boutiques beginning in the early 1870s. They were the pinnacle of political power and for those who wished to gain standing and favour, new forms of courtly etiquette and behaviour had to be learned, royal aristocratic dance choreography had to be practiced and above all one had to be up to date in the liveries of the aristocracy. As the middle class and nouveau riche nobility made every effort to copy the style and behaviours of the old nobility, established nobles became increasingly antagonized and insecure. Baron Johann Caspar Riesbeck observed sourly in 1787 ‘Vienna Swarms with literati. When a man accosts you, whom you do not know by his dirty hands for a painter, smith or shoemaker, or by his finery for a footman, or by his fine clothes for a man of consequence, you may be assured that you see either a man of letters or a tailor; for between these two classes I have not yet learned to distinguish’. (Steptoe, 15). This keen imperative for the middle class to adopt the accoutrements, posture and literate ability of the upper class continues with the rise of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class in society, and yet forebodes a change in dress and in the aristocratic style of extravagant male dress.
The beheading of King Louis XVI symbolically signalled the end of European monarchic power, a process which was largely complete by the end of world war I. Increasing after the death of King Louis XVI, respectable, bourgeois men opted out of the excesses of royal costume, and chose instead a new formal, conservative costume of suits, frock coats, breeches and hats that varied little until world war II .
After the war, a new society and world was emerging, in which imperial powers were gaining and losing colonies and African, West Indian and Asian immigrants were seeking better lives for themselves and their children in the promising cities of the US, Britain and Europe. America, freed militarily from the isolationism and consumer stagnation of the 1930s, had produced a demographic that would flex its power and cultural power like never before.
In Britain and in America, a ‘teenage’ demographic was earning more money than their parents could have dreamed of in the depression and wartime years. The cultural and fashion industries focussed more explicitly than ever before on a ‘youth’ market thereby leaving adult fashion (which was still primarily a women’s domain) to a range of department stores and specialty luxury ‘designer label’ markets. Since the men’s ‘ready-to-wear’ suit and coat has remained largely static and unchanging, there was much less of an imperative to capitalize on a less lucrative demographic. The youth market on the other hand, was being seized upon as a marketing and advertising arena of synergy and product tie-ins. Hollywood films stars James Dean and Marlon Brando re-branded the T-shirt, jean and tousled hair look into one of instant ‘coolness’ and laid back sex appeal, while Elvis, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry were signed on to various record labels to popularized the doo-wop suit look and sound. The new ‘look’s of these rock n’ roll stars was the stuff of teen fashion magazines and companies which actively sold the rock star look to the masses. “Brylcreem, a little dab’ll do ya…” was like an “…an icon attesting to a time before there were 600 products to put on your hair," said Daniel Altman, creative director of A Hundred Monkeys, a branding company in Mill Valley, Calif. He said that the trademarks deliberately sought to conjure heroic images” .
In Britain and subsequently in America, young working class men combined zoot suits with Edwardian style tailoring and formed gangs and cliques (Hebdige, 50). Astonishing conservative America, they comprised one of the first controversial, rebellious cultures comprised of a hybrid of different styles and musical popularity. Hollywood gangster films and pulp fiction heavily influenced the image and attitude of the teddy boys, who went to great length to copy their ‘alter’ heroes (See Appendix for more information on this distinct cultural style). As early as the 1930s, working class youth cultivated an identity that de-emphasized their inferiority in terms of class, and emphasized a strong, American-style ‘gangster’ attitude, mannerisms and dress style. Sociologist Jerry White argues that glamorized gangster identities seen in films like ‘Little Caeser’ (1930) , ‘Scarface’ (1932) and others helped forge the British working class identification with an American ‘democratic’ gangster culture which idealized the low class rebel instead of stigmatizing him. Seen in this light, the very commercially motivated attempts to appeal to a ‘rebel’ demographic in American masculine culture had in fact resulted in a complex and somewhat globalized refusal of classist inferiority. Where reggae would inspire the African diaspora to throw of ‘the man’ and adopt a self-oriented value system and self-esteem, the pop-rock and rebel culture of America functioned not only to accrue millions for Hollywood and major record labels, but to inspire the working class to pride on their own terms. This all violently conflicted with the elitist cultural perspective o f Theodore Adorno and the Frankfurt school. To them British teddy boys were imitators of a depraved, American trash culture that had nothing but immoral cultural and anti-authoritarian influence to offer .
The Americanized, hybrid and dislocated culture and style of the teddy boys allowed them to cultivate angst and racist views toward the changing working class ghetto, which had recently seen the immigration of West Indians. The slouch, mannerisms, zoot suit and the pop music of Chuck Berry and Elvis offered them an exotic and glamorized escape from their working class condition. Dislocated from Elvis’ imitation of black rhythm and blues, they were insulated from the irony of nurturing xenophobic views while borrowing from the zoot suit and listening to black rock n roll music . As Dick Hebdige writes, “The history of rock’s construction was, after, easily concealed. It appeared to be merely the latest in a long chain of American novelties (jazz, the hula hoop, the internal combustion engine, popcorn) which embodied in concrete form the ‘liberated’ drives of New World Capitalism” (Hebdige, 50).
Where the bourgeoisie of the 19th century gladly constructed “…a stylish imago in order to maintain a claim to social position” the youth of the world, for better or worse, felt suddenly compelled to ‘belong’ and to ‘identify’ as never before. Whether this belonging was a completely hypocritical act as it was for British white boys to don zoot and Edwardian style suits, listen to Chuck Berry and then profess a hatred of the coloured immigrant population, it became a secondary concern to the imperative of at once rebelling (against social cohesion and parents) and conforming (to the style of the teddy boys). These same characteristics characterize almost all of the youth sub-cultures that were to follow, however commercialized and sanitized they might have become over time. Although films and records made a tremendous amount of profit off the popularity of the Doo-wop sound and look both domestically and overseas, its scale and integration paled in terms of later day commercial exploitation and appropriation. One such ‘later day’ culture that defied (to some extent) exploitation (almost by self-exploiting itself) to some degree was Britain’s punk epoch.
Exploding onto the streets of London in the mid 1970s, punk was a hybrid style that later inspired Goth, Grunge and neo-punk/skater cultures of America in the 1980s and 90s (See Appendix for more information on these distinct cultural styles). Originating from the “dubious parentage” of David Bowies glam-rock, American punk precursors (Iggy Pop, the Ramones), London pub rockers, and inspired by the black r & b and Jamaican ska, emerged a new pastiche musical and visual style that was defined by its resentful disdain of the establishment. Its very image flew in the face of any semblance of unified ‘look’ and the only rule for punk costume and image was if it would offend, disgust and horrify the mainstream (Hebdige, 25). This channelled punk style down predictable bastions of establishment distaste, not the least of which, as already mentioned, was an affinity and respect for the black community. Instead of outright theft of black musical tradition, they respectfully appropriated Jamaican sound and acknowledged its source (unlike the Teddy boys) (Hebdige, 63). This open attraction to reggae put racial issues into the spotlight and hinted at a complicity on the part of the British establishment; the pretence that racial tensions didn’t exist and had nothing to do with the high unemployment and discrimination that faced the working class as a whole. The fact that the plight of unemployment among the black immigrant population was even more prevalent than among white working class emphasized the disjunction and inequality, and made punk a fittingly discordant sub-culture . Amid an emerging Rastafarianism message in reggae, which preached black pride and encouraged a dismissal of the injustice of ‘Babylon’, many punks were refused identification with an exclusive cultural music that was not intended for them (Hedbige, 64).
As punk rockers and youth exerted their particularly crass brand of masculinity and strove to resolve the influence and rejection they felt from the reggae scene, they experienced a markedly different treatment than more unified and long standing cultural traditions like rock, r & b and hip hop culture. Although they provided much of the cultural material and ‘shock’ value to inspire the emergence of ‘heavy metal’ and grunge in the 80s and 90s, punk was fundamentally not as commercially appealing as disco, electro-pop and pop-rock were in the 80s. None of the authentic punk artists had individual fan bases with that primary ingredient – middle and upper class disposable income. Unlike the ‘rank and file’ of pop music performers of the 1980s, punk music stars were not propositioned with Pepsi and Coke ads and remained vitally underground, until they were popularized in American by the rise and fall of skateboard culture and the development of American punk (some of which remained faithful to the anti-fashion, anti-establishment tenets of the original British punk scene. As Martin Wong writes “…the birth of punk in the '70s gave nerds such as Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and Devo an outlet for energy, but indie rock transformed the culture into a style. Clunky glasses, bowling shirts, and racing jackets can be attributed to DIY bands like Beat Happening and Mudhoney. The natural, nonchalant, and cheap look of these bands has been appropriated by stores ranging from Kmart to Bloomingdale's….the fashion has crossed over into hipsterland, where people wear non-prescription glasses to look like brains, little backpacks to look like little kids, and polyester to look like they just don't care” . As punk was lifted out of its original context and given American popularity, where it could be consumed as ‘style’ it was easy and ripe for manipulation by commercial ‘trend-setters’ and ‘cool hunters’ – the same cool hunters who saw white suburban kids wearing the accoutrements of African American inner city Hip Hop youth and realized ‘loose jeans is not a fad, it’s a movement’.
By the time grunge had appeared as a post-punk, post-80’s preppie style, the infrastructure of cultural industries and branding had changed dramatically. The deregulation of the 1980s through the neo-liberal economic policy of US president Ronald Reagan and Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulrooney had resulted in international agreements like NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) and GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) which with the IMF, WTO and other global organizations advocated decreased cultural industry protectionism and super ceded the jurisdiction of national governments to control cultural industry imports and exports. What this meant is that music, movies and mass-produced fashion retailers were free to utilize cheap off-shore (Indonesian and Asian primarily) production facilities to generate massive amounts of product at a fraction of domestic costs. Money saved from production overhead could be funnelled directly into advertising and marketing, which for almost all industries received massive increases in funding in ‘brand panic’ after black Monday of October 19th, 1987. In the ensuing economic recovery, corporations practiced the strict principles of flexible accumulation, kept work forces temporary, underpaid and increased marketing and advertising revenues through the roof. With this massive incentive to brand, corporations targeted the lucrative youth market not only through advertising but culturally as well. In order to create profits, corporations needed to understand the culture and sub-culture of youth, speak to them on their own terms and in so doing ‘become culture’. The story of skate/alterna culture clothing brand Vans treads the thin line between ‘authenticity’ and cross-promotion, branding and profit accruing in any way possible. As Dave Wielenga writes
“…That's where the brand-new Vans Skate Park comes in. When its 46,000 square feet of vert ramps, cement pools and street courses open Saturday at the Block in Orange, the Vans Skate Park will be the first such facility ever positioned as an anchor of a shopping mall. It's down the walkway from the Saks Fifth Avenue outlet and next door to Borders Books. The irony is obvious. Typically, skateboarders have been chased away from shopping centers; the idea here, however, is to lure young, renegade daredevils off the streets and steer them-along with the disposable income of their had-it-up-to-here parents-into the cash flow of the retail mainstream. No, skateboarding is not a crime anymore. It's a cross-promotion. ”
Really, one must agree with Vans President and CEO Gary Schoenfeld when he sentimentally reflects that“…[ the company is] just going to stay close to these kids, just keep doing things better. And as we grow, we'll make sure they feel they're benefiting”. One wonders how rebellious it will be to packaged co-branded, Pepsi-sponsored pop-punk by Blink 182 and Sum 41 while one is skating in a mall (See Appendix for more information on this distinct cultural style). For these kids, how natural it must seem to watch a Kellogg’s corn pop’s commercial depicting a skater who can’t live a day without skating, but more importantly, without the essential ingredient of Kellogg’s corn pops. Corn Pops and skate/punk culture would seem to share little in common with each other until one considers that most of the young adults and teenagers who skate and listen to punk-rock today have grown up with Vans and Corn pops since a very young age. Some critics argue that these children and teenagers of the generation X and the younger generation to follow now live in Tom Vanderbilt’s ‘ perpetual marketing event’ with little or no recognition of history and life outside of the branded world. Accusations that ‘kids today would mutiny’ if they attended any cultural event that ‘wasn’t shrink-wrapped’ seem unlikely if one considers that the predominant history of underground sub-culture has consistently arose out of a frustration with mass, commercial culture.
Afro-Caribean ex-gang member Africa Bambaataa and many other founders of Hip Hop’s unique mix of spoken word and electronic beat have repeatedly cited the extremely commercialized prevalence of Disco as a primary reason for their ‘going underground’ (See Appendix for more information on this distinct cultural style). In the early days of Hip Hop, confined as it was to small Bronx communities, it was underground even in the black community. It was only with its spread across the US to hotspots in the ostracized L.A ghettos that it was seized upon as a cultural medium of power and ‘diasporic interchange’ (Lipsitz, 43). Although arguably, Hip Hop was mainstream at the time of Lipsitz writing in 1994, it has become much more so in the years since, and predictably this commercial mainstream centres on artists who offer creativity, talent, flashy music videos and none of the political activism and ‘speaking out’ that characterized the counter-hegemonic practices of Lady Latifah, Herc and the Herculoids and ‘bam tha man’ in the early days of Hip Hop. While the mainstream pays tribute to those artists who either are unaware of political and social issues or choose not to focus on them. Because of this, many female emcees have comprised the majority of cultural progression towards the revolutionary roots of Hip Hop, “Hip-hop now is like hip-pop,” confirms Loushanna Rose, co-founder of the Oakland, Calif.-based UMA (Universal Music Awareness) Productions
“You look up and you see these visually beautiful Levis ads trying to use hip-hop characters,” says Omana Imani, one of the organizers of the Underground Railroad, a San Francisco Bay area youth activist organization that also hosts all-women hip-hop shows. “They’re taking our culture and trying to throw it back at us for a profit. ”
A similar charge could be levelled at Gary Schoenfeld, but doubtless the reply would be ‘we are part of, and supportive of skate culture, not separate from it’.
While the existence of skate or hip hop culture would be impossible without urethane wheels, smoothly aligned ball-bearing wheels, and the electronically sophisticated sound systems and turntables of history, its highly contestable what role corporations have in the culture they appropriate and profit from apart from profit. When advertising has become so embedded in culture, its easy to claim to be a part of it, an embedded ness which fundamentally is advertising. It becomes difficult to rally against a corporation like Vans when the very neighbourhood skate park, history, tradition and idolized skater celebrities are sponsored or ‘donated’ by the company. While such generous sponsorship can easily trigger anger and resentment, especially when it is so ubiquitous (Vans Triple Crown of Skateboarding, Vans Amateur Skateboarding Series Vans Triple Crown of Surfing, Vans Wakeboarding Championship, Vans Triple Crown of Snowboarding, Vans Warped Concert Tour and every one of the Vans-shoes-and-clothing-wearing characters in the PlayStation game Psybadek ). It all smacks of that orgy of advertising that was Space Jam, in which every second camera shot and dialogue line depicted a product placement or a product being endorsed.
In the cultural progression of style, identity plays a basic and powerful role in individual demand for, and acquisition of the accoutrements of desired class, identity, race and culture. In the 19th century, it was vital – somehow – for the urban poor to starve themselves in order to look as though one was well off. This elevation of appearances produced a deficit in familial, financial and social stability which continues among the ‘wannabe’ rich lottery ticket and luxury item purchasers of today who suspend rationality for the acquisition of a mythical ‘levelling’ affect which occurs when one sports the right look and style. While the youth were relatively unimportant commercially during the 19th century (and were expected to look like their parents and work at a young age, among the low and middle class) as a demographic they experienced a tremendous elevation not only in earnings but in advertising awareness during the post war period.
In the post war period, youth identity became the vital and perennially important question and continues to be to the present. Important considerations of race and class and rebellion against an ‘establishment’ figured dominantly in the sub-cultures and youth cultures of Britain and America during the Doo-wop era, continuing in the 1970s with the punk ‘shock’ revolution, and more lately with grunge and hip hop. This identity is continuously thrown into question as the very culture becomes undermined underneath its members and is turned into un-substantive and dislocated style, to be ‘re-sold’ like Levis jeans back to the original ‘hardcore’ practitioners. As the messenger of the culture becomes the marketplace instead of more authentic forms like word of mouth (how Vans shoes were originally sold) or by sold-out performances, the ‘use’ of culture becomes increasingly fragmented and dilute. This diluted and stylized culture affects those who are really not out to participate in a movement so much as to glean its style and benefit from its social cache before moving on. Their ‘use’ of the culture is superficial and while popular or ‘mass’ often has little affect on the ‘active’ participants and contributors to Hip Hop, Punk, and other cultural scenes. As an example illustrating the converse of this example, (i.e. propagandistic anti-authoritarian culture) those who listen music like ‘Rage Against the Machine’ and attend their concerts do not necessarily become revolutionaries for several reasons, some of which may include a lack of involvement or deep awareness of the music. A raging sermon about ‘Zapata’s Blood’ will probably strike a deeper chord among poor disenfranchised Mexican youth than it ever could among a fairly clueless mass of suburban white teens. The commercial co-optation of Culture becomes irrelevant to the daily and regular contributions of the practitioners in culture. To use an obscure example illustrating this, two punk bands founded on the ‘old school’ punk band invasion, NoFX, Pennywise and Bad Religion have continued to proffer up the gospel of anti-authoritarian, radio unfriendly punk rock despite the rise and fall of trend-punk in the form of Sum-41, Blink 182 and others. For these albeit talented bands, their style becomes so much ‘cache’ to be labelled, stamped and ultimately discarded. At its worst, for those who engage passively with consumer culture and the multitude of identities that are available and the conveniently accompanied ‘ready-made’ consumer identities, the following quote is of relevance.
[t]he inherent obverse of ‘Be your true Self!’ is…the injunction to cultivate permanent refashioning, in accordance with the postmodern postulate of the subject’s indefinite plasticity…in short, extreme individualism reverts to its opposite, leading to the ultimate identity crisis: subjects experience themselves as radically unsure, with no ‘proper face’, changing from one imposed mask to another, since what is behind that mask is ultimately nothing, a horrifying void they are frantically trying to fill in with their compulsive activity… (373)
Appendices
The following cultures, musical genres and sub-cultures are loosely defined and necessarily generalized. It is also problematic to speak of a cultural moment or group as a totality that existed and occupied a brief period of time, and were composed of uniform ‘members’ of the group. Often there were racial and class tensions, cultural movements often extend beyond the fictional decade which they are supposedly contained within, and it is problematic to refer to the ‘punk’ sub-culture as a static group, when in fact there are divergences not only within 1970s Britain punk culture, but on a larger scale as the style spread and evolved in the US and Western Europe, or was assimilated and commercialized into a fragment of its former origins. The existence flagrantly anti-authoritarian sub-cultures (teddy boys, greasers, punks, hip-hop thugs) usually gives rise to a conservative or academic backlash, characterized in the case of ‘Americanized pop culture in the 50s’ by the writings of Theodore Adorno and the Frankfurt School. In general the progression or ‘life-cycle’ of a sub-culture, ‘movement’ or ‘style’ in popular culture conforms to the following process:
1. A small group of anti-conformists or rebels establishes a close knit community of like minded individuals who feel the same way, create a similar kind of music, and dress differently than their (parents, the rest of society as a whole, different ethnic groups etc).
2. The group is ‘discovered’ by the media or a conservative group of ‘concerned individuals’ who then give the group attention and their ‘different-ness’ is broadcast nationally or internationally as it may be, or the group steadily becomes ‘less underground’ as ‘posers’ and ‘wannabes’ mimic the style or dress, and the style becomes disenfranchised without really being located as coming from any specific culture, class or ethnic minority.
3. Once discovered, the commercial apparatus engages what can be ‘lifted’ from the sub-culture. Predominantly any sub-culture is necessarily defined and a community is organized around principles of visual or stylistic reference, and it is because of these visual or aural properties that commercial markets for fashion, music or movies can exploit the style as cultural cache or a ‘trend’ and market it as ‘the next fashion, or musical vogue’ and through the enlarging global apparatus of media, film, music, fashion and ‘tie-in’ promotional synergy target massive publics and demographics for the widest spread appeal.
4. The sub-culture, now reduced to a mere visual or stylistic property is now ‘popular’ and ‘commercial’ and can be critically attacked and can have its meaning steadily eroded as its principles and founders move on to something else, and or, its popularity wanes and the next trend is sought out. The trend or culture then becomes another passé cultural epoch, which can alternately be forgotten entirely, depending on its popularity and importance, or recycled as part of an ‘in-thing’ retro look in the future.
The following is also not an exhaustive list of all cultures and sub-cultures from 1940 to the present, and in fact is incomplete. Divisions among the working class sub-cultures (beatniks, hippies) are not fully discussed, and there are many, more ephemeral sub-cultures and movements, that are excluded because they were not publicised or ‘news-worthy’ enough to justify inclusion in the histories of ‘style’.
Beats (Beatniks)
The 1950s beat sub-culture emerged in general out of the middle class college age youth who were characterized by an affinity for jazz and afro-american social justice, and often dressed in ragged jeans and sandals (Hebdige, 49). The original beats, ( Keroac and several friends and fellow students from Columbia Univeristy) defined themselves by being non-conformists and rebels who often engaged in petty crime as well as poetry and writing. Often possessing an intellectual bent and interested in French avant garde theory and the new wave, this group is characterized by writer/travelers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Bob Kaufman, Gary Snyder and Lew Welch among others. Similar groups included the French existentialist theory movement with Jean Paul Sartre as one of the leading authors.
Boppers (Greasers)
A heavily cliched ‘rebel’ macho male identity inspired by James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause and Marlon Brando’s biker style in the 1951 film The Wild One. Not discounting these stereotyped identities, it is difficult to think of the ‘bopper’ as separate from or in any other context apart from filmic representation, though presumably the films had to exploit an original sub-culture to begin with. The stereotypical definition of ‘Boppers’ were young angst-ridden men who came from the broken homes of post-world war II America and evolved various gangs and ritualistic and often violent fraternities to substitute for a sense of lost family .
Blues
The Blues musical style is distinctly an African American evolution with roots that can be traced to both European and African verse and melodic tradition.
“Following the Civil War (according to Rolling Stone), the blues arose as "a distillate of the African music brought over by slaves. Field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups evolved into a music for a singer who would engage in call-and-response with his guitar. He would sing a line, and the guitar would answer it." (RSR&RE 53) (author's note: I've seen somewhere, that the guitar did not enjoy widespread popularity with blues musicians until about the turn of the century. Until then, the banjo was the primary blues instrument.) By the 1890s the blues were sung in many of the rural areas of the South. (Kamien 518) And by 1910, the word 'blues' as applied to the musical tradition was in fairly common use. (Tanner 40)” .
The blues had considerable influence in jazz, r & b, funk and 60s and 70s hard rock (Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors, Led Zeppelin).
Country and Western
Originating in the 19th century American settler musical tradition of folk music and white ‘cowboy’ culture, the country and western genre was popularized for a mass audience by the evolution of the Hollywood ‘western’. Country and western artists evolved a soundtrack and vocal quality to satisfy the immense popularity of American westerns. Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were two early and famed artists who defined the genre and vocal quality for country and western music. Western Swing, Honkytonk and the soulful ballads of Bluegrass derived from the popular tradition of country and western music and dance .
Funk
Arising out of the ferment of the American black civil rights movement in the late 1960s, funk became a hybrid fusion of soul, rock and jazz. It became a vocal and highly rhythmic expression of black political activism and the desire to take binary oppositions to a new level, with a celebration of black power, black music and black funk, which meant something stinky. When something was funky, it was downright stinky. The term was meant as an affront to a conservative, rule bound, oppressive white culture which set the rules of what was and was not music. The emphasis on bass, horn, heavy off-beat rhythms and guitar strayed from the ‘shuffling’ rhythm of rhythm and blues and this was done to emphasize that black people would not ‘shuffle’ in shame, and would walk proud and free . Hedbige offers a similar image of second generation black West Indian immigrants in Britain, who abandoned the racially implied sense of shame and the ‘shuffle’ of inferiority and walked in a deliberate, sassy black style (Hedbige, 41).
Glam Rock
Freed from its previous association with black culture and music, glam rock deviated towards sugary, disco-influenced pop ballads. David Bowie is claimed to have been one of the founders of this variety of pop music.
Grunge
Associated with bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Candlebox and Alice in Chains, grunge was a music that knew what it wasn’t. Tired of the consumer culture of the 1980s and weary of becoming another shiny and new product, the grunge movement was characterized by angst and restless poets and musicians who revelled in the old, used and un-glorious second hand garbage culture of consumerism . The polar opposite of ‘preppies,’ grunge artists were concerned with nihilism, insecurity, self-hatred and loathing and a dismissal of the overall project of selfish consumerism and the ‘rat-race’ desire to get a job and mindlessly compete in the workplace.
Heavy Metal
Beginning with Led Zeppelin which established the distinctive sound of hard rock, various other groups including AC/DC, Kiss, Duran Duran and others took their established sound and created a new genre of hard rock and metal, which appealed primarily to a young male audience. Heavy metal merged out of the 80s to spawn ‘metal’, ‘thrash’, ‘industrial metal’ and other distinctive and original sounds that were epitomized in the post-grunge era by Korn, Tool, Rage against the Machine, and more recently the uber-controversial band Slip-knot. Many of these bands have an anti-establishment or anti-consumerist stance but are often hamstrung by the paradox of attaining commercial success and becoming a merchandizing and record-producing commodity themselves. Rage against the Machine is perhaps the most intelligent and radical political metal band that has existed in recent memory, which has refused to ‘sell out’ their political message and spirit despite massive popularity, this may be in part due to the intense awareness of the industry they were a part of. Other bands like Slipknot and Korn, which chiefly arose out of the ‘nowhere’ of working class, rural and suburban towns in middle America engage in a similar project of grunge style nihilism and angst issues and feature the output of male vocal aggression. The latest crop of ‘nu-metal’ bands (Disturbed, Creed, Finger Eleven, Linken Park) have been criticized as shamelessly radio and MTV friendly, possessing little of the underground appeal and potential that Korn, Tool and other bands originally possessed.
Hip Hop
Hip Hop, another youth style emerged out of the failure of funk culture to survive the drum machines and vapid commercial vacuity of disco. Its founding members came from well-known and feared New York and Bronx gangs like the Black Spades and a sub-gang of the spades, called the ‘Zulu Nation’, which was lead by Africa Bambaataa. Out of the experimentalism of mostly second generation blacks of Caribean ancestry, Africa Bambaataa, DJ Cool Herc, Run DMC and others mixed Jamaican toasting, style boasting with turntabling and electronic bass lines. The culture grew and ‘b-boy’ break-boys and emceeing (rhyming verse to a beat) and sound-battling (competitions between emcees with various electronic beats and cuts) culture spread not only through New York (assisted by rapid dubbing of tapes) but to the West Coast where it became popular among the entrenched gangs and ghettos of Los Angeles, San Pedro, Compton, South Central and Englewood. While initially underground (even among the black community) the primarily West Coast ‘gangster rap’ and various white rappers like Vanilla Ice, the Beastie Boys and later Eminem assisted rap’s popularity among white suburban audiences. As the juggernaut of media, marketing, promotion and pop-rap production and sponsorship was enabled by the genres overall tremendous appeal and popularity, the form grew and spread and evolved into a diverse range of styles which altogether comprises a global multi-billion dollar industry.
Hippies
As the mods and beat generation became increasingly popular, a young college-age American population was becoming increasingly aware of social and civil injustice on a grassroots level. With the gradual public awareness of the Vietnam war and the eventual public uprising, a broad, and general coalescence of awareness and anti-conformist style and meaning was created. Folk artist Bob Dylan became a spokesperson for a new generation when he proclaimed that ‘a new day has come’. The ‘flower children’ are perhaps the most memorable sub-culture that proclaimed self-expression and personal freedom as the mantra of a new age of consciousness. John Lennon and George Harrison introduced through the music of the Beatles a vogue for everything Eastern in philosophy, Existentialism became a popularized and drugs and rock and roll became as much a part of the ‘scene’ as public protests and Vietnam-war activism. The Summer of Love in July 1967 was a public moment of celebration of ‘free-love’ and consciousness raising which heralded the hippie movement as nothing had before. Other mantras which included ‘don’t trust anyone over thirty’ faded when the Hippies became over thirty and either became old hippies or abandoned their ideals, had children and succumbed to the imperative to make money in the commercial marketplace somehow.
Jazz
Evolving out the Dixieland and New Orleans funeral and marching band melodic and rhythmic distinctions, primarily black musicians began improvising melodies in groups of three instruments, where a melodic interplay is stressed. Louis Armstrong was one of the defining players of 1920s and 30s style jazz and invented the ‘scat’ singing nonsense syllables to the tune of music. Later, the sound was picked up by white and black musicians who evolved ragtime, Harlem stride, piano jazz and boogie woogie styles out of the Dixieland improvised jazz.
Big band jazz became predominant during the pre-world war II period, and became a popularized form of jazz that, like swing jazz, was palatable and consumable by white audiences.
Partially in response to this degradation of the jazz form into a predominantly white ballroom culture, virtuoso jazz musicians created a new, intricate jazz form called be-bop that utilized complex melodic formations, and required an advanced understanding of jazz theory. Effectively, this primarily black form of jazz excluded white listeners and initially sounded like noise to audiences that had been used to the palatable and simplistic swing tunes of the 40s. The development of the be-bop style is considered the beginning of modern jazz. Dizzie Gillespie, George Gershwin and Charlie Bird were some of the founding members of this elite group of jazz musicians and composers.
The cool era of jazz was a response to the fast paced, frenetic and complicated rhythm and melody of bebop and was coined after legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis led an ensemble in a session called ‘Birth of the Cool’. The style was picked by many west coast musicians and became popularized as ‘West Coast Jazz’.
Later artists simplified be-bop and introduced (Stan Getz introduced) Latin American influence and other musicians combined gospel and blues sound to produce some interesting and influential jazz music typified as ‘hard-bop’.
In the 60s and 70s, jazz became an instrumental sphere for experimentation and absorption into other styles and musical traditions including funk, soul, rock n roll and more experimental avant-garde varieties. Today it remains a predominant musical style that has both lived on powerfully in some amazing contemporary artists and on the negative side, been degraded into a bourgeois, middle and upper class white ‘sophisticate’ sound.
Mods
Of course, the 60s wouldn’t be the 60s without the mods, which like the teddy boys, borrowed heavily from West Indian immigrant style and dressed neatly, subtly and wore conservative suits in respectable colours with short, close cropped hair. The mod style was one that enabled a smooth transition between school, work and leisure and kept to themselves. Their secret affinity with black people via American soul music was concealed and un-advertised. By actively using the clothing and manner of conservative dress to hide their radical support for African American music and culture, they were able to avoid inspection from the authority of the police and their parents (Hebdige, 54). The mods gradually split up towards the end of the 60s and evolved into the skinheads and the other merged into less controversial and inciteful ‘fashionable’ hippies, with underground participation in the rhythm and blues camp (Hebdige, 55).
Preppies
Originally coined to describe upper and middle class students at ‘preparatory school’ , this distinguished and consumer-friendly style dictated the must-have styles of the 50s and 80s, although it has always been a necessary fashion ingredient for peggy-sues, squares and establishment conformists of all kinds. The preppy style and culture has emerged out of the conservative, ivy-league, upper/middle class tradition of suburban America and is distinguished by conformity of dress, the ‘ivy-league’ look and an unabashed desire to fit in by swathing one’s body in the designer labels and material possessions of the ‘with-it’ crowd. The casts of ‘Friends’ and ‘Miami Vice’ are in general, all white, middle and upper class ‘preppies’ that un-controversially consume and are depicted in the show debating the inconsequential and unimportant while tacitly avoiding issues of class, war, famine, oppression, terrorism, and anything outside the realm of sanitized sit-com humour. 1980s and 90s boy and girl bands like ‘New Kids on the Block,’ ‘INXS’, ‘N-Sync’ and Britney Spears appealed to this market segment.
Punks
Punk culture arose out of the bleak climate of unemployment, working class ghettos and almost as a response to the apocalyptic media coverage of a summer drought in England in the Summer of 1976. On London’s King Road, a new working class, youth sub-cultural style was emerging that combined all the elements of post-world war II youth styles together in an unlikely and chaotic bricollage of worn teddy-boy overcoat, with dyed hair, Mohawks,
Ravers
“Sunny day, sweepin’ the clouds away,
On my way to where the air is sweet,
Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Sesame Street?”
The Rave movement emerged out of the escapist and fantasy tradition of Glam-rock and artists like David bowie, incorporated a new ‘techno’ and ‘industrial’ sound and began in the underground scene of London in the late 80s and early 90s. The scene began with music fanatics, who usually under the influence of then unheard of meta-amphetamine drug ‘ecstasy’ began a movement that was about re-experiencing a lost and nostalgic childhood in extended, late night ‘raves’ dancing to frenetic electronic soundscapes and drum machine rhythms. Ravers sported bright hair and combinations of loose sweatshirts with tight mid-rif exposing t-shirts and tanks.
Rastafarianism
Out of the filth and squalor of colonized Jamaica, out of an island of which ninet-nine percent of the beach-front is owned by American resort companies, out of a completely disenfranchised black population emerged a radical rethinking of the ‘white-man’s bible which had been historically used as an instrument of ideological oppression as early as the 18th century French and British colonization of Haiti and the Caribbean islands. This interpretation interpreted the black poverty stricken Jamaican as a modern day
‘Israelite’ in a righteous struggle against the greed and cruelty of modern day ‘Babylon’. The interpretation made far more sense than any white colonial conception of blacks as a rightly inferior race unwarranted to ask for anything other than the scraps from the master’s table. Rastafarianism preached a return to Africa, to the holy continent and the land of Ethiopia. The movements named when the prophecy of a black ‘king of kings’ were thought to have been fulfilled with the crowning of the Ethiopian king ‘Ras Tafari’ or Haile Salessi I of Ethiopia in 1930. Championed by the powerfully emergent Reggae sound, Bob Marley and many others preached the peaceful ‘exodus’ to the ‘promised land’ in an otherwise popular tradition that united an otherwise divided African diaspora.
Reggae
Drawing from an assortment of styles from American pop sound, church choir hymns, local calypso shuffle style and carnival music. Jamaica has a long history of colonial, indigenous and native African influences. Reggae revived deep primordial beats at higher speeds, highlighting the drum and bass, introduced a ‘chugging’ organ sound and added a soul vocal and chorus ‘callback’ on top. Reggae began as a uniquely Jamaican cultural style and music that increasingly reflected emergent Rastafarianism as the 1960s came to a close. Artists like Desmond Decker, Bob Marley and many others defined the sound in the early 60s, which later spread to international appeal and influence in European and African music (punk, hip-hop, ambient, electronic, jazz).
Rockers
With the arrival of the Beatles in America and the subsequent commercial and popular frenzy of ‘Beatlemania,’ and with the heady success of Elvis, the Beach Boys, the Temptations and many other early surfer and rock ballads, Rock in its general sense became a defining and general musical form in the late 50s, 60s and 70s. Rock was at first a counter-cultural sound that appropriated black blues and jazz influences and combined with country and soul vocal quality, created a new vocabulary and a harsh, frenetic sound. Artists who defined the genre were the Bob Dylan (songs using electric guitar), Credence Clearwater, Jimmy Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and many others.
Skaters
As the Beach Boys stole Chuck Berry’s Sweet Sixteen, expended fifteen minutes of their time and substituted ‘Surfin’ USA’ for ‘Sweet Sixteen’ and made a few other cosmetic changes, they re-released what essentially is a cover song, and sold millions of records. Popularizing themselves as the soundtrack to a new California Surfing culture, they helped popularize a trend that eventually gave birth to a more street and concrete jungle based ‘skater’ youth sub-culture popularized by skating prodigy and celebrity Tony Hawk in the 1980s. The skateboard industry and culture has experienced four major maves of popularity and decline, with a ‘hardcore’ group maintaining interest in the sport as the technology and industry of skateboarding developed (especially the development of urethane wheels and ball bearings). Experiencing its last decline at the end of the 80s, it has re-emerged with such commercial and popular events as ESPN 2 Extreme games in 1995. More recently, sponsorship and ‘celebrity’ skaters and inner-city competitions in the US and Canada ensure its continuing popularity.
Skinheads
The skinhead group, although actively supportive of a united working class of both black and whites, was increasingly excluded by the music of Rastafarianism, which as reggae progressed become increasingly inclusive towards blacks and exclusive towards others.
Teddy Boys
The Teddy boy ‘look’ was already an appropriation of previous style, although that appropriation came from an unexpected place – working class Britain. The teddy-boys, although distancing themselves from the wartime ethic of conservation and rationing, were nonetheless in conflict with other sub-cultures that developed, which mainly meant the immigrant, West Indian black community. Hebdige argues that the black immigrant population played an important role in the style of working class sub-cultures, which spread through Britain in the post war period (Hebdige, 56). A fundamental part of the music, if not fashion from which the teddy boy, mod and beat style emerged out of, like much of the youth culture of America and Europe (predominantly Britain) were cultures that appropriated or worked with West Indian immigrant music in some way.
Teenyboppers
A term initially coined to refer to the desire of teenage girls and boys inflicted with insecurity and peer-defined self worth predicated on the acquisition of the latest trends in fashion, music, fast food and music. Frighteningly contingent on fads and the latest ‘thing’, teenyboppers unconsciously consume and assume identity en masse without triggering desire for individuality or identity apart from the whole. Teeny Bopper mentalities are fostered in the sequestered, close knit bounds of class and gender segregated cliques of high-school, and in general don’t continue past adulthood. The first ‘teeny-boppers’ were the ‘Peggy-sue’ girls in the 1950s who had to have the latest conservative fashions and ‘must-have’ items.
“The female versions of the square, Peggy Sues were good girls. They took home economic classes and learned how to be a good housewife and homemaker. With their sweater sets, full circle-skirts, and ever-present pearls, these ladies eagerly waited to sport their dreamboats’ letterman’s sweater around their shoulders. Their hair was pulled back into a ponytail and tied with a scarf, or neatly tamed into the curly poodle cut. The wildest they got was dancing in their socks at the sock hop, and they saved necking for their steady. Gee, whiz…” .
The Teeny Bopper has never really died, and continues with every generation of suburban middle-class offspring who mimic the idyllic consumer lifestyle cut out for them by the first generation of conservative ‘classic American’ youth. The ever wholesome (or not), Britney spears, Christina Aguilera (before she became ‘dirty’) and N’Sync are examples of talented individuals recruited and commercially produced by major record and distribution labels to appeal to teens and parents that desire a reinstatement of ‘safe’ teenybopper teenage identity.
References
Darnton, Robert “The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History”
New York: Vintage Books, 1985.
Ewen, Stuart “All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture”
New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988.
Heilbroner, Robert “The Making of Economic Society” 9th edition.
US: Prentice Hall, 1993.
Hebdige, Dick “Subculture: The Meaning of Style”
London: Routledge, 1979.
Hoggart, R. The Uses of Literacy,
Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1958.
Laba, Martin “Picking Through the trash” M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999)
http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/trash.html
Laver, James Costume and Fashion: A Concise History
Thames and Hudson: 1995.
Lipsitz, George ‘Diasporic Noise: History, Hip Hop, and the Post Colonial Politics of Sound’ in
‘Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place’
London: Verso, 1994
Steptoe, Andrew “The Social Context: Vienna and her ruler” UK: Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1988.
Strinati, Dominic An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture
London: Routledge Inc. 1995.
Williams, Rosiland “The Dream world of Mass Consumption” in ‘Rethinking Popular Culture’
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991
Additional References
Klein, Naomi No Logo
New York: Picador, 2000.
Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson “Advertising in the Age of Accelerated Meaning’ ‘The Consumer Society Reader’
New York: New Press 2000.
Web Sites Consulted
See the following site for information on Vans sponsorship, cross branding and co-optation of skater culture. Last accessed Mar 26th, 2003.
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/archives/99/11lede1-wielenga.shtml
See the curvemag site for information on lesbian and women emcees speaking out on the issues that matter to them and are ignored by the mostly male Hip Hop world. Last accessed Mar 26th, 2003.
http://www.curvemag.com/Detailed/168.html
Yesterdayland is a comprehensive site detailing some obscure as well as well known stylistic trends and events associated with the time period of 1940 to the present. Last accessed Mar 26th, 2003.
http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/fashion/fa1932.php
See the following site for more information on funk as a style and political and social phenomenon associated with the black civil rights movement in the 1960s and 70s. Last accessed Mar 26th, 2003.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~hostette/music2.html
The following site documents some interesting cultural styles, events including a short article on the rise of the nerd and the ‘indie’ scene’s impact on authentic punk culture. Last accessed Mar 26th, 2003.
http://www.giantrobot.com/issues/issue18/geekfest/geekfest1.html
See the following site for more information on coffee history and its trade in early medieval Europe. Last accessed Mar 26th, 2003.
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/coffee/history.htm
See the following article for information on Fight club and the male identity
http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/09-snowflake.html
For information on male ‘manity’ (vanity) and the hallmark products that established male ‘mirror-galleries’ among greaser gangs in the 1950s, 60s and even more prevalently in contemporary society, the following site is useful.
http://www.ahundredmonkeys.com/nytimes_article3.htm
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