If we had the gift of time travel, I’d take you back to my sophomore year of high school. I’d allow you to perch on the edge of a window looking into my ecology class, or even into my own bedroom. And there you would find me (in either setting – school or at home) scribbling madly into a notebook. The scrawling of a budding writer or poet? No, most definitely not. I was an “artist” then, but even art lacked importance. I can guarantee you that I was scribbling the names of my favorite bands and musicians across any surface I could find. The Cure. Bauhaus. Siouxsie and the Banshees. NewOrder. The Smiths. The Sisters of Mercy. MUSIC MATTERED, and it still does.
I can’t say I was ever part of the whole “gothic” scene (and when I say “gothic,” I refer to the subcultural movement that came to life in the 80s, and not to the Slipknot/Hot Topic revolution of the mid to late 90s), but I can assure you that I embodied the mentality associated to such a movement, and that I listened to music commonly linked to that scene. And yes, I wore an awful lot of black.
I would argue that dedication to music is a large part of what it means to be in a subculture, because quite often, music is the means through which a subculture is shaped. Music embodies like-mindedness and expresses solidarity of beliefs, whether they are political, social, religious, or philosophical.
In Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), Dick Hebdige defines subculture as “noise,” the “interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media.” To the masses, the subcultural movement is like a surprising blow to the stomach – an unforeseen, powerful force that disrupts the ordinary, expected flow of life.
In Hebdige’s eyes, The Sex Pistols and their punk rock followers embodied the strongest subculture to come to the public’s attention. Thanks to the antics of Sid Vicious, which included spitting on fans and vomiting in public forums, punk rock was shoved to the forefront of media coverage. When punk hit the press, it ceased to be “underground”; its political convictions were thrown to the wayside in favor of its fashionable style. Within a short amount of time, the anxious mothers who once cried at the sight of Sid and bandmate Johnny Rotten were now fully aware (and no longer afraid of) the punk movement. The Vogue articles dedicated to the movement’s “fashion” had pushed the revolutionary flair out of punk rock’s true purpose.
Hebdige also discusses the similar fate of the Mods, but the similarities in the rise and fall of these two movements persists in even more contemporary subcultures. Each new subculture is met with fear and doubt by those outside of it, but with time, the subculture is absorbed into mainstream culture (the very force it fought against), either due to the picking and prodding of mainstream media or by a self-destructive force residing WITHIN the subculture.
While Hebdige does a very good job of exploring how the subculture is picked apart by mainstream society, I am interested in how a subculture deconstructs itself. In my own experience interacting with members of various subcultures, I have noted that a subculture is not so different from mainstream culture. Although subcultures come to represent what Stan Cohen calls “folk devils” in mainstream society, each subculture falls victim to its own folk devils – those who challenge the subcultural society that has already been established.
Hebdige quotes Cohen as saying “societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests . . . ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible.” While Cohen speaks of the subculture’s threat to the mainstream culture, this own reaction happens within subcultures. Although a subculture is often presented as a group of people who are unified in their beliefs in politics, art, music, etc., each subculture is victim to its own members who pose a threat to that culture’s own interests. So just as the punk rocker threatened the mainstream of the 70s, the grunge rocker of the early 90s emerged from and then threatened the metal scene.
The easiest genre for me to discuss (and possibly the easiest for you to envision) is the goth/industrial subculture. I hate to clump the two terms (“goth,” “industrial”) together because they represent entirely different values in music, in fashion, and in the “politics” of music. They are, however, related historically. The founding artists of the music genre began (just as with any subculture) by expressing unified or similar ideas and philosophies. Differences in these beliefs surfaced after time, and that larger subculture divided as a result of its own ‘folk devils,’ which caused “moral panic” among the once-unified scene.
Today, the genres have evolved even more dramatically, and instead of sharing the broad term of “goth/industrial,” the division is more like “goth VS. industrial.” And yet the two genres have broken down even more. The industrial movement is not as unified as it once was, and now, enthusiasts of industrial MUST define themselves more accurately: is he or she “oldschool,” favoring Skinny Puppy, Ministry, or Front Line Assembly? Coldwave? Powernoise? Or maybe ebm? Or more specifically, aggro-ebm? Perhaps you’re dealing with futurepop, or maybe even the newest wave among the waves, “hellectro.”
I know it’s scene-specific jargon, and perhaps these names are meaningless to you, but I assure that each word carries distinct connotations in the industrial music community. Alliance with these terms is crucial, for a fan does not merely identify with the term… the term actually identifies the fan.
I would also like to suggest that any “distinct” movement loses its impact when the movement is repeated time and time again. Sid Vicious spit on his audience. Iggy Pop cut his torso with shards of glass. But if you show me a punk band that uses these same tactics today, I will yawn. Any subculture MUST continue to challenge THE social institution (even if that institution is its self-made one) in order to remain “unnatural,” a quality that Hebdige insists that subcultures possess. If a subculture refuses to change, develop, and re-challenge structures, mainstream society consumes it and tears it apart. The fashion gets duplicated in the pages of Elle and by haute couture designers. Corporate music machines rip off the music. And the political message, the initial reaction or response to the many things that are “wrong” with society, gets tossed aside.
Posted by Kate Cielinski at April 6, 2005 4:28 PM