Moral panic primarily emanates from a fear of difference and the unknown. The emergence of punk in the 1970s utilized moral panic to establish and maintain their culture while simultaneously trying to distance themselves from mainstream society. Despite the polar differences between punk and popular culture, reflective qualities can be drawn between the two. Punk culture can be interpreted as the amalgamation of society’s repressed aggression, passion, and restlessness, or can be the assumed consequence of the political or economic repression of the lower classes. The increasing fear that punk caused mainstream society illustrates the true fear of society resorting to atavistic and unrefined means to express their emotions. Through the use …show more content…
William Fowler explores the British underground film scene and its influence on, “and relationship with… the rich sub-cultural interrelations of the 1980s that embraced esoteric ideas, queer occultism, punk, postmodernism” and British art schools among other aspects in his 2017 article, “The Occult Roots of MTV: British Music Video and Underground Film-Making in the 1980s.” By analyzing different films, music videos, and other artwork created during this time period Fowler describes punk culture in regard to the art movements and artistic practices that stemmed from this period of exploration. The expression of punk within art work and primarily film aided in the distinction between punk and the mainstream because of its unusual techniques, such as using a Super 8 camera to shoot a music video despite the poor picture quality. The evolution of punk within Western culture is described in “Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols: Punk Rock as a Reflective Subculture” (1983), which utilizes the sociological research conducted within Britain regarding youth culture and applies it to the adoption of punk in America. With a primary focus on Los Angeles, authors Harold Levine and Steven Stumpf investigate what it …show more content…
There is an emphasis on self-actualization, expression through art and media, as well as an embrace of difference within the punk community, which opposes with the prevailing public opinion of punk from popular culture as being violently oppositional, anarchists, and
In Justin Pearson's memoir, From the Graveyard of the arousal Industry, he recounts the events that occured from his early years of adolesence to the latter years of his adulthood telling the story of his unforgiving and candid life. Set in the late 1970s "Punk" rock era, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry offers a valuable perspective about the role culture takes in our lives, how we interact with it and how it differs from ideology.
Within this essay I will discuss Widdicombe and Wooffitt’s suggestions made within their book ‘The Language of Youth Subcultures’ regarding resistance and will use the subculture example of punks to portray a clear conclusion. This book is about how different identities, both social and personal are established, maintained and managed within their everyday language. Widdicombe and Wooffitt seem to narrow in specifically on youth subcultures, particularly interviews with punks. We will look carefully at the language used by them to construct their identities and why they ‘resist’ being seen of members when approached in interview situations.
"1991: The Year Punk Broke" is a documentary about the leading punk figures in the nineties such as Sonic Youth and Nirvana. In the continuation of the documentary, the viewer finds Thurstoon Moore of Sonic Youth asking young music enthusiats: “People see rock and roll as youth culture, and when youth culture becomes monopolized by big business, what are the youth to do?". In addition to the question, he states, "I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture by mass marketing and commercial behavior control and the first step to do is to destroy the record companies.” "The bogus capitalist process" that Moore talks about refers to the aggressive capitalist side of any market, but more
In "On the concept of moral panic" Garland, David (2008) argues that, from subliminal messages to witch hunts, the moral panic has existed for many centuries especially when related to the music industry (25). Moral panic even predates television. A moral panic in particular that experienced much media presence and public reactions were in the1980s when allegations arose on how subliminal messages were being hidden in songs through the process of back masking. In the 1980s, Christian evangelists started noticing that there were some messages being passed in rock and roll music. This issue caused a moral panic as it was alleged that some rock band wrote and sang songs that when sang backwards held some particular messages. The songs were alleged to be containing satanic content or occult and encouraging drug and alcohol abuse. Back-masking created a moral panic in the country and had several effects in the rock roll music industry.
The concept of moral panic emerges when the mass media sensationalizes violence as it relates to drug use and sales. It is defined as a “condition, episode, person or group emerges to become defined as a threat to social values and interests.” (Altheide, 2009, p.79) Media coverage on select topics such as drugs and the violence associated with it shows a pronounced problem. The problems and issues trigger a panic by the public to act and reduce the threat to social conditions to prevent violence and drugs from reaching their communities. “Moral panics can be understood as having an ideological dimension in that they...
In the portion "Gangsta Culture" from Bell Hooks' We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity
Some of the governing models of moral panics include Jock Young (1971) and Stanley Cohen (1972). Stanley Cohen fabricated the idea of moral panics in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), whilst Jock Young concentrated more on the correlation of deviance amplification and drug taking. The main feature of a moral panic is deviance amplification; this was looked at in more detail by Stanley Cohen (1972) in what he called the deviancy amplification spiral. Some examples of media moral panics include; internet pornography, violence in video games, immigration, single parents etc… Moral panics can affect the public’s perceptions of crime in many ways, making the ext... ... middle of paper ... ...
Hip Hop culture has been the same throughout the years, such as expressing themselves, in their songs there are always themes and hinted quotes they tell their audiences on how they feel or what they did. Also in Hip Hop one of the biggest stereotypes is selling drugs. The film Notorious displays, what Hip Hop Culture is, such as rapping to express themselves and portrayal of drugs.
For nearly half of a century, fragments of our society have continually made outward attempts to create and popularize movements that try to ‘go against’, ‘take over’ or ‘change’ popular culture; in even more far-fetched examples, ‘change’ society as a whole. This idea, as referred to by Roszak in the 1960’s, is commonly known as “counterculture”. A counterculture movement takes one or multiple social norms from established culture that it is in opposition to, and fights said norms. This idea of “culture jamming”, a term coined by the San Franciso area band Negativland, is built on a hope that a counterculture movement can reshape the norms it tries to destroy, into ones which suit its’ needs and ideologies. In the vast majority of cases, the objective of counterculture has not even remotely been reached; in fact, most attempts have failed miserably, unable to attract even the most minute amount of noteworthy attention or following.
The generation of punks was influenced from many different kind of modern art and writers. The word punk was used in a defamatory manner, which has been considered with punk bechaviour of personal disrespect or has been used as a form of expression of feeling of hatred. It started by the youth people who were criticizing the economy, the rising unemploymend and they were seeking a reform of the goverment system. The punk culture is a subculture which defines the freedom, the liberty and the revolution against the stereotype society and the casual culture. They were anarchist or marxist. Their ideas were anti authoritarianism, the movement of DIY (Do It Yourself) and there only request was not to sell out. Ten years after the emerge of the punk subculture many currents imitatived from the first, the celticpunk, the hardcore punk, the anarcho-punk, skate punk, garage punk the street punk and many others. So the punk subculture went through a laboratory which affect its DNA which created new forms of the initial subculture which had their own
single person orchestrate its ideologies or its strategies. Punk is, like Hip Hop and others, just another culture built around the strife of the youth as a reaction against stiff older
“We were just a couple of young punks.” SLC Punk is a incredibly well written, iconic film. SLC Punk is full of contradictions that all young minds have to face, the inevitability of conformity, and growing up in todays society. The films a journey starting out with a young punk kid doing everything possible to not fit in. At the end of the journey, you see a tale of life's highs, and lows, and just how difficult it is to be a punk, in Salt Lake City. The exellent narration, contradicitions of youth, and visual aspects, make this film an incredible view for anyone at any point in their lifes.
In the article by Dawson Barrett, “DIY Democracy: The Direct Action Politics of U.S. Punk Collectives,” as the DIY name implies, these bands basically had the freedom to do their own thing (23). What that means is that they did not have a major label pushing them to do one thing or another, so they were able to pick and choose what they did or did not want to do regarding their music, the scene they played in, and where they wanted to tour. If they would have had a major label, they would not have had the ability to do these things on their own. Ian Moran states in his article “Punk: The Do-It-Yourself Subculture” that the reason these bands were considered DIY was also because of the fact that they specifically wanted to seek an alternative lifestyle from the norms of music at the time (58). The norms definitely were not the crazy hair, weird style, aggressive behavior, or form of music these bands portrayed. For example, punks did not care what other people thought of them, they were just doing the music they wanted to do and trying to get a message across that they strongly believed in. If someone did not like it, that actually fueled them, because then they knew they were accomplishing their
The American rock band Nirvana impacted American culture and society by paving the way for the punk rock subculture into mainstream corporate America. Punk rock music stems from the rock genre but has its own agenda. The crux of punk rock is that it is a movement of the counterculture against the norms of society. Punk rock in itself is made up of a subculture of people who rejected the tameness of rock and roll music during the 1970s. (Masar, 2006, p. 8). The music stresses anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian ideas in its lyrics as well as scorns political idealism in American society. Before Nirvana unintentionally made punk rock a multi-million dollar commercialized genre of music, underground rock paved the way for the punk rock genre by creating core values that punk rockers drew upon.
There are many ways to define popular culture. Many individuals have grappled with the question what is popular culture? And how to critically analyze and deconstruct the meanings. Looking at the root words of popular culture is where to begin. Raymond Williams states ‘popular’ means: “well liked by many people" or “culture actually made for the people themselves (Storey, p.5). This is part with the word ‘culture’ combine to look at how the two words have been connect by theoretical work within social and historical context. John Storey approaches popular culture in six categories, they are as followed: “Popular culture is simply culture that is widely favoured or well liked by many people”, Popular culture is “the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture”, Popular culture is “mass culture”, “Popular culture is the culture that originates from ‘the people.” and “Popular culture as a site of struggle