Subcultures

What is a subculture?

They are defined by shared interests, with a distinctly different culture with a form of resistants that works against the dominant culture.

Examples of subcultures:

• Casuals - sportswear  being fashionable before chavs

• Beatnik

• Glam Goth

• New Romantics

• Goths

• Northern Soul

• Health goth (black sportswear)

• Normcore (no brands)

• Hypster

• Off white - street

• Hype kid

Talking about style cultures

We looked at Fred Perry as they have been very influential in regards to subcultures.

Fred Perry was the son of a Stockport cotton spinner who later went on to become a world table tennis champion at a very young age. He then switched to lawn tennis and won Wimbledon three times. Perry was approached by Tibby Wegner, who was formerly Austrian football player, in 1952 with the idea of launching their own fashion brand. The company was bought by 1995 by Hit Union, its Japanese distributor

Fred Perry Videos - history in a subcultural context

• Video 1 - born to be wild -

• Teddys boys came from the edwardian style - working class people who had money in their pockets that wanted to mess with the class system

• Notting Hill Riots

• The rocker wanted something that wouldn't be destroyed easily, they embraced one of the best britain's inventions, the motorcycle (cross reference) - there was a generation gap as no parent wanted their son to lounge around in oil covered jeans and ride a motorcycle all day and get in fights

• Skinhead - football hooliganism

• All of these are started by a few kids wanted to be different

• All they've got is what they stand up in and they want to be special so they work with what they've got

The self as others

‘Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought’. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself’ De Beauvoir 1950 - feminist theorist

Here, De Beauvoir talks about Woman being set as the other of Male, and as dominant, Masculinity becomes the holder of all of the power - PATRIARCHY

To define yourself as ‘other’ means a rejection of the dominant ideology in whatever are we are talking about.

Storming vs norming - wanting to be different vs going with the ‘normal’ way of  life

The forming–storming–norming–performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who said that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results.

Intertextuality

Fred Perry video 2: Subculture

• Modernists/stylists  - Mod - the scooter is a very important part of being a mod as it means these young people no longer have to rely on their parents - very forward looks

• Drugs culture created a generation gap

• ‘Ready steady go’  was a show where people found out how to dress and where to buy it form - however it diluted the culture and became widely diffused

• Made their own little wars - wanted their 15 minutes of fame  - it was fun to run round and smash things

• Mod scene starts to split as people start picking up things from other cultures  - psychedelic mods and skinheads

• Mod is clean living in difficult situation

Intertextuality is the shaping of a text’s meaning by another text (text doesn’t have to be a piece of writing it can be an object)

Assimilation is the process of taking in and fully understanding information and ideas

Fred Perry video 3: Black ‘n’ White Riot

• Punk - Wanting to scare people

• Post modernist idea

• An accumulation of different cultures - no one looked like each other - do it yourself influence

• First time women got involved in music and playing guitars  

• Lots of feminists ideas actually started to be heard

• Punk and reggie mixing together??

• Two Tone

• Air of political change - solidarity between young blacks and whites in the council areas

Bricolage is a French word -  construction or creation from a diverse range of available things.

In cultural studies bricolage is used to mean the processes by which people acquire objects from across social divisions to create new cultural identities.

We can understand subcultural dressing as signifiers for rebellion, or differing ideology from the dominant hegemony. This is semiotics, and is very important in all kinds of arts practice.

In social psychology the term ‘psychological bricolage’ is used to explain the mental processes through which an individual develops novel solutions to problems by making use of using previously unrelated knowledge or ideas they already possess.

A subculture is more than just a way of dressing and styling yourself

Digital connectivity

77% of Americans have a smartphone (feb 2018)

52.2% of all internet traffic is from mobile devices

China has the most internet users in the world 746 million users annually (feb 2018) this is a small amount of their population

Active users on social media

(These are all active users that have logged in in the past 30 days)

• Facebook 2.27 billion

• Instagram 1 billion

• Snapchat 186 million

• Twitter 336 million

• Pinterest 250 million

51.5 of the population has regular access to internet

Digital immigrant and digital native

“Filter bubble”

Blocking culture

Trolling

Democratised access to platforms

Filter bubble/blocking culture

Introduced by Eli Pariser in 2010 to describe how algorithms tailor content dependent on user interest.

Danger that people will only be exposed to people/content that they agree with

Has been used to explain political upsets eg Brexit, Trump election

Exploits our natural tendency to want to interact with people who think the same as us, and also avoid confrontation!

“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” — Eric Schmidt, former executive chairman of Alphabet Inc.

Global consumerism helps us be freer with how we want to express ourselves in the past you had to make more of a commitment as you couldn't afford to buy such a variety of clothes

Hybrid Identities

Vaporwave is an internet subculture which starts as a micro-genre of electronic music, but also references an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and popular culture.

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Seminar

Subcultures are a thing because there is a need to belong, identity and shock factor/tactics.

Utopia vs dystopia

A utopia will never happen as you will never happen as we would never agree on its conditions

Representation in the media

• Black mirror - dystopia

• Hunger games - dystopia and utopia in one

• Ready player one -

• Neo Luddites - skeptical about technology

• Tech addicts

Subcultures now aren't as defined as they were years ago.

Modern avant-garde

It has a complex history, that started with the bourgeoisie. It's main aims were to shock.

Shock strategy doesn't last long, people get over it or it is no longer a shocking thing.

Spectacular subculture are well known subcultures.

The 'Teenager'

• It wasn't a term until the 1950's,

• It was an advertising scheme

• It was the first time that young people had a social life separate to their parents

Punk and Shock

Started in the 70's and 80's. It was so popular in Britain as everyone hated Maggie Thatcher and wanted a voice. Punk was the first time that women were a prominent part of the culture.

Charles Saatchi

• Sensation exhibition.

• 284,734 people went to see the exhibition over three months

• Myra Harley painting was mad up of a mosaic of children hand prints. It caused some outrage, it was nearly destroyed on three occasions which only made it more popular