Lecture 5//Subculture and style

Definition of subculture:

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden) which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.

Dogtown and Z boys (2001)

Ian Borden ‘Performing the City’

Urban street skating is more ‘political’ than 1970’s skateboarding‘s use of found terrains: street skating generates new uses that at once work within (in time and space) and negate the original ones. 

Parkour

A method of movement focused on moving around obstacles with speed and efficiency. Originally developed in France, the main purpose of the discipline is to teach participants how to move through their environment by vaulting, rolling, running, climbing and jumping. Parkour practitioners are known as traceurs. They train to be able to identify and utilize alternate or the more efficient paths through the city
Free-running
A form of urban acrobatics in which participants, known as free runners, use the city and rural landscape to perform movements through its structures. Places more emphasis on freedom of movement and creativity than efficiency.

Jump London (2005)

Nancy McDonald The Graffiti Subculture

Here (on the street) real life and the issues which may divide and influence it, are put on pause. On this liminal terrain you are not black, white rich or poor. Unless you are female, ‘you are what you write’.

Miss Van

McDonald suggest that women come to the subculture laden with the baggage of gender in that her physicality (her looks) and her sexuality will be commented on critically in a way that male writers do not experience.

Motorbike girl
Brigitte Bardot 1960’s
Suggests sexual deviance which is a fantasy not reflective of most conventional real life femininity at the time.

Mod girl
•Mod culture springs from working class teenage consumerism in the 1960’s in the UK
•Teenage girls worked in cities in service industries for example, or in clothing shops where they are encouraged to model the boutique clothing
•This meant they had money for socialising and mod rallies.

Hippy girl
•Subculture arises through universities of the late 60’s and early 70’s
•Middle class girl therefore has the space to explore subculture for longer before family etc.
•Space for leisure without work: encourages ‘personal expression'.

Riot Grrrl- mid 1990’s onwards •Underground punk movement based in Washington DC, Olympia, Portland, Oregon and the greater Pacific Northwest

What makes this a true subculture? •Zines revived from 1970’s DIY punk ethic
•In turn this was influenced by posters and graphic design from the Dadaists in the 1920’s 30’s
•Women self-publishing their own music

Media attention turns to Grunge scene 

•Courtney Love and Hole
•Style without the subculture
•Distorts even further as the 90’s continue into the more more media friendly Spice Girls use of phrase “Girl Power”.

Dick Hebdige Subculture: The meaning of Style
•“Subcultures represent ‘noise’ (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media.”
•Offence caused by lyrics and behaviour is important as it leads to questions about ‘the parent culture’.

Zandra Rhodes 9ct White Gold Diamond Safety Pin Brooch
•Although punk seems to challenge eventually and surprisingly quickly it goes mainstream/high end and is turned into “To shock chic” which marks the end of the movement as a subculture.

   

This is England (2006) Shane Meadows
•The new kid on the estate transforms into a British Skin
•His dad has been killed in the Falklands War and his new friends become a surrogate family.