Punk Culture's Promotion Of A Subculture

The ability to subscribe and effortlessly identify with a subculture through the representation of clothing, cinema, and music, creates a community in which those who feel displaced or othered by society can relate and connect. Punk culture’s promotion of self-expression and the capacity for anyone to create and engage within the punk community enables the repressed emotions of society to be revealed. During the peak punk-era of the late 1970s and early 1980s in England, young art students created punk music videos to express their burgeoning views of contemporary society. Through the use of cheap, domestic technology to explore new modes of expression new film makers banded together to engage in self-reflexivity while simultaneously participating

286). During a period when the working class and the blue-collar citizen was disregarded and struggling to survive within society, punk music sought to provide an outlet for the inequalities that ran rampant across the globe. The creation of a distinct divide between mainstream and sub-culture and the deliberate contradiction of dominant taste acted as an open space for those dissatisfied with their sociopolitical state. For example, the Sex Pistols’ bandmember Jonny Rotten deliberately sang in a “working-class dialect”, while the rest of the band passionately and aggressively played their instruments with reckless abandon and a lack of self-recognition of poor talent (Moore, 2004, p. 312). Though they were no musical aficionados, the Sex Pistols defiantly opposed commercial rock music’s form and theory in order to perform and construct their own genre, “noisier than anything most audiences had heard previously” (Moore, 2004, p. 312) and to solidify their place outside of popular

Bands present at RAR included the popular punk band, The Clash, renowned reggae act, Steel Pulse, as well as new wave, punk rocker, Elvis Costello and the Attractions (Moore, 2004, p. 314). Also included in the lineup were more politically charged performers such as X-Ray Spex, which was a female-led punk band, the racially mixed “2-tone” ska band, The Specials, as well as the openly gay singer, Tom Robinson (Moore, 2004, p. 315). The vast array of bands that composed the RAR concert series was a deliberate attempt to “bring black and white audiences together” and to “debunk racist mythologies” that plagued the United Kingdom (Moore, 2004, p. 315). Although the bands were widely recognized and well known, the punk doctrine of an inclusive and communicative space enabled this concert series to be an integral moment in the development of punk culture. The political and societal movement of bringing together the privileged white race with the objectified and discriminated against black UK citizens through performances and concerts ostensibly accredits the advent of punk music. Regardless of the fact that the punk culture was initially