Before there were cyberpunks, before there were steampunks, or neko punks, there were the Sex Pistols, and the Ramones, as the originators of punk movements that not only emerged to counter mainstream orthodoxy, but who came to define more than a look but a lifestyle, a subculture in itself. According to Hebdige (1979?), subcultures are formed from communal and symbolic engagements with larger societal systems from which they do more than resist, but rather hybridize what is available as material culture and along with anything else that can be used to fragment them from the mainstream. In essence, the intended result is open subversion as antithesis to tradition, hence the alienation and emptiness embodied in punk style. Thus, their primary goal as constantly evolving subcultures was to distance themselves from prescribed societal conventions to the furthest extent possible.
Norms respond to subcultural manifestations by absorbing them and making them commonplace. And what did (and does) conventional wisdom dictate in the face of subcultural threats? Appropriation. And their parade of these subcultural practices to the status of fad. This can occur by way of commodification, by making it into public property and valuable merchandise, or by way of ideology, by its perpetuation as a good (or bad) thing in the public eye: recall Versace safety-pinned couture? Recall seeing multiple hybridizations of the punk style in SL? Being that SL is a virtual simulation of RL, the same manifestations are commonplace on the grid. SL businesses thrive on replicating punk styles, and we as consumers commodify them to exhaustion. Even freebie boxes are replete with the stuff. And we run around with an excess of rips on our virtual jeans, tattoos on our skins, and dried blood on our t-shirts, even when in RL we are computer nerds, are afraid of contracting hepatitis through artists’ needles, and blood nauseates us, wet or dry. That’s the convenience of SL: we can all enact our punkness without apparent repercussions. Perhaps we should thank Sid Vicious for enabling us dorks to feel all bad-ass, even if only in avatar mode. :P
I agree whole-heartedly with what you say here.
ReplyDeletePunk, like many other subcultures, is an attempt to give voice to the unvoiced. These can become appropriated almost immediately by the unvoiced with little to say, the hangers on that find what they need to say being said for them. People will then bemoan the commodification that ensues but it is typically needed for a subculture to have any impact beyond its deliberately hermetic origins which might well strangle it. The originators express what the clique will suppress, trying to protect 'their' new found identity from dissipation and dissemination.
The use of such subcultures within SL is multiple acts of abstraction compounded. Being 30 years from the focus of punk it would still be moderately shocking to have green hair in RL or be dressed in a bin bag but it would be the shock of insistence. That people have seemingly not moved on from the art school shock tactics of old, or more likely shocked that they got lost on the way to a fancy dress party. That is what SL is much of the time, a fancy dress party, with the endless "Best in...." competitions, which reward capitalism with capitalism, brand recognition with purchase power. The clothes are not being worn, the gob is not being spat, the music is rarely being listened to but in digitally remastered, 3CD, best of compilations.
And now to end on a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiUzo38BbSA
Umm at this point I should point out I don't actually hate you. gahihateyou is an email account I set up ages ago when I was having problems signing in to things and it refusing my credentials. The blog required me to sign in and it picked that username from someplace. It is only actually the internet as a whole I hate and only on bad days, not you. Wow that is a craven, little, snivelling excuse, I am so not punk.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I deleted the comment forever, by accident. All it said was that I didn't think you hated me (based on your name), nor did I think you were a punk (in any sense of the word)....hehehhehe.
ReplyDelete