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| Week 3, Friday 9th August, 2002 (Richard Griffiths) "Fashion and Subcultures" lecture Cultural Studies and Society (SOCIOL 105); Week 3, Friday 9th August, 2002 (Richard Griffiths) Keywords subculture / subcultural wardrobe anarcho-punk / straightedge / riot grrrl subordinate / dominant / hegemonic culture resistance identity Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) "interdiscursive space" methodology textual Analysis qualitative Research Clothing tie-symbols ("unique", "iconic", "hybrid") Gothic disruption Bricolage subculturalists Moral Panic Introduction In today's lecture we are going to explore subcultures, clothing styles, identity and the notion of resistance. Accordingly, I will offer you a snapshot of some of the clothing styles worn by several youth subcultures in NZ. In relation to this I will argue that the local anarcho-punk and gothic subcultures display a variety of fashion styles that collectively form what I have called the "subcultural wardrobe". The theme of representation via visual imagery will also be significant. I will also briefly consider how fashion fits into cultural studies, and what some might call "fashion crimes" at the local level. Fashionable Neglect? In the past sociology as a discipline has been accused of neglecting the status of fashion. For example, Peter Braham (1997: 132) draws attention to how some modern dictionaries of sociology have completely failed to acknowledge fashion, while Joanne Entwistle (2000) has signaled that this problematic is remarkable given the significant role that fashion and clothing plays in everyday life. Although Pamela Church Gibson (1998: 36) acknowledges this issue, she also points out that over the course of the last decade fashion has "established itself as a serious academic discipline and as an important area of theoretical debate". Similarly, Fiona Anderson (2000: 374) notes that such developments have produced "a multiplicity of new approaches to the study of fashion", while Entwistle adds that scholarship interested in fashion has recently employed a cross-disciplinary methodology in order to cater for the "hybrid" nature that constitutes human dress. Accordingly this research can be drawn together under the banner of cultural studies, which Entwistle notes has been informed by numerous theoretical perspectives such as semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalysis, and Marxist materialist analysis. Jandals and other Stuff Unfortunately contemporary fashion is a cultural area that remains largely ignored by NZ scholars. Richard Wolfe's (2001) The Way We Wore: the clothes NZs have loved appears to be the only obvious contemporary text on the subject. Although not a specifically academic analysis, Wolfe weaves an accessible narrative that describes the evolutionary history of everyday "Kiwi" clothing from just before the Second World War to the end of the 20th century. For instance, he traces how NZ's have worn everything from the "Swanndri" to Jockey Y-front underpants, miniskirts, to "menacing shoulder pads", "Stubbie" pants and jandals. He concludes that while Kiwi clothing styles have in the past been significantly influenced by both British colonizers and Pacific Island cultures, there is room to suggest that in the future our national wardrobe may be significantly influenced by the clothes worn by its youth. What is a "Subculture"? (Theory & Problems) Within the broader landscape of cultural studies the status of youth subcultures has long been recognized as a significant field of inquiry whose roots may be traced back to studies conducted by the sociology department at the University of Chicago during the early twentieth century. The "Chicago School" was interested in the city as an urban, social environment, as well as juvenile delinquency and youth deviance as an everyday reaction to living in this setting. Subsequently much has been written on subcultures and the question of youth since this period. I'm now going to take you through some of the main points related to subcultural theory. David and Julia Jary (1995) provide a good overview of how academics have defined the concept of subcultures. They write: A subculture is any system of beliefs, values and norms, which is shared and actively participated in by an appreciable minority of people within a particular culture. The relationship of the subculture to the so-called dominant culture has been identified as one of subordination and powerlessness. Power relations are therefore an important dimension of any sociological consideration of subculture. Subcultures have been examined in terms of ethnicity, class, deviance and youth culture (Jary and Jary 1995: 665). Sarah Thornton (1997: see Chapter 1) signals that what sets youth subcultures apart from other groups is the way in which commentators have seized on the notion that "subcultures have come to designate social groups which are perceived to deviate from the normative ideals of adult communities". Thornton also notes that members of a subculture "carve out spaces" in which they follow their own rules and practices that may differ from conventional society. In relation to this, Chris Barker (2000) adds that the prefix "sub" indicates that subcultures are distinct or different from conventional or the dominant culture. Perhaps the major turning point in studies interested in youth culture was the establishment of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University in the mid-1960s. Researchers at the CCCS began to take an interest in British youth subcultures such as the skinheads, Mods and teddy boys, and explored issues revolving around youth, class relations, ideology, power, resistance, and semiotics. This Marxist-based approach to youth subculture thus extended the earlier American perspectives. Barker suggests that the CCCS text, Resistance through Rituals was a landmark publication for British cultural studies that laid the foundation for future researchers interested in popular music, style and fashion. He also draws attention to the emphasis that the CCCS authors placed on the theme of resistance to the so-called "hegemonic" or "dominant" culture. If you are interested in subcultures I would strongly recommend that you check out Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) -the quintessential text-, The Subcultures Reader (1997), David Muggleton's (2000) Inside Subculture, and also Barker's chapter on subculture and resistance in your course text. What has happened to subcultural theory following its migration to the shores of Aotearoa? Unfortunately very few academic studies have charted the existence of youth subcultures in NZ. Thus far the only comprehensive research that has been produced that has had an interest in this particular area of popular culture has been a small number of postgraduate theses on rap and hip-hop, graffiti and anarcho-punk. The Challenge to Subcultural Theorising Subcultural theory has not escaped criticism. For instance a close inspection of Hebdige reveals that he didn't explicitly consider the personal experiences of 1970s British punk rockers. Instead he depends almost exclusively on mainstream media accounts, as opposed to ethnographic evidence gathered from "the field". Alternatively, Angela McRobbie has long challenged the way in which the experiences of female members of subculture have been marginalized by male researchers in this subject area. Other issues that have been raised include whether the question of class is still applicable to the more contemporary examples of youth subculture, as well as the positionality of non-white subcultures, and whether the notion of resistance is still applicable for contemporary examples. Accordingly these issues must be kept in mind when we examine contemporary subcultures. The Subcultural Wardrobe: Theoretical Strategies Ziauddin Sardar and Borin Van Loon (1999) describe how within the field of cultural studies theorists who are interested in culture combine different theoretical perspectives taken from a range of disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, musicology, political science, and literary criticism. Elaine Baldwin (1999: 41) eloquently adds that this produces an interdiscursive space" in which "there are no fixed boundaries and no fortress walls". Using this overview as a starting point, the "Subcultural Wardrobe" is a "collective" model that uses a coalition of older and more recent theoretical perspectives from a range of disciplines in order to explore how subcultural clothing styles display potential acts of resistance. Further, my theory enables us to investigate how subcultures (or subordinate groups) consciously articulate, and unleash a political and personal set of semiotic manoeurves on dominant or hegemonic culture. This idea of "attack" is the central reason behind my play on the word "wardrobe". The coalition of theories that I will use in today's lecture is as follows:
This assemblage of theoretical perspectives can be best understood as a "methodology" that serves an "analytical" purpose, or put another way, "tools" that can be used to study and thus interpret a particular cultural practice, which in this case is subcultural clothing styles and adornment. I will describe these theories as we go, and use them to conduct a textual analysis of selected examples of anarcho-punk and gothic fashion. I will also draw on interviews that I have conducted with a number of NZ anarcho-punks and goths in order to unearth their reflections on the clothing that they wear. The use of such data, which is also known as "qualitative research", enables me to construct a more balanced account & use theory in a more objective way. Punk and Anarchy The cultural history of punk is a much-contested area. A significant issue that underpins scholarship interested in punk subculture is that of its life span. A review of the largely cultural studies-based literature that has been produced on punk quickly reveals that many academics see 1979 as the year that "punk died". From personal experience and research I know that this is not true. The major repercussion of this dominant reading of punk is that scholars working on punk usually ignore over two decades of punk history and evolution, and miss out the rise of other punk subcultures such as anarcho-punk, straightedge, and riot grrrl. Unfortunately we don't have time to get into any more detail on punk history. If you are interested, check out Craig O'Hara's (1999) text The Philosophy of Punk and my MA thesis, Punkturing the Scab. When we look at contemporary anarcho-punk clothing in NZ, like other anarcho-punks across the globe, NZ punks have a wardrobe that presents to outside viewers a veritable cornucopia of patches, symbols, slogans and images that are worn within a forest of spikes, studs, chains and belts. Nestled inside this assemblage of objects and images are countless references to anarchist philosophy, which is a political belief system that strongly rejects political authority and institutional structures such as government and the State, but also racism, capitalism, warfare, homophobia, multinationals, organized religion, and the exploitation of animals and the environment. This overview of anarchism offers a very different perspective to the mainstream media's discussion of anarchy that relates to violence, rioting and chaos. Modern-day anarchism can also be located within the anti-globalization movement that protested in the late 1990s in Seattle, London and Genoa. By consciously locating themselves within anarchist and general political activist culture at the NZ level, local anarcho-punks can be theorized as occupying a broader ideological space that simultaneously challenges and is outside "conventional" or hegemonic culture and society. Symbols as Clothing Tie-Symbols The various symbols that are often accompanied by band logos that embellish the clothing worn by anarcho-punks can be defined as clothing tie-symbols. Rubinstein advances this concept, which can be employed as a theoretical tool in relation to understanding this aspect of the anarcho-punk wardrobe. She writes: Tie-symbols are expressions of support, or association, with a particular idea, [or] cause.... Wearing one announces sympathy with a group, a political idea, or a public persona. The tie- symbol can stand for something or against something.... Tie-symbols are used by individuals to help define the self, maintain self- definition, and express political values and goals (Rubinstein 1995: pp. 206-208). I asked my interviewees to describe the meanings that underpin the clothing that they wear. The following replies exemplify the responses given to this question: "For me it's identification. It's like a form of identity. Quite often people will wear patches because it's like wearing your belief system on your clothing", and "All the slogans, patches and clothes express our political beliefs or the bands we listen to". These quotations satisfy Rubinstein's theory that the wearing of tie-symbols -in this case patches and slogans- creates subcultural identification, while also providing a site in which the individual can express their political beliefs and values. Additionally Hebdige's (1979: 102) claim that subcultural style communicates "the parallel communication of a group identity" appears to still have currency. The anarcho-punk wardrobe exhibits three types of clothing tie-symbols, which I describe as "unique", "iconic" and "hybrid". Iconic symbols are those signs whose meanings are potentially understood regardless of language barriers. Hybrid symbols are those that are usually recognized by some members of society, but have been modified by "subculturalists" in order to produce new or additional codified meanings, while unique tie-symbols are those that have been invented by subcultures themselves. Anarchy and peace symbols are iconic symbols that decorate the anarcho-punk wardrobe. While the inclusion of the peace symbol indicates an anti-war position, the anarchy symbol may be interpreted as a symbol that signifies either youthful rebellion or disorder, a reading that wouldn't necessarily acknowledge the range of anarchist beliefs noted earlier. This problematic also reflects Mark Gottdiener's (1995: 12) claim that the meanings that lie behind iconic signs are "weakly fixed by social conventions". Beyond Ethnocentrism Other symbols that could be located within the clothing tie-symbols section of the subcultural wardrobe at either the local and/or global level include the following items:
These particular clothing tie-symbols might also be located within what Tricia Rose calls "black cultural address", a concept that relates to "general racial and ethnic struggles" (Zemke-White 2001: 241). These examples are significant as they demonstrate how the concept of the subcultural wardrobe extends beyond the anarcho-punks and goths, and includes subcultures that speak from a non-white position. Gothic Subculture & Clothing How many of you remember the Columbine High School shootings from April 1999? Mainstream media at both the NZ and global level initially suggested that two "goths" had gone on a shooting rampage at their school, which resulted in the deaths of fifteen people, including the gunmen's suicides. The word "goth" became heavily loaded with negative connotations revolving around death, extreme violence, murder and Nazism. What immediately followed can be perhaps best defined as a "moral panic", or a situation characterized by a period of intense media coverage whereby "A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests" (Cohen 1980: 9). Within the first week of the shootings the gothic wardrobe was prised wide open by the media, an act which produced a popular stereotype that contemporary goths predominantly wore black clothes, trench coats and black and white makeup. Ironically these items of clothing / adornment have been central symbols of the gothic wardrobe since the early 1980s. However rather than engaging in a specifically political campaign of confrontation like the punks, the goths that I spoke to approach the way that they adorn themselves in a more personal way in order to position themselves and critique New Zealand society and culture. Cyndy Hendershot (1998) provides an extremely profitable conceptual framework for reading various aspects of the gothic wardrobe. Unlike other theoretical models that have been incorporated into the wardrobe coalition, Hendershot is concerned with the analysis of literary texts. My use of literary criticism to investigate subculture is therefore a break of sorts with traditional analyses of youth subculture. In her discussion, Hendershot focuses on the ways in which Gothic fiction has treated "traditional heterosexual masculinity", which she states is a subject position that constitutes one particular aspect of Western ideology. Subsequently she advances the notion that "Gothic bodies" have disruptive capabilities. She writes: The Gothic disrupts. It takes societal norms and invades them with an unassimilable force.... The Gothic fragments stable identity and stable social order.... Masculinity as a masquerade may be articulated through Gothic texts, which frequently reveal the fragility of traditional manhood.... Gothic bodies.... break down the demarcations between... death and life, and male and female (Hendershot 1998: pp. 1-9). Hendershot's claim that gothic bodies possess disruptive powers within "Gothic texts" such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the New Zealand film The Piano can arguably be transported across disciplinary boundaries in order to read the masculine bodies that inhabit the gothic subculture in New Zealand. By wearing makeup and dresses men in the local subculture intentionally engage in a form of resistance that is both "playful" and "daring". Arguably the "rugby boys" signify one of NZ's more traditional masculine identities. Subsequently, their negative and somewhat uncomfortable reaction to gothic males illustrates how makeup worn by other men challenges socially accepted boundaries pertaining to gender positions, thus satisfying Hendershot's argument. Bricolage Hebdige (1979: 68) argues that the 1970s British punk subculture "launched frontal attacks on the established meaning systems". According to Hebdige one way that this was achieved was by taking various objects such as safety pins, PVC fabric and fishnet stockings and subverting their "conventional" uses, an act that effectively created "new and covertly oppositional readings". This process is also known as "bricolage", and was a theory first introduced by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in The Savage Mind. This perspective can still be used as a theoretical tool to discuss the way in which modern subcultures have appropriated a wide range of objects and commodities in order to "produce" new fashion styles. For example, the way that anarcho-punks sometimes wear bullet-belts as an anti-war statement and goths sometimes wear crucifixes in order to challenge and offend Christians are examples of bricolage by members of New Zealand youth subcultures. Conclusions One of the important things to remember about the groups that have been discussed in today's lecture, is the simple fact that in Raymond Williams's (1983: 90) words they are simply people living "a particular way of life". Likewise, from my own personal experience and ethnographic engagements there are moments when punks, goths, and Rastafarians put on their "everyday" clothes to go outside in order to do very "ordinary" things like going to the bank or the supermarket. References Anderson, Fiona. (2000). "Museums as Fashion Media", in S. Bruzzi and P Church Gibson (eds.). Fashion Cultures. Theories, Explorations and Analysis. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 371-389. Baldwin, E., Longhurst, B., McCracken, S., Ogborn, M., and Smith, G. (1999). Introducing Cultural Studies. New York: Prentice Hall Europe. Barker, Chris. (2000). Cultural Studies. Theory and Practice. London: Sage. Braham, Peter. (1997). "Fashion: Unpacking a Cultural Production", in P. Du Gay (ed.). Production of culture / cultures of production. London and Thousand Oaks, California: Sage in association with the Open University, pp. 119-177. Church Gibson, P. (1998). "Film Costume", in J. Hill and P. Church Gibson (eds.). The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 36-42. Entwistle, Joanne. (2000). The Fashioned Body. Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge and Massachusetts: Polity Press. Gelder, Ken. and Thorton, Sarah. (1997). The Subcultures Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Gottdiener, Mark. (1995). Postmodern Semiotics: Material Culture and the Forms of Postmodern Life. Cambridge: Blackwell. Griffiths, Richard. (2000). Punkturing the Scab: A Sociological Investigation of Anarcho-Punk Subculture. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Auckland. Hebdige, Dick. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London and New York: Methuen and Co. Ltd. Hendershot, Cyndy. (1998). The Animal Within. Masculinity and the Gothic. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Muggleton, David. (2000). Inside Subculture. The Postmodern Meaning of Style. Oxford and New York: Berg. O'Hara, Craig. (1999). The Philosophy of Punk. More Than Noise! (second edition). London, Edinburgh, and San Francisco: AK Press. Rubinstein, Ruth. P. (1995). Dress Codes. Meanings and Messages in American Culture. Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press. Williams, Raymond. (1983). Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. London: Fontana Paperbacks. Wolfe, Richard. (2001). The Way We Wore: the clothes New Zealanders have loved. Auckland: Penguin Books. Zemke-White, Kirsten. (2001). "Rap Music and Pacific Identity in Aotearoa: Popular Music and the Politics of Oppression", in Macpherson, C, Spoonley, P and Anae, Melani (eds.). Tangata o te Moana nui: The evolving identities of Pacific peoples in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Palmerston North: Dunmore |
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