Punk rock was explicitly anti-establishment, and it articulated its opposition to socio-economic inequality not only through its songs but also through its fashion style. Punk championed a Do-It-Yourself aesthetic that involved appropriating banal objects from everyday life for outrageously bizarre purposes.
Safety pins, lavatory chains, belts and ripped clothing became ‘signs’ that alluded to the ‘bondage’ of the working class to poverty (both material and spiritual) in a decadent consumerist society. The deliberate outlandishness of punk fashion also signalled the working class’ resigned acceptance of its alienated, ‘outcast’ status in British society (Hebdige, Subculture 65-66).
(Image by Tim Schapker)
Punk was also opposed to racism, which was experiencing a revival in the 1970s. In fact, punk openly identified with the black music subculture of reggae. It admired reggae’s opposition to race and class oppression and its complete disavowal of white mainstream society (Hebdige, Subculture 63-64).
“Three-quarters of our look, that third-rate tramp thing, that wasn’t really Steve and Paul, that was poverty, really. Lack of money. When the arse of your pants falls out you just use safety pins to stick it back on. The fact that that became a fashion statement wasn’t deliberate.”
- John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), The Sex Pistols (Filth and the Fury 39)
“London’s burning with boredom now
London’s burning, dial 99999”
- “London’s Burning”, The Clash
“Black people gotta lot a problems
But they don’t mind throwing a brick
White people go to school
Where they teach you how to be thick”
- “White Riot”, The Clash
Punk Semiotics
Besides criticising class and race inequality, punk rock attacked the status quo on the more abstract level of language as well. In Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige argues that punk fashion, by appropriating everyday objects and jumbling them together into strange combinations, challenged the conventional uses and ‘meanings’ of these objects.
By giving these objects new meanings through incongruous juxtaposition with other objects, punk showed its audiences that these objects or ‘signs’ have no essential meanings that can’t be changed, regardless of what schools, the police, and other institutions have to say about these ‘signs’ (114-116).
In the world of punk fashion, the safety pin is no longer a functional instrument used to hold damaged clothing in place. It is a makeshift earring; a fashion accessory; a signifier of poverty; even a self-reflexive symbol of the ‘cut up’ and ‘stitch together’ collage-like aesthetic of punk fashion itself.
In Hebdige’s view, the ultimate ‘meaning’ of punk is the absence of absence of any ultimate ‘meaning’ (117). This, perhaps, is punk’s most menacing political message.
Punk Legacy
Like most other subcultures, the punk rock movement has been co-opted by the mainstream music industry, the mass media and high fashion. Vivienne Westwood, who made her name in the heyday of punk as Malcolm McLaren’s girlfriend and fashion collaborator, now sells punk fashion at prices few punks would have been able to afford in the 1970s.
A Japanese brand selling punk-inspired fashion
Although punk has gone ‘couture’ and has, like its iconic safety pin, lost its old meanings and gained some new (commercial) ones, punk’s grassroots spirit of DIY and its willingness to question and challenge our ‘normal’ way of life still remain with us today. Thanks to punk, many young musicians today form their own garage bands, perform at ‘indie’ music venues, and create music that does not follow the dictates of the mainstream music industry.
And when we listen to the old punk records again, it is clear that things haven’t changed much from the days of superficial consumerism, socio-economic inequality and social mind-control that punk rock revolted against. Perhaps it is time to take punk’s many messages seriously again, and to think about what we can do about the world we live in.
http://www.nlb.gov.sg/blogs/libraryesplanade/music/anarchy-in-the-uk-the-explosive-emergence-of-punk-rock-and-its-aftermath/
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