American youth culture

  American rock and roll grew around it. Some of post-war street youths hanging around bombsites in urban areas and getting drawn into petty crime began to dress in a variation of the zoot suit style called a drape suit, with a country style bootlace tie, winklepicker shoes, drainpipe trousers, and Elvis Presley style slicked hair. These youths were called Teddy boys. For a night out dancing at the palais, their girlfriends would usually wear poodle skirts and crinolines. For day-to-day wear there was a trend toward girls wearing slacks or jeans. At the time, the idea of girls wearing trousers and boys taking time over their hairstyle was socially shocking to many people.

In America and Australia, Hawaiian-influenced Surfing was the new youth sport. A whole subculture grew around the sport and the associated parties, clothes, speech patterns and music. During the same timeframe skateboard riding developed as a parallel lifestyle to wave riding. Both forms of board riding continued throughout the remainder of the century and into the next. From these two sports young people learned to provide their own social structure within which they could display skills and excellence.

In the 1960s, the "beats" or "beatniks" grew to be an even larger subculture, reaching such proportions that they spread around the world, and developed subcultures of their own. Subcultures within subcultures. That was the extent of cultural fractiousness in the 60s. The beat scene included Radicals, Peaceniks, Mods, Rockers, Bikers, hippies and, eventually, the self-parody thing: the freak scene. One of the main transitional features between the beat scene and the hippies was the journeying across America of the Merry Pranksters driven by Neal Cassady in a yellow school bus named "Furthur".

Also during the 60s, the beginnings of Hacker culture were forming from the increased usage of computers at colleges. Students who were fascinated by the possibilities of computers, the telephone and technology in general began figuring out ways to make the technology more freely available or accessible.

Disco first appeared in the 60s, which lead to the appearance of discotheques, such as the Whiskey A Go Go and Studio 54. In the 1980s, Disco turned into Techno.

In the 1970s, the hippie, mod and rocker cultures were in a process of transformation which temporarily took on the name of freaks (openly embracing the image of strangeness and otherlyness). A growing awareness of identity politics combined with the legalisation of homosexuality and a huge amount of interest in science fiction and fantasy forms of speculative writing produced the autre with an attitude freak scene. There was a lot of talk about "revolution", most of which was, undoubtedly, a lot of talk.

At some stage, though it's unclear when, some of the hacker/computer nerd subculture took on the derogatory word geek with pride, in the same way the freaks had done. Computer usage was still a very inaccessible secret world to most people in those days but lots of people were interested in computers because of their appearance in science fiction. The dream of one day owning a computer was a popular fantasy amongst science fiction fandom which had grown from a minor subculture in the first half of the 20th century to a quite large contingent by the 70s, along with horror fandom, comics fandom and fantasy freaks.

Since the freak scene was connected to the political ideas of the alternative society, the bands on the freak circuit didn't please the bank balances of the pop industry very much. A band like The Edgar Broughton Band or The Pink Fairies would play at a free festival, not on Top of the Pops.  The music/fashion/subculture which the pop industry created as a commercial alternative to the freaks was glam rock. Glam was a continuation of the trendies of the mod culture in the 60s, appealing to the androgynous trend of the seventies.

At the same time there emerged a new subculture called skinheads. The "skins" or skinheads were anti-aesthetic, pro-basic, fiercely working class tough youths. They sometimes had the image of homophobia and racism and this image was often true although, paradoxically, they loved black Jamaican reggae, ska, and bluebeat.

Skinheads mainly began from 1969, as a development from the hard, headcase type of mods but, by the mid-70s, some crossover was happening between skins and the freak scene. This developed into the punk subculture which became apparent from about 1975 onward. Punks managed to be both hardcases and tongue-in-cheek at the same time. The concept of Anarchism became fashionable.

Disco, which had begun in gay dance clubs, became a really significant centre of subculture from about 1975 onward. However, in some sectors, particularly in the NYC area, where disco had seemingly "taken over" all aspects of youth life from fashion, to behavior, to music, to dance, an aggressive "counter disco" movement was born. The artistic response to this anti-disco sentiment, in conjunction with an anti-hippy dippy movement, was the Punk Rock movement.

When punk was happening, some of the progressive rock elements took it as a challenge to live faster, harder and tougher than punk. They kept the long hair of the freak scene, adopted the black leather jacket as virtually a uniform and took on the name heavy metal (which is a phrase from the writings of William S. Burroughs).

In 1979, the Usenet was created as a medium of communication over the, still very primitive, internet of the time. The Usenet and the BBS subculture would become increasingly significant over the next few decades.

At the beginning of the 1980s some of the followers of punk rock began to be bored with it and wanted to make it more stylish and introduce elements of glam. By 1981 this trend had become New Romantics and the music was synthesiser electro-pop.

Other punk rock followers took the genre and culture further underground, where it evolved into a faster, harder genre coined as "Hardcore" or "Hardcore Punk". Some early hardcore bands are Black Flag, Minor Threat and The Bad Brains, Weirdoz, Sf's Flipper, and Youth Brigade.

Along with the Hardcore Movement came the "straight edge" Movement. Many associate "straight edge" with hardcore punk rock, perhaps because the founder of straight edge, Ian Mackaye of Minor Threat, owns Dischord Records, a label that supports the DC hardcore scene. However, this is a misconception: even McKaye states that he was not initially a punk. In contrast, Straight Edge is a progressive lifestyle in response to the "live fast, die young" associated with Punk Rock or Hardcore. Straight Edge is a lifestyle and (counter cultural) subculture, existing worldwide, but most notably in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. It advocates abstinence in relation to tobacco, alcohol and recreational drug use (especially psychoactive and stimulant drug use), and for some people in relation to promiscuous sexual behavior.

There was an unsuccessful attempt to manufacture an artificial subculture around the pop group Adam and the Ants. Supposed to be called Antpeople this remained merely a fictional subculture and didn't catch on in reality.

Other former punks searching for a new direction around 1979 evetually developed into the nucleus of what became the Goth subculture. Gothic culture developed naturally enough, without too much media forcing. The goths are a sub-culture of dark dress and gloomy romanticism. Unlike the New Romantics goth has become a permanent part of the sub cultural scene still going in the 21st century with some claiming their roots reach backwards to the gothic-romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Post punk and post hippie elements continued and a particular type of anarchist-pacifist subculture centred around the records being put out on the independent Crass label by Crass themselves and other bands including The Poison Girls. Crass records was a very independent operation enabling bands with an extremely raw sound to put out records when the major labels might not have bothered with them. Crass also organised gigs around the country for themselves and other bands and campaigned politically for the anti-nuclear movement and lots of other causes they believed in.

In American urban environments, a form of street culture using freeform and semi-staccato poetry, combined with athletic break dancing, was developing as the Hip hop and Rap subculture. In jazz jargon, the word rap had always meant speech and conversation. The new meaning signified a change in the status of poetry from an elitist artform to a community sport. Rappers could attempt to outdo each other with their skillful rhymes. Rapping is also known as MCing, which is one of the four main elements of Hip hop: MCing, DJing, graffiti art, and breakdancing. From the early to mid 1980s, poetry culture in a broader sense caught the same kind of energy as rap and so began the first of the Poetry slams. Poetry slamming became an irregular focus for the latest wave of poetry aficionados.

A subculture relishing free enterprise capitalism sprang up in the mid 80s and were branded by the tabloid press with the name of Yuppies (the first two or three letters intended to mean either Young Urban Professional or Young and Upwardly mobile and the remainder to sound like hippies). In the USA the yuppie style was contemporaneous with the Valley girl stereotype which was all about outer flash and cash at the apparent expense of any inner spirituality or gravitas.

Free parties and raves began from the mid-80s and became a flourishing subculture. The music was electronic dance music which developed from Techno, pioneered in Detroit and Chicago by people like Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, as well as electronic music, pioneered by Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage and others, taken by way of progressive rock bands like Hawkwind, filtered through the sounds of dub-reggae and the electro-pop bands like Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode and given a different twist via The Art of Noise and early hip hop and recycled psychedelia. Towards the end of the 80s rave culture had diversified into different forms connected to music such as Acid House and Acid Jazz and would continue to diversify into the 90s. Rave culture thrived from the mid-80s to the end of the century and beyond.

The Usenet and BBS subculture had developed an element called Slashdot subculture which involved its own forms of etiquette and behaviour patterns both social and anti-social and the phenomena of trolling, spamming, flaming etc. The computer subculture was also influenced by fictional subcultures of the future to be read about in cyberpunk literature.

The 1990s saw most of the subcultures of the eighties continuing in some form or another. The music and clothes changed more than the sense of identity associated with the cultures. Dance music continued. Raves continued. Pop continued. Hip hop continued. Rock continued. Goth continued. Punks and Hippies were back. 80s Valley Girl looks were recycled in Japan as Kogal. Sixties styles like Mod bands and psychedelia were revived and recycled. There were, within rock and dance music, some variations like grunge within rock or drum and bass within dance styles but these and others were just musical styles, not radically different mindsets representing actual subcultures. Even the term Generation X or Gen X refers to a condition experienced equally by previous generations and presented in a published form by journalists and novelists as if it were a new phenomenon. Alternative society elements continued as DIY Culture. Important musical-cum-social movements included house, rave, techno, trance, hardcore, handbag, garage, electronica, Crusty, pagan techno.

The main new technological development of the 90s was the internet. As the 1980s ended and the 90s began Tim Berners-Lee created HTML which made possible the World Wide Web. Importantly, the web allowed internet subcultures to grow from tiny numbers of geeks, to big global online communities. These communities are as diverse in their preoccupations as any other subcultures. Despite its geek-leaning origins, the internet soon became the focus for subcultures of all kinds.

As always, coffeehouses are a gathering place for subcultures. In the 90s some new ones sprang up offering internet access with the coffee: Internet cafes [31].

 

 

2.3 The origin, fashion and ideology of subcultures

 

 

After the Second World War people got a chance to show they standpoint and to rebel against the authority. That’s why a lot of subcultures, such as punk or hippie, appeared. People are distributed to the subcultures by their attitude as well as by their favorite music styles.

Youth subcultures are often defined or distinguishable by elements such as fashion, beliefs, slang, ideology, behaviours or interests. It was noted that fashion plays a role in all subculture groups and that some are more strongly defined by their fashion, while others take the clothing that relates to the music or sport to define the subculture group. The study of subcultures often consists of the study of symbolism attached to clothing, music and other visible affectations by members of subcultures. In the USA the most popular subcultures are hip-hoppers, goths,

skinheads, punks, emo. Now we consider them rather more detailed.

 

 

2.3.1 Punks

 

 

The punk subculture emerged in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia in the mid-1970s. Exactly which region originated punk has long been a major controversy within the movement.

Early punk had an abundance of antecedents and influences, and Jon Savage has described the subculture as a "bricolage" of almost every previous youth culture that existed in the West since the Second World War "stuck together with safety pins" [25,p.16]. Various philosophical, political, and artistic movements influenced the subculture. In particular, punk drew inspiration from several strains of modern art. Various writers, books, and literary movements were important to the formation of the punk aesthetic. Punk rock has a variety of musical origins both within the rock and roll genre and beyond.

The earliest form of punk rock, named protopunk in retrospect, started as a garage rock revival in the northeastern United States in the late 1960s. The first ongoing music scene that was assigned the punk label appeared in New York City between 1974 and 1976 [13,p.324].

In the United States during the early 1980s, punk underwent a renaissance in the form of hardcore punk, which sought to do away with the frivolities introduced in the later years of the original movement, while at the same time Britain saw a parallel movement called streetpunk. Hardcore and streetpunk then spread to other regions just as the original subculture had. In the mid-1980s to the early 1990s in America, various underground scenes either directly evolved from punk or at least applied its attitudes to new styles, in the process producing the alternative rock and indie music scenes. A new movement in the United States became visible in the early and mid-1990s that sought to revive the punk movement, doing away with some of the trappings of hardcore.

The punk subculture is centered around listening to recordings or live concerts of a loud, aggressive genre of rock music called punk rock, usually shortened to punk. Different punk subcultures often distinguish themselves by having a unique style of punk rock, although not every style of punk rock has its own associated subculture. Punk bands usually consist of a singer, one or two overdriven electric guitars, an electric bass player, and a drummer (the singer may be one of the musicians). In some bands, the band members may do backup vocals, but these typically consist of shouted slogans, choruses, or football(soccer)-style chants, rather than the sweet, arranged harmony vocals of pop bands.

Although punks are frequently categorized as having left-wing or progressive views, punk politics cover the entire political spectrum. Punk-related ideologies are mostly concerned with individual freedom and anti-establishment views. Common punk viewpoints include anti-authoritarianism, a DIY ethic, non-conformity, direct action and not selling out. Other notable trends in punk politics include nihilism, anarchism, socialism, anti-militarism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-nationalism, anti-homophobia, environmentalism, vegetarianism, veganism and animal rights.

Punks seek to outrage others with the highly theatrical use of clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, tattoos, jewelry and body modification. Early punk fashion adapted everyday objects for aesthetic effect: ripped clothing was held together by safety pins or wrapped with tape; ordinary clothing was customized by embellishing it with marker or adorning it with paint; a black bin liner became a dress, shirt or skirt; safety pins and razor blades were used as jewelry. Also popular have been leather, rubber, and vinyl clothing.

Some punks wear tight "drainpipe" jeans, plaid/tartan trousers, kilts or skirts, T-shirts, leather jackets (which are often decorated with painted band logos, pins and buttons, and metal studs or spikes), and footwear such as Converse sneakers, skate shoes, brothel creepers, or Dr. Martens boots. Some early punks occasionally wore clothes displaying a Nazi swastika for shock-value, but most contemporary punks are staunchly anti-racist and are more likely to wear a crossed-out swastika symbol. Some punks cut their hair into Mohawks or other dramatic shapes, style it to stand in spikes, and color it with vibrant, unnatural hues.

Some punks are anti-fashion, arguing that punk should be defined by music or ideology. This is most common in the post-1980s US hardcore punk scene, where members of the subculture often dressed in plain T-shirts and jeans [24].

The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.

 

 

2.3.2  Emo

 

 

Emo (from Latin: "to buy, purchase", pronounced eeee-moe) is a type of subculture (rather distinctly from the 21st Century) loosely rooted around punk rock with its own distinct style of music, fashion, argot and other trappings in a desperate, though ultimately hopeless attempt to pronounce their uniqueness [9].

There are a few existing theories on how the entire emo subculture was started, though none of them are regarded as entirely compelling:

Theory 1: Some people have gone so far to suggest that "emo" originated in the 1980's, as a way to describe a branch of hardcore punk that appeared in the 1980's, with "emo" being short for "emotive/emotional hardcore/emoxcore/emocore/whatever," but these people are liars, as early emocore bands like Fugazi are about as far removed from emotastic "music" as is possible, and everybody on the internet knows that "emo" means "angsty kids who take pictures of themselves in a mirror on MySpace." Because random fat people sitting in their basements have confirmed this, it is generally accepted as true.

Theory 2: Some people believe that "emo" is a subculture which stemmed from goths, which stemmed from the punk culture, which stemmed from tophats. This is largely debatable and difficult to prove considering the drastic differences between the "goth" and "emo" subcultures: goths kill kittens, emos cry when kittens are killed or when candidates like John Kerry lose the election. Emos wear tight pants, goths wear parachute pants. By numerous comparisons, those of the emo stereotype have more in common with a chocolate cookie than they do with goths.

Theory 3: The third theory, designed by Dr. Kent of the University of Stanford while he was on ecstasy, cites vague and obscure evidence that, he argued, strongly proved the Lithuanian Nihilist movement as being responsible for the emo subculture's outgrowth in the early 1990s, perhaps as a secret means of creating hybrids to take over the Earth's teenagers and other abnormally-hormonal people before the egg-shaped meteors came, possibly due to the "emos" being victims of a fungal infection developed by rogue Cuban scientists. Additionally, Dr. Kent believed that they would eventually grow cybernetic appendages to make themselves more superior to the rest of the human race, who would then be victims of a horrific parasitic fringe as detailed in his short paper on the issue, which stated, "they would eventually grow cybernetic appendages to make themselves more superior to the rest of the human race, who would then be victims of a horrific parasitic fringe." However, Dr. Kent was killed and eaten by Wilford Brimley in the early 1980s, at least two decades before the emo subculture started appearing at Hot Topic stores nationwide. Kent was once resurrected from the dead, so it's not impossible that he has again managed to return to the land of the living. This theory has proved controversial [12,pp.154-155].

Today emo is commonly tied to both music and fashion as well as the emo subculture. Usually among teens, the term "emo" is stereotyped with wearing skinny jeans, sometimes in bright colors, and tight t-shirts (usually short-sleeved) which often bear the names of emo bands. Studded belts and black wristbands are common accessories in emo fashion. Black Converse sneakers and skate shoes, such as Vans, are popularly worn among people of the emo fashion. Some males also wear thick, black horn-rimmed glasses.

The emo fashion is also recognized for its hairstyles. Popular looks include long side-swept bangs, sometimes covering one or both eyes. Also popular is hair that is straightened and dyed black. Bright colors, such as blue, pink, red, or bleached blond, are also typical as highlights in emo hairstyles. Short, choppy layers of hair are also common. This fashion has at times been characterized as a fad. In the early 2000s, emo fashion was associated with a clean cut look but as the style spread to younger teenagers, the style has become darker, with long bangs and emphasis on the color black replacing sweater vests.

Emo has been associated with a stereotype that includes being particularly emotional, sensitive, shy, introverted, or angst-ridden. It has also been associated with depression, self-injury, and suicide [9].

Emo is a style of rock music typically characterized by melodic musicianship and expressive, often confessional lyrics. As the style was echoed by contemporary American punk rock bands, its sound and meaning shifted and changed, blending with pop punk and indie rock and encapsulated in the early 1990s by groups such as Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate. By the mid 1990s numerous emo acts emerged from the Midwestern and Central United States, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the style [12,p.152].

 

 

2.3.3 Hip-hoppers

 

 

Hip-hop (or hip hop) is a modern sub-culture that originated in the late 1970's in New York City. Hip hop is the culture from which rap emerged. Initially it consisted of four main elements; graffiti art, breaking  (breakdancing), dj (cuttin’ and scratching) and rapping  (emceeing). Hip hop is a lifestyle with its own language, style of dress, music and mind set that is continuously evolving. Nowadays because break dancing and graffiti aren’t as prominent the words “rap” and “hip hop” have been used interchangeably. However it should be noted that all aspects of hip hop culture still exist. They’ve just evolved onto new levels [7,p.8].

Hip hop has a distinctive slang. Due to hip hop's commercial success in the late nineties and early 21st century, many of these words have been assimilated into many different dialects across America and the world and even to non-hip hop fans (the word dis for example is remarkably prolific). There are also words like homie which predate hip hop but are often associated with it [29,p.98].

 

 

2.3.3.1 Rapping and dj

 

 

Rapping (also known as emceeing, MCing, spitting (bars), or just rhyming) refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics with a strong rhythmic accompaniment". The art form can be broken down into different components, such as “content”, “flow” (rhythm and rhyme), and “delivery”. Rapping is distinct from spoken word poetry in that is it performed in time to the beat of the music. The use of the word "rap" to describe quick and slangy speech or repartee long predates the musical form [2,p.90].